Grade the moves: The NHL's random busy week in August

Patrik Laine goes to Montreal, Yaroslav Askarov goes to San Jose, a restricted free agent offer sheet actually happens, and the Jets and Penguins make a prospect trade.

August is typically the dullest, most boring month of the NHL schedule.

The NHL Draft is over, all of the top free agents have signed, most of the major trades have already happened and training camp and preseason are still weeks away from opening. There is usually nothing of any relevance happening.

That all changed over the past week when the league went a little crazy with a dual offer sheet, a major trade involving a potential top-line goal-scorer, two top-prospect trades and a couple of other smaller moves.

Let’s talk about them!

Patrik Laine goes to Montreal

The trade

Montreal Canadiens get: Patrik Laine, 2026 second-round pick
Columbus Blue Jackets get: Jordan Harris

I wrote about this trade in greater depth over at Bleacher Report (read it here) so this will be a brief section here, but I absolutely love everything about this trade from a Montreal perspective.

First, there is a very real chance that Laine — assuming he stays healthy and on the ice — bounces back and again produces like a top-line goal-scorer. He is not a perfect player by any means and certainly has his flaws away from the puck. But the one thing he does — shoots the puck and scores goals — he does extremely well, even when he is having a “down” year. While his time in Columbus was mostly underwhelming, and even a little tumultuous at times, he still scored at a 30-goal pace per 82 games. When you are scoring at a 30-goal pace in your “down” years, you have a high ceiling and he is still at an age (26) where he should still have some prime years ahead of him.

His contract ($8.7 million per year over the next two years) is a big commitment, but Montreal has the salary cap space to handle that, it has a need for another goal-scorer to help move along its rebuild and it also got a second-round pick in 2026 that could be reasonably high as part of the deal. It’s a great deal.

Columbus didn’t do terribly here, either. The Blue Jackets were in a brutal spot where pretty much everybody knew they were going to have to trade Laine while having to do so at perhaps his lowest possible value with a sizable contract. They still managed to get a viable NHL defender that is still young with some upside, while also clearing some much-needed salary cap space.

Both teams did at least reasonably well here.

Montreal grade: A
Columbus grade: B-

---

Pittsburgh and Winnipeg exchange top prospects

The trade

Pittsburgh Penguins get: Rutger McGroarty
Winnipeg Jets get: Brayden Yager

When word first surfaced on Thursday that the Penguins had acquired McGroarty from the Winnipeg Jets it seemed like a pretty significant move to add a much-needed high-level prospect into what is a mostly empty farm system.

McGroarty was a first-round pick in 2022, had no interest in signing with the Jets, and was one of the more intriguing players available on the trade market this offseason.

Simply landing him is, in a vacuum, one of the best moves Kyle Dubas has made since he has been the Penguins’ general manager.

Some of that excitement went away when it was revealed that the return for McGroarty was Brayden Yager, the Penguins’ first-round pick from 2023 and one of the few reasonably talented prospects with NHL potential in the Penguins’ system.

But it still a solid move, because it could still be both a short-term and long-term upgrade while every little improvement still matters.