Awaiting a trade, a healthy, eager Erik Karlsson just wants a chance

The 33-year-old Erik Karlsson is the same one we’ve always known…in certain ways. He commands a room with the same disarming charm and swagger he did as a superstar in his early 20s, but this version carries so much more with him.

The luggage he carries is the grueling arc of a career that seemed to peak in the 2016-17 Stanley Cup playoffs. At that point, he’d already won two Norris Trophies and finished as the runner-up two more times, piling up four first-team All-Star selections by 27. His Ottawa Senators had come within a Game 7 overtime goal of reaching the Stanley Cup Final. The “best player in the world” discussion typically revolved around Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Karlsson at the time, but then came the valley. During the 2017 offseason, Karlsson underwent a surgery that included, in his own words, “removing half my ankle bone.” He started his season late, the Senators slipped out of the playoffs and Karlsson ended up traded to the San Jose Sharks in a summer blockbuster.

His body never cooperated after that. He missed 29 games in 2018-19, his debut Sharks season, with a lower-body injury and a groin injury. A broken thumb stole 13 games the year after that. He made it through most of the shortened 2020-21 campaign before a disastrous 2021-22 in which he missed 32 games thanks to COVID-19, left forearm surgery and a lower-body injury.

The meat grinder chewed him up and spat him out the other side, yet Karlsson was still standing — for all of 2022-23. He played every single game this past season and made it count, becoming the first defenseman in 31 years to record a 100-point season and capturing the third Norris Trophy of his career. When he accepted his accolade last week at the NHL Awards show in Nashville, he did so with the weary appreciation of how hard he battled to return to his glory days.

“I was always, in my own eyes, this is where I belong, this is where I should be every single year, even though that’s hard to do and hasn’t happened,” Karlsson said. “But I always believed in myself. Being healthy for a longer period of time has really given me a perspective on how important it is to take care of your body and yourself. There’s certain things you can’t control. I think right now the most important thing is to stay healthy, and that obviously played a major factor in the season.”

Karlsson also referenced how different the third Norris felt compared to the first two. He was the third-youngest winner in league history when he captured his first in 2011-12, a full career ahead of him, feeling invincible. Now he’s a father to two young kids, fresh off a season very few people saw coming, and he’ll never take that for granted. As he said last week, he found himself “enjoying hockey again” this past season.

“I feel very good with where I’m at both personally and professionally,” he said. “I think this was a season where I’m going to choose to take all the good parts from it and try to learn from every situation that was thrown at me throughout the year and try to grow form it.”

With that newfound joy and eagerness to soak in a special year, of course, comes an understanding that Karlsson is running out of chances for the ultimate feat of hockey joy. He wants a trade out of San Jose. He understands how complicated it might be to execute, but he’s hopeful. He currently carries a cap hit of $11.5 million across four more seasons. Significant salary retention on the Sharks’ side will be a necessity to facilitate any deal, but GM Mike Grier has been adamant that his team won’t consider the max 50 percent retention. He also publicly put his foot down about not wanting to simply give away the reigning Norris Trophy winner.

Therein lies the conundrum: You don’t want to give away someone playing at such a high level, but because Karlsson recouped so much of his trade value this past season, the environment for a trade should be more fertile than ever in theory. Karlsson is as much a champion of his own value as anyone. Never lacking for self-belief, he thinks he can maintain the dominance he showed in 2022-23.

“I feel like I had a fantastic year and I felt good the whole way, but I still feel like there’s more,” he said. “And that’s what will make me excited going forward.”

Any team making the big splash for Karlsson will understand it’s acquiring one of the best pure offensive defenseman ever to play, but trading for Karlsson still has pitfalls. For one, it’s possible he was selling out for offense and the century mark on a team that was going nowhere in the playoff hunt this past season. That might have artificially puffed up his numbers somewhat. Secondly, he was decidedly below average defensively at 5-on-5. He was second among NHL defensemen in team on-ice scoring chances per 60 with him on the ice, but he sat bottom-third in team on-ice scoring chances against per 60, putting to rest any debate over whether Norris voting skews toward offense.

Then again, Karlsson did what he did on one of the weaker teams in the NHL. In the right situation, a team could insulate him from the toughest defensive matchups and maximize his play-driving ability, which remains elite. Feeling his healthiest in six years, all he wants is a chance to show what he can do on a team with something to play for. It’s just a matter now of whether a team tempts Grier with the right offer.