While it was a long offseason for the Penguins organization, it was an even longer spring, summer and fall for Rutger McGroarty.<\/p>\n
After beginning his rookie season in the NHL and spending much of his first year in the American Hockey League adapting to the pro game with the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins, McGroarty, 21, returned to Pittsburgh last spring before sustaining a lower body injury that ultimately ended his 2024-25 campaign prematurely.<\/p>\n
Then, another setback for McGroarty, the 14 th overall selection in the 2022 NHL Draft, occurred over the summer as it was revealed he would be starting the season on the team\u2019s injured list with an undisclosed upper body injury \u2013 resulting in the promising young forward missing the entirety of training camp and opening five weeks of the season.<\/p>\n
McGroarty resumed skating in Pittsburgh and was seen on the ice prior to Penguins\u2019 training camp practices in September, slowly ramping things up as he joined Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton at the end of October before returning to game action on November 15 against the Springfield Thunderbirds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think overall, it was my first game in like seven and a half months, so I really wanted to focus on the little details,\u201d McGroarty said after his first game action since April 8. \u201cThe first period, I don\u2019t want to say it was kind of a feeling out process, but it\u2019s kind of just getting back into the flow with things. Just making little plays to gain confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a bit of a scare in the first period after McGroarty took a puck to his chin and left the game, but when he returned for the start of the second period he accepted a pass in the neutral zone with speed and skated hard to the net before a smooth resulted in his first goal in his first game back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, he played great, especially for the first game (back),\u201d Penguins head coach Kirk MacDonald said of McGroarty\u2019s play last weekend. \u201cHe could have easily popped a few more goals, but for not having any training camp \u2013 everybody else is two, three months into the season \u2013 to jump in there the way he did. I thought he was outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience of a long injury absence really resonated with McGroarty as he went through the rehabilitation process with the Penguins\u2019 training staff, noting everyone\u2019s engagement from family and friends to his Penguins\u2019 teammates always checking in with him to see how he was doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I wasn\u2019t as behind the eight ball as a lot of people could be. I think that they did a really good job, and they had a great plan. I mean, kudos to them,\u201d McGroarty said, thankful for all the help from various training staff members and doctors helping him on his road to recovery. \u201cI think that they are extremely smart, and there\u2019s a reason why they\u2019re in the position that they\u2019re in. They handled everything incredibly, so I\u2019m super grateful to those guys how they handled it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that he\u2019s back on the ice and playing in games again, it\u2019s about getting back to what was making him successful with Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton last season while also working on other areas of his game to take his play to another level in his second year of pro hockey.<\/p>\n
McGroarty noted that when he was skating in Pittsburgh this fall, he did a lot of work on getting shots off and getting shots through during 1-on-1 rushes into the offensive zone \u2014 a part of his game he said he was disappointed with last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel like you have to grow where you\u2019re planted,\u201d McGroarty explained when asked about how he\u2019s going to go about making up for lost time. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m here in Wilkes-Barre with this group of guys, and we\u2019re winning. It\u2019s a lot of fun when you\u2019re winning. So, just continue to grow my game and focus on the little details.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like with this injury, I\u2019ve learned so much about myself and the people that I\u2019ve surrounded myself with, and it\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it was a long offseason for the Penguins organization, it was an even longer spring, summer and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1902,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-42073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-penguins","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42073","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=42073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}