It’s never easy to watch a championship team get sold for spare parts.
This may not have been the most emotional post-2017 Stanley Cup trade (that honor goes to expansion draft sacrifice/cap dump Marc-Andre Fleury), but Pittsburgh’s announcement on Sept. 24, 2020 was still a painful one: the Penguins asked Patric Hornqvist, who had among his 264 points in Pittsburgh earned both a Cup-winning goal and fan-favorite status, to waive his no-trade clause in order to send him to Florida.
Hornqvist thrived on gritty netfront goals that ran the gambit from hammered-in shots that required minutes-long goaltender interference reviews to sneaky rebound pick-ups.