Kyle Dubas swings a trade with the Vancouver Canucks for a once promising defensive prospect

The full details of the deal are as follows:

The Penguins acquire defenseman Jack Rathbone and forward Karel Plasek

The Canucks acquire defenseman Mark Friedman and forward Ty Glover

Drafted in the 4th round of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, Rathbone played for Harvard University in 2018-19 and 2019-20 accumulating 14 goals and 53 points in 61 games before splitting time with the Canucks and their AHL affiliate. For the Utica Comets and Abbotsford Canucks, Rathbone scored 49 points in 47 games in his first 2 seasons before slipping through the cracks last year with just 14 points in 37 games in the minors and 2 points in 11 games with the big club.

For the Canucks, they acquired Mark Friedman who at one point was a promising defenseman in the Philadelphia Flyers pipeline. Drafted in the 3rd round of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft, the Toronto-native accumulated 61 points in 186 games for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the AHL with only 11 games mixed in with the Flyers. He had the skills and the intangibles to be a very dependable bottom-4 defenseman but his aggressiveness toes the line and he's a suspect for egregious minor penalties that drive the head coach and the front office insane.

As touted as Rathbone was, the Canucks had a deal in place with his agent that if he didn't make the team out of training camp they would find a trade partner once the season commenced. He was sent down to Abbotsford to begin the year and with that, the writing was on the wall, and they gave him the change of scenery that he wanted and required in Pittsburgh.

Plasek was drafted in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft and spent 2017-18 to 2022-23 in the Czech Republic with an 8-game pit stop in Abbotsford in 2021-22. While Glover, an native of England, spent 2020-21 and 2021-22 with Western Michigan University before joining the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in 2021-22 as a free agent.

It appears as though old habits die hard. Dubas was known for acquiring players who were once looked at as top prospects during his time in Toronto. We saw it with players like Alex Galchenyuk, Nick Ritchie and, more recently, Conor Timmins. Now we're seeing it in Pittsburgh with Rathbone. The bet on Timmins seems to have been okay thus far, so let's see if the move to acquire Rathbone carries a similar result or if this move will work out more like the Galchenyuk and Ritchie experiments.