Pittsburgh Penguins general manager and president Kyle Dubas repeatedly stated how much he wanted to revamp the left side of the defense heading into free agency.
He wasn’t lying when he said that and added multiple players when free agency opened, including Alexander Alexeyev, Caleb Jones, and Parker Wotherspoon. Wotherspoon has the best chance of being an every-night player out of those three free-agent signings, and it's due to the season he had last year. He scored his first NHL goal and compiled six assists for seven points in 55 games. It’s the most games he has played in a season since breaking into the league in 2022. The New York Islanders originally picked him in the fourth round of the 2015 NHL Draft.
Besides a little bit of offense, Wotherspoon has demonstrated his ability to shut down opponents in the defensive zone and on the penalty kill. His combined 155:20 on the PK over the last two seasons attests to his defensive acumen, and he is eager to bring this momentum to his first season with the Penguins.
“Obviously, was building pretty good last year. It was kinda a tough season. Obviously, we didn’t make the playoffs or where we wanted to be, but with the extra playing time, I felt like I was growing every game, playing more and more, especially when I got the bigger roles with the PK (penalty kill) and stuff,” Wotherspoon said to Penguins team reporter Michelle Crechiolo on Monday.
73 of those 155 combined PK minutes over the last two seasons were last season, and the PK is an area where the Penguins want to be better for the 2025-26 season. They finished last season with a 77.8% PK rate, good for 18th in the league. It was a step down from the 2023-24 season when the Penguins finished with the No. 11 PK in the league.
Mike Vellucci was running the show on the PK for the last few seasons before taking an assistant coaching gig with the Chicago Blackhawks. It came about a month after the Penguins parted ways with former head coach Mike Sullivan after 10 seasons. There’s now a new coaching staff in place, led by Dan Muse, and one of their tasks will be to bring fresh and innovative ideas to the PK to improve it.
Wotherspoon also brings a physical element to his game and isn’t afraid to stand up for his teammates. He’ll lay the boom and also step in if another player tries to take a run at someone. A fair amount of Penguins fans haven’t been happy with how “soft” the team has looked, and Wotherspoon will undoubtedly try to help change that.
In a perfect world, he’s a third-pairing defenseman on a Stanley Cup contender, but that is not this Penguins team. They're a team in transition, and due to that, there’s a good chance he will find himself playing top-four minutes with Kris Letang or Erik Karlsson (if he doesn’t get traded) this year. The Penguins are trying to return to contention as urgently as possible but want to do it right.
He might be a good fit for either Letang or Karlsson since he's responsible in his own end and can cover if one of them makes a mistake. Wotherspoon ranked in the 86th percentile for 5v5 defense last season and was an overall analytics darling.
Both Letang and Karlsson love pushing the play and driving offense, but they need someone to do some of the defensive work in the Penguins’ zone. Brian Dumoulin was that player for the Penguins on the left side with Letang when he was in his prime before his game went downhill. He left the Penguins following the 2022-23 season and is about to be on his fourth team in the last three seasons.
The Penguins thought they were getting Dumoulin’s replacement in Ryan Graves when they signed him in 2023, but it hasn’t worked out the way they envisioned. He’s endured two brutal seasons but will still be competing for a spot in the everyday lineup this upcoming season.
Wotherspoon won’t be trying to replace Dumoulin per se, but he will try to give the Penguins some hard-fought minutes during the next two seasons. If he can bring even a little bit of stability to part of the left side of the Penguins’ defense, it will be considered a win after how rough it was the previous two years.
There’s more work to be done for the Penguins' defensive core as a whole, but Wotherspoon is ready to hit the ground running. Fortunately for him, he won’t have to wait too much longer since training camp is coming up in a little over a month. Wotherspoon will then make his Penguins’ regular-season debut on October 7 against the New York Rangers.
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Featured Image Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images
