First, the Penguins have gone from a dreadful prospect pool to a solid minor league system with at least one top-six potential prospect and at least one future top-four defenseman. <\/p>\n
Harrison Brunicke<\/a> was impressive after he arrived from Kamloops in April. The depth of his game was unwavering. Unfortunately, he got his bell rung in the first period Sunday (essentially tossed into the boards after playing a puck forward) and was a bit disheveled for the rest of the game, but his future looks much brighter than we anticipated just a couple of months ago. <\/p>\n Suddenly, Brunicke is looking like a stud prospect, not just a potential second-pairing guy who can chip in on the power play. <\/p>\n **The other potential top of the lineup player is Bill Zonnon<\/a>. <\/p>\n After a bolt of adrenaline when he first arrived, Zonnon settled. He slowed from his unsustainable pace of scoring a goal per game, and MacDonald generally kept him in a down-lineup role, but the physical tools are obvious. He just stands out. His jersey flaps in the wind generated when he skates. <\/p>\n Zonnon, 19, will need to learn to find open ice\u2013he seemed to always have the puck in contested space\u2013and fill into soft spots often enough to really let his skills shine where he could pressure the defense (instead of being pressured). But that\u2019s not an uncommon issue.<\/p>\n As Dubas said on his team-hosted GM radio show earlier this season, even if Zonnon doesn\u2019t develop, he already has the skills to be a productive fourth-line player in the NHL. That\u2019s a nice place to start. <\/p>\n **Wilkes-Barre ranks 18th of the 32 AHL markets in terms of population. The arena is a little smaller, and it\u2019s getting old, but there are no issues with it. Despite their limitations, the WBS Penguins crew does a great job with in-game presentation, too.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s changing society. Maybe changing demographics in the metro market. WBS struggled with attendance in the playoffs. They usually ended up with nice crowds, but there were a lot of late ticket sales, and some games with attendance under 4000. <\/p>\n No, the Penguins don\u2019t need to dump Wilkes-Barre, but attendance is a problem that bears addressing at an organizational level before it worsens. The team finished 23rd in the league with a 4576 average attendance, just ahead of Bridgeport, which the New York Islanders dumped. Here\u2019s the attendance graph from HockeyDB<\/a>, from the bottom up.<\/p>\n Municipal enthusiasm was a bit dreary for a team that could have been a civic darling. If some efforts to create more enthusiasm fail, there are other east coast towns that could handle it.<\/p>\n Cmon, why aren\u2019t Rutger McGroarty <\/a>and Sergei Murashov<\/a> doing some car commercials? I think I\u2019d pay the talent fee for that bit of immortal goodness. <\/p>\n **One market to circle for the future would be Youngstown. It\u2019s an easy drive from Pittsburgh, and has a metro market population only 20% smaller than Wilkes-Barre. There would be USHL concerns and complications, but those are issues for another day, long in the future. After all, Wilkes-Barre is guaranteed a team for the rest of the decade.<\/p>\n Actually, a few players have mentioned the lack of entertainment options in Wilkes-Barre, but that\u2019s also how they became so close\u2013they had to entertain themselves. So, it\u2019s a double-edged sword, kind of like the Steelers\u2019 training camp in Latrobe. <\/p>\n And the last note about the WBS Penguins. I feel compelled to defend some good people. In an effort to hype himself, an obscure writer who hasn\u2019t been in the game long enough to have much of a resume took a few potshots at both the WBS organization and the crew covering WBS. I heard it got some traction, so I will tell you that Nick Hart and the WBS Penguins organization could not be better. Tony Androckitis of InsidAHLHockey.com<\/a> and Sam Wismer cover Wilkes as faithfully as anyone covers any AHL team. I hope to use Sam a lot more next season.<\/p>\n **Owen Pickering played for a couple of weeks on a broken foot. He had to miss a few games, but MacDonald noted how the challenges showed Pickering\u2019s maturity.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going in the right direction. I think he\u2019s going to get (to the NHL). What he went through to get himself in the lineup to play in this series was impressive, and it speaks to his commitment level and how he cares,\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cI think that was a great sign of maturity on his part, just the way he handled it. He wasn\u2019t \u2018woe is me.\u2019 He just stuck to the process of what he needed to do to get better throughout this. And if you watched his game throughout this series, when he was in the lineup, he played really well.<\/p>\n \u201cHe kind of figured out how to manage his game in situations where he couldn\u2019t pivot in certain areas, he didn\u2019t have the right steps, so he had to adjust what he normally would do, and he got into people and defended hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Pickering was still in a walking boot for his exit interviews Monday, though he shaved his untamed playoff beard.<\/p>\n **For all the trade talk, and the exposition and analysis, is anyone else ready to skip ahead to the end of the offseason and to the final results? Let\u2019s go, eh?<\/p>\n One thing that has been impressive about Dubas\u2019s tenure is his creativity. Even the Erik Karlsson<\/a> trade, which looked like a bad idea for two years, was quite affordable for a Norris Trophy winning D-man. <\/p>\n Yet for all of the Penguins trade<\/a> talk, there is a path that requires very few of them. Instead of being creative, the Penguins and Dubas could also choose to take a few lumps in the immediate. Instead of the road less traveled, take the well-worn path of rebuilding. <\/p>\n Maybe win, maybe lose, but instead of doing so with big-name trade acquisitions, do so with homegrown talent. <\/p>\n It would be a short leap to include all of McGroarty, Pickering, Brunicke, Ville Koivunen, Tristan Broz, and Murashov on the 2026-27 NHL roster. Others, such as Avery Hayes and Bill Zonnon, could be included in roster battles, while also continuing to pursue young players struggling or out-of-favor.<\/p>\n Of course, such a path would be diametrically opposed to Dubas\u2019s stated intention to pursue a later 20s \u201cdifference maker\u201d in order to take a sustainable step forward next season. <\/p>\n Presumably, Dubas has additional plans in place to further support the later 20s acquisitions, if indeed one or more is possible \u2026 but the path well traveled is done so for a reason. If things don\u2019t work out with the master Dubas plan, the summer of \u201926 could be a fulcrum for a lot of second-guessing, in much the same way as keeping the core together in the summer of 2018. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTags: kyle dubas<\/a> Penguins Prospects<\/a> Penguins Trade<\/a> Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-08-at-11.56.55-AM.png\")
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