Lars Eller was determined to do his part to get the Pittsburgh Penguins out of the malaise they have found themselves mired in barely a month into the 2024-25 season.
“The adversity we’re going through has to make us better,” the dependable third-line center said in Cranberry on Tuesday. “We need to grow from it and improve. We talked, the players talked, the coaches talked. We are where we are and we need to crawl out of it and find our way back in one game at a time, one shift at a time.
“Everybody.”
Eller won’t have an opportunity to fulfill that edict.
Tuesday evening, he was traded to the Washington Capitals, the team he helped lead to its only Stanley Cup title in 2018. In exchange, the Penguins received assets that can aid them in the future.
Just not in the immediate future.
The Capitals sent back a pair of draft picks in the third round of 2027 and the fifth round of 2025.
The fifth-rounder was originally held by the Chicago Blackhawks and has been dealt around the NHL, making stops with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Capitals. In fact, current Penguins president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas, in his previous station as Maple Leafs general manager, acquired the pick from the Blackhawks in a 2023 trade.
As for the present, this transaction — with a hated division rival — certainly suggests any designs the Penguins (6-9-2, 14 points) had in being a contender this season — simply for the playoffs, never mind the Stanley Cup — are stunted.
In announcing the trade via a release, the Penguins boasted of now having “10 selections in both the 2025 and 2027 NHL Drafts to accompany nine selections in the 2026 NHL Draft.”
Dubas, via an e-mail with Pittsburgh-based outlets, indicated the transaction was designed with a binary pursuit.
“It signals that with Blake Lizotte returning from injury and having depth options at center with Cody Glass, Noel Acciari, and Sam Poulin on the roster plus younger centers progressing in our system that we wanted the minutes for those players,” Dubas wrote. “And give them greater opportunity plus increase our assets and cap space to give us greater flexibility.”
Dubas indicated a trade involving Eller had been “in the works since the spring.”
Poulin is a leading candidate to see an immediate boost in playing time following Eller’s departure.
A first-round pick (No. 21 overall) in 2019, the 23-year-old Poulin was enjoying a strong season at the American Hockey League (AHL) level with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton before he was recalled to the NHL roster on Monday. At the time of the promotion, he was Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s second-leading scorer with nine points (three goals, six assists) in 11 games.
Having previously skated as a center and left winger, he has almost exclusively been deployed as a right winger this season.
Roughly five weeks earlier, he was exposed to waivers (and went unclaimed), a necessary procedure to assign a player with his professional service time to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
“I want to play in Pittsburgh,” Poulin said Monday. “I’m just glad I stayed with this organization and I get to be with this team again.”
Will any other recalls be incoming from Northeast Pennsylvania?
“Players will be recalled and given opportunity only when we feel they have maximized their development (with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton) and are ready to make that step,” Dubas wrote. “Some guys earned that out of camp and others are starting to make a strong push while helping (Wilkes-Barre/Scranton) off to a great start. We look forward to seeing which guys can continue that push with (Wilkes-Barre/Scranton), help them win and earn their chance to come up when those opportunities arise.”
The 35-year-old Eller, who scored the championship-clinching goal for the Capitals in 2018, skated in 17 games this season and was the Penguins’ fifth-leading scorer with seven points (four goals, three assists) while averaging 16:25 of ice time per contest, including 2:08 on the penalty kill.
A left-handed shot, Eller had also taken the second-most faceoffs on the squad this season (184), winning 56.2% of them.
Signed as an unrestricted free agent in 2023, Eller is in the final year of a two-year contract with a salary cap hit of $2.45 million. Following Tuesday’s trade, the Penguins now have $1,782,625 of salary cap space according to Puckpedia. That figure also accounts for forward Matt Nieto ($900,000) who is currently on long-term injured reserve, a designation that provides temporary relief from most of his salary cap hit.
This trade came less than 24 hours after the Penguins were bluntly dropped at home by the Dallas Stars, 7-1.
“There’s going to be bad, there’s going to be good during a season,” Eller said Tuesday afternoon. “And (Monday) was obviously really bad in a lot of ways. There’s ups and downs during a season.
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“That’s all I’ll say.”
Justin Guerriero contributed.