The 2025 version of our Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25 countdown list continues with a fallen first round pick.
Catch up on the previous entries for this year:
Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25: Graduates and Departed players in 2025
Top 25 Under 25: The best of the rest
No. 25: Quinn Beauchense
No. 24: Cruz Lucius
No. 23: Travis Hayes
No. 22: Brady Peddle
No. 21: Finn Harding
#20: Sam Poulin, LW
2024 Ranking: 8th
Age: 24 (February 25, 2001)
Acquired Via: 2019 NHL Draft (Round 1, Pick 21)
Height/Weight: 6-foot-1, 213 pounds
The good news is Poulin set career highs in goals (19) assists (24) and points (43) last season. The disclaimer is that those statistics are from the American Hockey League. Poulin did record a single-season high seven NHL games last season – six of which came in a chunk from November 13-23. It didn’t really go his way, he only recorded two shots on goal (neither of which hit the back of the net), generated a single assist, played about 10 minutes per night and was back out of the NHL until the final game of the season.
Based on his age, this year will be the final appearance for Poulin in the Pensburgh T25U25, and perhaps that’s a year too late. Poulin cleared waivers in October 2024, and is looking at the very real possibility of ending up on the waiver wire again following this training camp with the Pens signing forwards like Anthony Mantha and Justin Brazeau while already being overstocked with lower line options like Kevin Hayes, Blake Lizotte, Noel Acciari, Danton Heinen, Phil Tomasino and Connor Dewar – to name a few. Poulin is a victim to the numbers on the roster, but also a case of stalled development that has ground to a halt over the past several years.
The reasons may be a perfect storm of unpredictable and sometimes uncontrollable events that broke against him. There was a global pandemic to zap crucial time in some formative years shortly after his draft. There were injuries and a mental health absence to attend to in recent times.
There were bigger issues in play too – skating and pace were question marks dating back to the pre-draft process, and Poulin never advanced in those areas to NHL caliber which ending up limiting his effectiveness. It wasn’t for a lack of trying or that far — after all, he’s developed enough to become a quality AHL player in the past few seasons. It’s that very fine line between being very, very good and being absolutely elite and at the top of the entire sport that separates those who can make it to the NHL and those that don’t.
It’s been trending that way for Poulin for some time, and now in his final T25U25 profile it’s about time to call the process as over as far as living up to the billing of a first round pick, thus the massive slide down the list in the rankings. Poulin is a player who has organizational value and can be brought up to the NHL for a spell when injuries hit, but he’s unlikely to make much of an impact beyond being a solid AHL player and NHL fill-in.
He’s also looking at becoming a Group-6 unrestricted free agent (barring playing 67 NHL regular season games this season) and could be seeing his time in the Pens’ organization wrapping up sometime with the next 10 months in a variety of ways between waiver claim, trade, or leaving in free agency.
Unfortunately, that can be a common end point for mid/late first round picks. It always starts with some promise but players picked in this area are no guarantee to make significant NHL impacts. There was added importance to Poulin since he was one of the few first round picks that the Pens had kept for themselves in the 2015-23 range. The team badly needed an infusion of young talent and to find a young piece through the 2019 draft, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Though, ironically, a player that Pittsburgh could have drafted when they picked Sam Poulin was Phil Tomasino, a player the Pens picked up for a fourth round pick. In just over half a season Tomasino managed to score almost as many goals for the Pens (11) as Poulin has NHL games played (13), to at least salvage some sort of contribution from the 2019 draft class.
That’s a silver lining in that cloud, but for Poulin’s case he is going to have to have a great training camp to stay relevant for this season in the NHL plans. Between Filip Hallander, Boko Imama and Joona Koppanen there will be a lot of competition for lower line wingers on the fringe of the NHL/AHL divide where Poulin will fit into somewhere. It would be a surprise if Poulin can end up doing more than that and do the unlikely to force himself into a bigger NHL role than expected after all this time.