Islanders one of five teams rumored to be inquiring on Filip Forsberg

Last week Elliotte Friedman indicated that the Nashville Predators will entertain a trade for just about anyone on their roster. That included forward Filip Forsberg. And now, according to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, the New York Islanders are one of a handful of teams that will inquire about acquiring through a trade.

It seems that Isles will join the Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens, Philadephia Flyers, and Calgary Flames in the chase for the Preds near point-per-game player.

New York Islanders seem to be in, but making it work will be hard

The Islanders, who are currently on a four-game point streak, could certainly use the talented forward. His worst year in terms of goal scoring was technically in 2019-20 when he scored 21 goals. But that was over 63 games, pace that out over an 82 game season and that’s 27 goals.

With 175 goals in 479 games, he’s scoring at a 0.36 goals-per-game pace. Which is the pace of a 30 goal scorer. Add 197 helpers over his career and Forsberg is scoring 0.78 points-per-game over his entire career (that the pace of a 64 point player).

Adding that to this Isles roster would clearly put them in the contender category.

But the problem with this trade is two-fold (1) how much will it cost to get Forsberg and (2) how the heck do the Islanders make the cap work?

Forsberg carries a $6 million cap hit this year and the next. Meanwhile, the Islanders are using $5.215 million of Johnny Boychuk’s $6 million of LTIR space just to stay cap compliant. Adding another $6 million is hard to imagine.

The Isles will either have to shed some salary in a different trade or increase the offer to the Preds to take one of their bad deals. The latter part was something the Isles couldn’t do in the offseason, it seems unlikely that they’ll have more success now.

But, if the rumor is to be believed, the Isles are ready to swing for the fences again. We’ll see if Lou Lamoriello can pull in another big piece after making a big trade just a year ago for Jean-Gabriel Pageau.