Ron Hextall continued to retool his defense on Saturday.
After trading John Marino to the Devils in exchange for left-handed defenseman Ty Smith and a 2023 third-round pick, Hextall made quick work of replacing Marino by acquiring right-handed defenseman Jeff Petry and center Ryan Poehling from the Canadiens for Mike Matheson and a 2023 fourth-round pick.
Dejan Kovacevic reported from the NHL Draft that Hextall and the front office had discussed a potential trade for Petry. A week later it happened.
Petry, 34, is signed through the 2024-25 season and carries an annual cap hit of $6.25 million.
"When you’re trading for good players, you’re going to have to give up good players," Hextall told reporters over a virtual meeting Saturday afternoon. "Mike is a good player. We certainly valued Mike, but we just feel like Jeff at this point is a little bit better fit for us. He can play all situations, he can log big minutes, and we just felt like right now with our right side with Letang, and Petry and Rutta is extremely strong. We’ve obviously got Chad (Ruhwedel) and Frieds (Mark Friedman) there, so we’re feeling pretty good about our right side. And when you get an opportunity to add a player of Jeff Petry’s magnitude, we felt like it was a good fit with our group."
With Marino and Matheson’s cap hits going out and Petry, Poehling and Smith’s cap hits coming in, the Penguins gained $1,411,667 in cap space from the start of the day. The total of their current projected cap space is $1,969,825. That does not include P.O Joseph’s cap hit or a contract for Kasperi Kapanen.
Petry struggled mightily to put points on the board through the first half of last season, picking up just six points in his first 40 games. When Martin St. Louis became head coach of the Canadiens on Feb. 9, Petry finished the season with 21 points in 30 games, a much closer resemblance to the player he was previously. Over the entire season, his ice-time averaged out to 22:07 per game, a higher mark than Marino.
6-foot-3, 209 pounds, Petry has been among the best defensemen in the NHL at driving quality offense over the past five years. He is not overly physical, and his defensive impacts grade out roughly average.
Poehling, 23, carries a cap hit of $750,000 through the end of next season. He will be a restricted free agent when his contract expires. Through 85 career games, he has 13 goals and nine assists. 57 of those games were last season, in which he scored nine goals and had eight assists. To this point, the highlight of his career was scoring a hat trick in his NHL debut during the 2018-19 season.
Hextall is hoping Poehling turns a corner with a change of scenery.
"I can speak for my staff when Ryan was drafted and we really liked him," Hextall said. "Talked to a couple members of our staff here that were here during his draft year. We really liked Ryan, felt like he’s a big body that is going to get better. Things haven’t gone exactly the way I think he would have liked them to go in Montreal there, and we’re hoping sometimes a change can spur a guy on, and we’re hoping he can be a good two-way player for us."
Smith, 22, was the Devils' first-round pick (No. 17 overall) in the 2018 draft. He has one season remaining on his contract that carries a cap hit of $863,333, and will be a restricted free agent at the conclusion of next season.
Smith debuted in the NHL during the 2020-21 season and has played 114 games, recording seven goals and 36 assists. Because he has not reached the 150-game plateau, he is waiver-exempt until he reaches that figure. That means the Penguins could send him to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins at the beginning of next season, if needed.
At 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, Smith is an offensive defenseman with very strong passing ability. The rest of his game, especially defensively, is a work in progress. After an encouraging rookie season, he took a step back in 2021-22 as the Devils scored just 39.7% of the goals when he was on the ice at five-on-five.
"Certainly nothing we’ve uncovered that’s cause for concern," Hextall responded when asked about Smith’s disappointing sophomore season. "The upside is pretty high."
Hextall noted that improving the Penguins' transition game was a focal point of their offseason plans, an area where Petry and Smith are effective.
"When the season was over, we sat down with the coaches and management staff and talked about or team, and the one thing we felt like we wanted to do was get a little bit heavier on the backend," he said. "I think with Petry and Rutta, we feel like we accomplished that. The other part, we wanted to improve our transition game a little bit, and we feel like with Jeff and, you know, obviously Ty Smith is a young player, but we felt like he’s gonna give us some puck skill that we felt like we wanted to add to our group. Between the two objectives, we feel like we got a little bit of both with these moves."
The signing of right-handed defenseman Jan Rutta signaled that at least one defenseman would be traded. Hextall on Wednesday confirmed the Penguins wouldn't take nine defensemen into next season, but after both trades on Saturday the Penguins are still left with nine defensemen.
While not all of them will make the Penguins’ opening-day roster, Hextall isn’t guaranteeing another defenseman will be traded.
"Not necessarily," Hextall responded when asked if there might be another trade coming. "Obviously we’ll look at everything that comes along as we go, and if we can strengthen one area we’ll certainly look at it, but I think part of our biggest issue was our cap situation. It’s a little closer to being compliant now, so certainly feel a little bit better about it than I did the other day."
Even though the Penguins have Petry for three seasons, Hextall managed to get out from under five seasons of Marino’s contract at a $4.4 million cap hit and four seasons of Matheson’s contract at a $4.875 million cap hit.
Marino was originally acquired by the Penguins from the Oilers in exchange for a lone sixth-round pick in the 2021 draft. He immediately became more than the Penguins ever could've hoped for and blossomed onto the scene as a very impactful player at both ends of the ice during his rookie season in 2019-20. However, the following two seasons saw Marino struggle to capture the same consistency and impact. The standstill in his development left fans and management alike with a bit of sour taste that he couldn't reach his full potential with the Penguins.
Matheson’s first season with the Penguins was a bit up and down, but last season he became an offensive dynamo for the Penguins and was one of their best defensemen.
It was tough for Hextall to move on from both players, but he's feeling better about his defense corps now than he was at the start of the day.
Because he doesn't have any current plans to move another defenseman, Hextall was non-committal to bringing in another forward for now, citing salary cap constraints as the prohibitor. Regardless, he feels comfortable with the forwards he already has under contract.
"It’s difficult right now because of our salary cap situation," he said. "I feel pretty comfortable with our group depth-wise. Again, we don’t have a whole lot of money to spend here under the cap, so you always look for things. Our job is to continue to look and see if there’s any areas where we can make our team better. ... Whether there will be movement or not I really can’t say."
