{"id":307283,"date":"2025-11-26T03:25:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T03:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/307283\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T03:25:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T03:25:05","slug":"metro-notes-mcgroarty-harding-svechnikov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/307283\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro Notes: McGroarty, Harding, Svechnikov"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Penguins acquired forward prospect Rutger McGroarty<\/a> from the Winnipeg Jets in the summer of 2024 with the hope that he\u2019d quickly translate his success at the NCAA to the pro ranks, and become an NHL player in short order. While that hasn\u2019t happened just yet, The Athletic\u2019s Josh Yohe reported today<\/a> that \u201cmany in the Penguins organization have been blown away by how dominant McGroarty looked\u201d in his two AHL games this season, noted that \u201cit won\u2019t be much longer until\u201d McGroarty is elevated to Pittsburgh\u2019s NHL roster.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a bit of a bumpy road for McGroarty at the pro level, as he not only struggled with some injuries, but also found his sub-par skating to be a larger barrier to his ability to impact a game than most likely expected. Yohe wrote that McGroarty \u201clooked like a fish out of water at the NHL level\u201d early last season, but also noted that \u201che looked like a decidedly different player in his second NHL stint\u201d later in the season. McGroarty finished with 14 goals and 39 points in 60 AHL games last year, and has two goals through two AHL games this year. Whether the Penguins\u2019 belief that McGroarty is a transformed and far more effective player actually materializes in tangible on-ice production remains to be seen, but it\u2019s clear he\u2019ll be a player to watch whenever his expected recall is made official.<\/p>\n

Other notes from the Metropolitan Division:<\/p>\n

Besides McGroarty, one player that Yohe reported<\/a> is also impressing Penguins brass is 2024 seventh-rounder Finn Harding<\/a>. The Penguins were able to add Harding with the third-to-last pick of that year\u2019s draft, and per Yohe, \u201cthe Penguins believe he has a future as an NHL player,\u201d with team sources comparing him to former Penguins defenseman Ben Lovejoy. Harding began his pro career last season with an eight-game cameo at the ECHL level. So far this season, Harding has five points through 14 AHL games. If Harding, who is a 6\u20192\u2033 right-shot blueliner, can end up anything like Lovejoy, who had a 544-game NHL career and won a Stanley Cup in 2016, the Penguins are likely to be quite pleased with their seventh-round investment.
\nOn Sunday, reports emerged that Carolina Hurricanes star Andrei Svechnikov<\/a> was reportedly open to a trade earlier in the season as he struggled with lower-than-expected usage and a season-opening scoring drought. Today, Svechnikov denied those reports<\/a>, according to Chip Alexander of the Raleigh News & Observer. While it\u2019s not without precedent for a player to publicly deny a private period of frustration that in reality very much existed, in Svechnikov\u2019s case, his reported unhappiness was always unlikely to actually lead to a trade. The Hurricanes reportedly view Svechnikov as a cornerstone player, one that is central to their hopes of building a Stanley Cup championship team, and therefore it remains highly unlikely that they will reach an agreement with another team on a deal that sends Svechnikov out of Raleigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Penguins acquired forward prospect Rutger McGroarty from the Winnipeg Jets in the summer of 2024 with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[130117,49,48,748,137502,448,753,137503,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-307283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-andrei-svechnikov","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","12":"tag-finn-harding","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","15":"tag-rutger-mcgroarty","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}