Penguins trade Sprong to the Ducks in player for player deal!

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Anaheim Ducks have made a trade on this very busy Monday in the National Hockey League

According to a report from TSN National Hockey League insider Frank Seravalli the Pittsburgh Penguins have sent promising your forward Daniel Sprong to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for a promising young defenseman in Marcus Pettersson.

We knew it would not be long before Penguins general manager Jim Rutheford pulled the trigger on a trade deal given the way his team has struggled early on in the season and this is a pretty big one all things considered. Sprong was once a promising young prospect for the Penguins, perhaps even their top prospect at times, but it seems he has slowly fallen out of favor with the organization in spite of a strong showing in the American Hockey League last season.

Over the course of the 2017 - 2018 AHL campaign Sprong appeared in a total of 65 games for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the AHL affiliate team of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and recorded a very impressive 32 goals and 33 assists for a total of 65 points per game. Needless to say when you show that kind of scoring prowess, even if it is only at the AHL level, there are going to be some teams desperate for scoring who would be very willing to give you a chance to score for their organization instead.

It seems that team is the Anaheim Ducks, who currently have Pontus Aberg, a player who was waived twice this season, as their leading scorer on the season. The Ducks will get a solid and, perhaps more impportantly for their aging roster, a young forward who can slot into their top 9 group of forwards for many years to come. They do however have to give up a defenseman who was showing himself to be a valuable asset on the blue line this season especially. Pettersson has appeared in 27 games for the Ducks this season, already the biggest stretch of play at the NHL level of his young career, and he has no goals and 6 assists for a total of 6 points on the season. He currently boasts a plus minus rating of +4 on the season and will fit in nicely on the blue line where the Penguins appear to have lost faith in some of their younger defensemen.

There are rumors that Jim Rutherford and perhaps even head coach Mike Sullivan have not been overly thrilled with the play of Olli Maatta as of late and perhaps this is why they opted to bring in a defenseman in exchange for Sprong.