With the NHL entering its Olympic break, the Pittsburgh Penguins assigned rookie forwards Avery Hayes and Rutger McGroarty to Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton of the American Hockey League (AHL) on Friday.<\/p>\n
The team did not announce the transactions but they were reflected on the AHL\u2019s website in the early hours of Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Hayes made his NHL debut in spectacular fashion during a 5-2 road win against the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday by scoring a pair of goals. He tied a handful of franchise or league marks, including becoming only the seventh player in NHL history to score a multiple goals in the first period of his NHL debut.<\/p>\n
The Penguins recalled Hayes to the NHL roster Thursday afternoon, a handful of hours before the game.<\/p>\n
Injuries have disrupted most of his 2025-26 season at the AHL level. Limited to 31 games, the right-handed Hayes has scored 23 points (13 goals, 10 assists).<\/p>\n
Hayes, 23, is in the first year of a two-year entry-level contract with a salary cap hit of $830,000.<\/p>\n
Injuries have also inhibited McGroarty this season as he has split the campaign between the NHL and AHL clubs.<\/p>\n
At the NHL level, McGroarty has skated in 19 games and scored four points (two goals, two assists) while averaging 11:55 of ice time per contest.<\/p>\n
With Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton, McGroarty, a left-handed shot, has appeared in nine games and scored 12 points (four goals, eight assists).<\/p>\n
McGroarty, 21, is in the second year of a three-year entry-level contract with a salary cap hit of $950,000.<\/p>\n
While the Pittsburgh Penguins are not scheduled to play any games until a home contest against the New Jersey Devils on Feb. 26, the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins are slated to play in seven games during that span, starting with a road entanglement against the rival Lehigh Valley Phantoms on Friday, 7:05 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the NHL entering its Olympic break, the Pittsburgh Penguins assigned rookie forwards Avery Hayes and Rutger McGroarty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-106883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}