19\/20 reactions<\/a> on this blog and social media. Going back to the AHL by game three after a pair of quiet games isn\u2019t the most promising start to the season and puts off some uncertainty about how or when the 22-year old will get the opportunity to make the next step. This development of him playing his way off the roster almost immediately could have implications that ripple throughout the rest of the season.<\/p>\nThe case: Sending Koivunen down represents the path of least resistance for the Penguins, since Koivunen was the only player on the NHL team who could go to WBS without needing waivers (or being assigned back to juniors for the season). Koivunen may have faded as preseason went on and been invisible for the regular season, but it\u2019s still very early on and there\u2019s plenty of time to right the ship and get back on track. It\u2019s not nothing that Koivunen is outside of the NHL plans and failed to seamlessly build off the impressive end of last season, but this move doesn\u2019t have to be a major one. Perhaps Ben Kindel stays for six more games in the NHL and gets sent back to juniors and Koivunen can be right back up and resume a role somewhere in the top-nine forwards within a couple of weeks, get his season off the ground and this transaction will be a minor footnote in the story of his season that still has the chance to make the strides that everyone was hoping he would make.<\/p>\n
The case: To keep it real, it\u2019s difficult to take the position to try and frame this decision as no big deal for Koivunen and the Pens. It\u2019s a disappointment on some level for how he played and now that he\u2019s gone \u2014 especially considering that with Rutger McGroarty and Kevin Hayes are on the mend and make the numbers could shift even further away from making the situation favorable for Koivunen. (Until the next wave of injuries or some trades kick in). Any time a player takes a step backwards from the NHL to the AHL, especially at age-22 and when they were expected to a piece of the team on the growth of importance to become established and they instead move back out of the league completely, that\u2019s a difficult and unfortunate development.<\/p>\n
Best bet: somewhere in between big deal and little deal. It\u2019s unavoidable that to a degree Koivunen got caught up in the numbers for a decision like this. At the same time, it\u2019s telling and a bad outcome that Koivunen didn\u2019t do enough to play himself above being a casualty of numbers. Players who are going really good at the moment like Ben Kindel, and even to a degree Filip Hallander and Connor Dewar are not getting caught up in the numbers at the moment.<\/p>\n
With that being said, the Pens have further soul-searching to do when it comes to tough roster decisions. They\u2019ve already waived Ryan Graves and Danton Heinen \u2014 but are players like Noel Acciari, Matt Dumba and Connor Clifton really needed? That\u2019s a rhetorical question, since we all know the obvious answer to it. In the bigger scheme of the picture when taking into account chemistry, cohesion and all the like Kyle Dubas and company might not want to flood the AHL with an unlimited number highly-paid and potentially unhappy wanderers of washed up veterans at the crossroads of a fading career. Unfortunately for him, the 23-player limits of an NHL roster are starting to give him little other choice.<\/p>\n
Surely before too long the Pens are going to want to see players like Koivunen, McGroarty, Avery Hayes, Tristan Broz and Owen Pickering up in the NHL. That can\u2019t happen so long as a bunch of hangers-on are, well, hanging on to the bottom of the lineup for little good reason besides them having a contract. The onus is at least partially on management to figure out a way to make the roster composition right.<\/p>\n
While that perspective above makes sense, it\u2019s also important to remember that the player himself carries responsibility. There\u2019s a reason that Koivunen is in the AHL and why Kindel is sticking around, for the time being at least. Kindel has been making a better case for himself almost literally with each passing day to continue to prove himself and excite with his quality play. Outside of a few brief flashes in the preseason, Koivunen hasn\u2019t done that. Koivunen hasn\u2019t held up his end of the bargain, so he made it easy to be sent packing.<\/p>\n
Rust\u2019s late-camp injury gave Koivunen a wonderful opportunity to start the season out with Sidney Crosby. Unfortunately it wasn\u2019t one he grabbed the ball and took off with, but the good news is it is still early on in the year and the future is always uncertain about when that next chance might come around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome back to the first installment this season of \u2018Big Deal, Little Deal, No Deal\u2019 where we discuss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[257,385,99],"class_list":["post-219444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-general","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}