Painful Penguins Lessons; This Is What Rookie Development Looks Like

Where are the Pittsburgh Penguins‘ rookies and the young players?

After an initial rush of excitement and production in the first games of the NHL season, the Penguins wunderkins have struggled to make a dent through the second month of the season. Welcome to player development–it is not a linear path upward.

There are ups, but sometimes some very steep downs, too.

Despite nine rookies playing for the Penguins this season, there were only three in the lineup, including goalie Arturs Silovs, Saturday as the Toronto Maple Leafs embarrassed the Penguins 7-2 at PPG Paints Arena.

Ben Kindel and Ville Koivunen were the only rookie skaters for the Penguins, who otherwise iced a veteran team.

Kindel, 18, had five shots on goal, including a power play goal. Kindel’s all-around game has been solid, even if the offensive numbers don’t leap off the page. The Penguins’ 2025 first-round pick (11th overall) has no even-strength points since Nov. 3.

After an eye-catching debut last season with seven assists in eight games, Koivunen has only two assists in 14 games this season. Saturday, he did not have one of the Penguins’ 35 shots, and he has struggled mightily at times this season, including a brief demotion to WBS after the second game of the season.

Tristan Broz, 23, made his NHL debut Wednesday. He tried to do too much in the third period and didn’t clear the zone. His turnover quickly became a tying goal by the Buffalo Sabres.

Broz served the last two games as a healthy scratch in large part because he is a center, and Kindel returned to the lineup. Broz has a tenous spot on the Penguins roster as a worthy participant, but stuck behind a couple of Hall of Famers and Kindel.

Broz was solid in his debut, much like 24-year-old Sam Poulin, who also played a pair of stout games 10 days ago before his return to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

2022 first-round pick Owen Pickering has been up and down twice, including a 25-game stint last season and a forgettable four-game stint this season. Pickering, 21, played very well for most of his stint last season, but began to fade.

He was tentative and largely invisible in his latest go-round. He played with fellow rookie Harrison Brunicke, and it’s fair to say the two did not form a solid third pair. Gaffes, soft coverage, and ineffectiveness were too common.

Brunicke, 19, is currently on his 14-day conditioning assignment with the WBS Penguins. He played nine NHL games, but the games at the beginning of that run were significantly better than the games at the end. The Penguins organization and staff have gone to great lengths to avoid returning Brunicke to the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers. Still, his immediate future remains in limbo as a result of not seizing his NHL opportunity after a splashy preseason made many take notice.

Rutger McGroarty missed all of training camp and most of the first two months of the season after suffering an upper-body injury over the summer. The Penguins assigned him to the AHL, where he has seven points in five games, including goals in his first four games.

McGroarty floundered when he made the NHL roster out of training camp last season, lasting just three games before spending the bulk of the season in WBS. However, he was very good in a late-season call-up.

As he told PHN late last season, “I was surviving, not thriving,” in his first NHL games. That feeling and attitude were dramatically different the second time when he played five games at the end of the season before suffering a lower-body injury after blocking a slap shot.

McGroarty’s tale is the norm, rather than the exception, and he hasn’t yet claimed his next NHL game, though the Penguins’ desperate need for scoring on the wings and his play would indicate that’s coming any day now.

…Any day now.

Last April, Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas made a self-effacing joke about the Penguins’ rebuild, retool, or rewhatever. He cracked that many fans would like to see all players be under 25, and then fans would want younger players, still.

Dubas’s comment with a little smile was an acknowledgment of the persistent, if not slightly overzealous, insistence from fans (from most fanbases) that younger players are better. After all, they have no baggage, and the future is wide open.

Such assumptions are getting a healthy dose of sunlight this season.

When McGroarty makes his season debut, he will be the 10th rookie to play for the Penguins this season, but many of the rookie skaters are struggling to make a significant dent.

Certainly, veteran players such as Danton Heinen and Joona Koppanen, who haven’t hit the scoresheet or made much impact, offer available spots to claim.

But it is certainly not coach Dan Muse that is holding back the talented crop of rookies. Dubas hired Muse in part because of his work with young players, and Dubas has delivered a mandate to incorporate them.

Once upon a time, Penguins winger, now sage veteran with a healthy contract, Bryan Rust was also a bubble prospect, going back and forth between WBS and Pittsburgh. As he told PHN a few years ago, “It doesn’t matter if you’re on the fourth line or only playing five minutes, you have to seize your opportunity, play like your hair is on fire.”

It was a quote that has stuck with this writer as a firm truth from a player who lived it and succeeded.

And that’s the status of the Penguins rebuild, retool, or rewhatever. There are plenty of players ready for the next step, but learning what it takes is not easy.

With or without the haircut.

Tags: Penguins Analysis Penguins Prospects Pittsburgh Penguins