Penguins acquire Kaeden Korczak from Golden Knights for Parker Wotherspoon

In what came as a surprise to many was a trade today that saw the Penguins deal Parker Wotherspoon, who arguably was the team’s best left handed defenseman and a massive reason of the defensive success, to the Vegas Golden Knights with the team retaining 50% of his contract ($500k) in exchange for defenseman Kaeden Korczak.

At first this comes as a head scratcher, based off how much success Wotherspoon had in his first and only season with the Penguins last year and gave Erik Karlsson the perfect partner on the blue line. 

At second glance and mulling it over doesn’t look too bad as Wotherspoon is destined to not repeat the same season he just had and may decline, he was on the cheap but Pittsburgh got a much younger version of Wotherspoon in Korczak. Kyle Dubas also didn’t have to spend any draft assets in this as it’s a pure blue-liner swap.

Korczak, 25, signed a four year contract extension with the Golden Knights that is set to kick in officially on July 1. Pittsburgh acquired his full cap hit at a $3,250,000 AAV and will be a nice depth defensive fit for the team. Korczak played in 78 regular season games last year for Vegas and secured 16 points (3G - 13A). He also played part in Vegas Stanley Cup Final run where they fell short. He played in 12 of 22 Vegas playoff games and scored 3 points in the playoffs. 

This most certainly raises some eyebrows as to where Kyle Dubas see's the left side of the defence as that side is currently very bare with the departing of Ryan Shea and now Parker Wotherspoon.

Korczak can log good minutes and he'll be a nice addition to the right side. It also indicates that Pittsburgh believe that Harrison Brunicke is not ready to log those kind of minutes and it speaks some volumes.

Could this be a prelude to another massive move or many small moves that everyone is speculating and asking questions about.

I think the reason Kyle Dubas moved Wotherspoon was because they felt they could get a younger version of him on the right side. There's also the belief that Parker may not be able to replicate the success he had last season and they don't damage the cap space with retaining his salary cap which is just for this season and it's only $500k.

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