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Pittsburgh Penguins make two separate trades to acquire defensemen

By Chris Cerullo

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July 17, 2022 4:38 am

The Metropolitan Division continues to load up as the offseason before the 2022-23 NHL season surges forward and the Pittsburgh Penguins are the latest team to jump into the arms race. The Pens made two moves on Saturday to address issues they believe they had on defense.

NHL rostered talent changed hands on both sides in separate deals with the New Jersey Devils and Montreal Canadiens.

The first of the two moves saw 25-year-old righthanded defenseman John Marino sent to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for lefthanded defenseman Ty Smith and a third-round pick in 2023. Smith was the Devils’ first-round pick in the 2018 draft.

Marino has played for the Pens for three seasons after being sent to Pittsburgh in 2019 by the Edmonton Oilers for a sixth-round pick. He finished eighth in Calder Memorial Trophy voting for rookie of the year after a 2019-20 campaign that saw him put up 26 points in 56 games.

Smith has struggled mightily since coming out of the WHL for the Devils in 2020. He’s an all-offense defenseman that only tallied 20 points in 66 games last season. The Devils were also outscored 59 to 40 at five-on-five with him on the ice.

The second move featured yet another swap of blueliners. This time the Pens sent lefthanded defenseman Mike Matheson and a 2023 fourth-round pick to Montreal in exchange for righthanded defenseman Jeff Petry and forward Ryan Poehling.

Matheson was originally acquired by the Pens in a 2020 trade with the Florida Panthers that also saw Colton Sceviour come to Pittsburgh with Caps playoff nemesis Patric Hornqvist headed the other direction. Matheson had a career-best offensive season in 2021-22, recording 31 points in 74 games.

Before last season, Petry had four straight seasons in a row for Montreal with at least 40 points and scored at least eleven goals as well. The 34-year-old becomes the Pens’ highest-paid player on the backend as he is due $6.25 million in each of the next three seasons.

Ryan Poehling was the Habs’ first-round pick in 2017 and started his NHL career off flying with a hat trick in his 2019 debut. Since then he hasn’t really been able to put much together at the NHL level and was reduced to a fourth-line role on a very bad Habs team last season.

How do you think the Pens did with these trades? Are they a better team defensively after them?

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