Penguins 2025 Draft Review – Part 2: Bill Zonnon
Continuing my breakdown of the Penguins’ 2025 first-round picks—if you haven’t read Part One on Ben Kindel yet, I highly recommend starting there. Now we jump into an exciting Part Two—featuring a player I was genuinely thrilled to see selected: Bill Zonnon. He’s someone I’ve had my eye on for a while, and going into the draft, I was really hoping the Penguins would come away with him. As I mentioned in my last article, I had told my fellow writers, Rick Buker and The Other Rick, that Zonnon was exactly the kind of player I’d target if I were the Penguins—because he’s exactly the kind of player the team needs.
I had a strong hunch that Kyle Dubas and his staff might be thinking the same way. It’s felt for a while now like Dubas has been steering this team toward a new identity—one built around grit, energy, and physicality, but without compromising on skill. You could see that shift taking shape with moves like trading Yager for a relentless, high-energy, physical forward like Rutger McGroarty, and adding guys like the hitting machine Noel Acciari, the gritty Connor Dewar, the buzzsaw Blake Lizotte, the dependable two-way presence of Tommy Novak, and most recently, Connor Clifton—a tough-as-nails defenseman who loves to lay on the hits, block shots, and not afraid to throw hands with anyone.