Is WBS going to be nasty this year? Based on their lineup strength and opening weekend the answer looks like a yes. Wilkes-Barre defeated Hartford 2-1 on Saturday night and then followed that up with a 4-1 win over Lehigh Valley on Sunday for a perfect start to the season.

Owen Pickering’s third period goal proved to be the difference on Saturday night to break the tie and send WBS to a 2-1 victory in their first game of the season. Sergei Murashov made his season debut and stopped 23 of 24 shots that he saw in the victory. Valtteri Puustinen also scored a goal for Wilkes on opening night.

Sunday turned into the Tristan Broz show, the Penguins center put up two goals and one assist to provide most of the power needed to down Lehigh Valley 4-1. Ville Koivunen chipped in two assists in his first AHL game of the season shortly after being assigned to the AHL. Avery Hayes added a goal and an assist on the night. Filip Larsson earned the win by stopping 26 out of 27 shots that he saw.

WBS is having to juggle extra veterans after the decision in Pittsburgh to waive Danton Heinen and Ryan Graves.

In a nutshell, the AHL rule stats that at least 13 of the 18 skaters dressed on a given night have to be “developmental players”. Teams can dress a maximum of five veterans (who are players with 361+ professional games at the start of the season), plus one veteran-exempt player (who has played 261-321 games prior to the start of this year).

For the Penguins, Alexander Alexeyev fits as their current veteran-exempt player. They have seven veterans, therefore two players from this list much be scratched in every game: Ryan Graves, Danton Heinen, Sebastian Aho, Boko Imama, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Joona Koppanen and Valtteri Puustinen.

Aho didn’t play in either weekend game, on opening night Imama was out and Harvey-Pinard was held out for Saturday’s game. If there are injuries to any of these players that helps break up the logjam, but otherwise it looks like they will rotate through who comes out of the lineup. It’ll be interesting to see if players like Graves and Heinen get included in that rotation.

There was no mention of an injury to Aho, so we’ll see how that ends up playing out. Memories of Libor Hajek and Andreas Johnsson linger, sometimes European players who find things not going as they expected or wanted decide to go play somewhere else back across the pond. Not that we know that to be the situation in this case, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented to someone like Aho to either be seeking a trade or considering moving onto the next chapter of his life and career by stepping away from the Pens organization.

Koivunen coming down seemed to ignite Broz for the second game where he scored two goals and had three points (one into an empty net). That’s a good sign, and from the AHL perspective WBS needed the pure skill infusion of Koivunen to put them over the top on that department. Hayes also did his part to keep up with those two by having a multi-point night of his own on Sunday.

It’s personally not nice for Koivunen to be out of the NHL, but he didn’t let it effect his play, was great on this sequence to turn into Broz’s first goal on the season.

Pickering scoring a goal on opening night is a welcome sight, the blueliner only had two goals in 47 AHL games last season.

Wilkes hits the road next weekend, playing in Hartford for a rematch on Friday and then heading over to Bridgeport for Saturday night.