Jeff Petry Is Important to Penguins Success in 2023

As part of the offseason overhaul on defense, the Pittsburgh Penguins shipped out John Marino and Mike Matheson while acquiring Ty Smith and Jeff Petry to fill those voids.

Smith has spent the better part of the season in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton waiting for an opportunity at a full-time gig in Pittsburgh. That hasn’t quite happened yet. Smith did get into a few games with the parent club when injuries ran rampant on the Penguins’ blue line and wasn’t a complete disaster so he looks capable of being a future staple on the Penguins’ blue line.

The acquisition of Petry came as more of a surprise.

Petry had been linked to the Penguins quietly in previous years but nothing ever came of it until this offseason when the Penguins sent Matheson to the Canadiens for Petry and forward Ryan Poehling. The deal hasn’t been a bad one by any means for the Penguins as both Petry and Poehling have been effective when in the lineup.

The more surprising part seemed to be the fact that the Penguins were going to take on a higher salary cap hit by acquiring Petry, who is 35 years old. He’s on the books for two more seasons at $6.25 million and has a 15-team no trade clause according to CapFriendly.

While a lot of that sounds scary, Petry has by no means had a bad season.

Petry has missed some time playing in only 40 of the Penguins’ 56 games to this point. He has three goals and 19 points in that time.

At 6’3”, Petry is a big-bodied defenseman, something the Penguins desperately needed after seeing the way their smaller defensemen were bullied around the net-front last season. He currently ranks third on the team in hits with 122 behind only Jason Zucker and Josh Archibald. They found toughness and a guy who is also a gifted offensive defenseman and can run the point on the power play if needed.

In recent days, there have been conflicting reports about his availability as we approach the trade deadline next Friday, March 3rd. If Ron Hextall doesn’t want to become more of a laughing stock around the Penguins’ fan base, he’d be wise to hang on to Petry for at least the rest of this season.

Shipping out Matheson, a young, gifted defenseman, for Petry was a hefty price. The move hasn’t been an awful one but trading Petry before he plays a full season in Pittsburgh would be quite the backtrack and Hextall admitting he believes he made a mistake.

The Penguins do have a cap problem right now and sending that $6.25 million elsewhere would alleviate some of those problems. But the contract isn’t an albatross by any means.

Petry provides offensive gifts that not many players on their current defense have. He plays sound defense and has experience playing top-pairing minutes in the absence of a guy like Kris Letang. He’s quite a nice insurance policy for a guy like Letang who has dealt with a bevy of health problems throughout his career.

Surely, Smith could come up and potentially replace Petry on the blue line for the rest of the season but if Smith isn’t quite ready to move up to the NHL full-time, overexposing him could halt his development. Pittsburgh can’t afford that at this time.

Teams like the Vegas Golden Knights and Tampa Bay Lightning find a way to load the roster year-after-year despite having lots of high priced talent and cap constraints. Salary cap space can’t be an excuse for Hextall considering he got the Penguins into this mess himself. There are other ways the Penguins could open up that space.

One of those ways should not be to trade a quality defenseman like Petry mid-season, especially if the Penguins still have aspirations of making it to the postseason.

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