The Pittsburgh Penguins made a fairly surprising trade Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Parker Wotherspoon, among the Penguins\u2019 most dependable players last season, was dealt to the Vegas Golden Knights. In return, the Penguins are receiving Kaedan Korczak, a 25-year-old defenseman who was a regular in Vegas\u2019 lineup for most of last season.<\/p>\n
The Penguins are retaining half of Wotherspoon\u2019s salary. He earns $1 million annually and is entering the final season of his contract. Korczak has three years remaining on a deal that pays him $3.25 million annually.<\/p>\n
Wotherspoon made a name for himself in Pittsburgh last season, producing career highs in goals (three) and points (30). He wasn\u2019t coveted by Vegas because of his offensive work, however. Rather, Wotherspoon was a very sound defensive player most of the season and formed a terrific partnership with Erik Karlsson. They began the season as the Penguins\u2019 top pairing and remained so for the duration. Karlsson enjoyed a resurgence during his third season in Pittsburgh and often paid tribute to Wotherspoon for his dependable partnership.<\/p>\n
The Penguins are now extremely thin on the left side of their blue line. Wotherspoon is gone, and unrestricted free agent Ryan Shea is set to hit the market in less than 24 hours. The remaining members of the left side of the defense are Sam Girard, Ilya Solovyov, Caleb Jones and Ryan Graves. There is a chance 2022 first-round pick Owen Pickering, a left-handed defenseman, could make the team out of training camp next year.<\/p>\n
The right side of the blue line looks quite crowded with Karlsson, Kris Letang and Korczak on the roster. Harrison Brunicke, among the Penguins\u2019 best prospects, is in the running for a roster spot, too.<\/p>\n
Wotherspoon, meanwhile, finds himself playing for one of the NHL\u2019s best teams.<\/p>\n
What the trade means for Vegas<\/p>\n
This feels like a really solid move for the Golden Knights, potentially upgrading their bottom pair while also saving $2.75 million in cap space. Korczak is a solid, young defenseman, but he underwhelmed this past season and was scratched for stretches in the playoffs. Vegas may have had some buyer\u2019s remorse on his four-year contract at $3.25 million per year before it even began.<\/p>\n
Wotherspoon was strong defensively for the Penguins last season and will likely play fewer, more sheltered minutes on the Golden Knights\u2019 bottom pair. He\u2019s 28 with only a year left on his current deal, so it\u2019s not a long-term play for Vegas, but it should help in the short term, and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 clear cap space for a team that\u2019s still clearly looking to add pieces but doesn\u2019t have much room to work. \u2014 Jesse Granger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Penguins made a fairly surprising trade Tuesday afternoon. Parker Wotherspoon, among the Penguins\u2019 most dependable players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4843,73,75,74,1067,31748],"class_list":["post-232571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-nhl","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-vegas-golden-knights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}