Penguin Prospects Update: Thru November 2022

Yesterday, I posted a discussion of how average our Pittsburgh Penguins are. They have waddled through the first quarter of the season in mediocrity. Some players are playing really well, others aren’t. When added together, they equal a very middle of the pack team.

After posting my last article we (the fans) found out that one of our Core players and perhaps the defenseman with the highest upside on the roster had a serious medical condition.

All of this makes for a pretty good segway into what I always write about at the end of every previous month, the progress of our Penguins’ Prospects.

Is there any help in the system?

Who is developing?

Who isn’t?

And, unfortunately, the more serious question, is anyone getting a chance to develop?

Defensemen

Today, I would prefer to start by talking about the defensive prospects in the system, considering yesterday’s news. Also, speaking about the Penguins defensive prospects is the bad news of the proverbial good news bad news question, so let’s get that out of the way first.

The cupboard is just about bone dry when it comes to defensive prospects on the horizon. Down in our top farm club the Wilkes Barre -Scranton (WBS) Penguins, Xavier Oulette, the 29-year-old Left-Handed Defenseman (LHD) has put up the most points and has the best +/- (11 Points, +8).

Ty Smith, the wunderkind for which we traded John Marino to acquire, well he has 1 less point (10 – 4 Goals, 6 Assists) than Oulette but he is a -1 compared to Oulette’s +8.

So, you may be asking yourself how is Marino doing? Good question. He is plying his trade with the division leading New Jersey Devils (of the NHL not AHL) and Marino has 2 Goals (G), 6 Assists (A) for 8 Points (Pts) and is a +15.

Who knows maybe we still win this trade, but right now, that trade doesn’t look so good.

	Po	S	Age	Team	League	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	(+/-)
Ouellet, Xavier	D	L	29	WBS Penguins	AHL	19	0	11	11	15	8
Smith, Ty	D	L	22	WBS Penguins	AHL	19	4	6	10	8	-1
Fedun, Taylor	D	R	34	WBS Penguins	AHL	17	0	0	0	6	2
Freidman, Mark	D	R	26	WBS Penguins	AHL	16	1	4	5	8	4
Maniscalco, Joshua	D	R	23	Wheeling Nailers	ECHL	15	4	8	12	24	-6
St. Ivany, Jack	D	R	23	WBS Penguins	AHL	12	0	1	1	2	0
Swoyer, Colin	D	R	24	WBS Penguins	AHL	3	0	0	0	0	-3
Masonius, Joseph	D	L	25	Kalamazoo Wings	ECHL	2	0	0	0	9	1
Masonius, Joseph	D	L	25	Fort Wayne Komets	ECHL	5	0	0	0	13	-2

Looking deeper into the organization, again, the pickings are less than encouraging. Perhaps the best and most consistent Defenseman has been Isaac Belliveau. The 2021, LHD, 5th round pick playing in the QMJHL has 3 G, 17 Pts, and is a +7. To give you some a frame of reference, Belliveau’s 17 points ties him at 74th in the QMJHL in scoring. His +7 ties him for 43rd.

What of Ron Hextall’s first opportunity at a first-round pick, Owen Pickering?

Another good question.

Pickering checks in with 14 Pts and is a +2. If you recall my last update on our Prospects, Pickering already had 11 Pts, so in the month of November, Mr. Hextall’s first foray into round 1 of the NHL Entry Draft as Pittsburgh’s GM only added 3 more points to his total. The 14 total Pts has the young LHD tied for 127th in the WHL in scoring.

It is hard to compare QMJHL and WHL players, so to add proportionality to these numbers, Ryan McCleary, our Penguins 7th round pick LHD from 2021 (taken 2 rounds after Belliveau but only 4 months younger than Pickering), he has 5 G and 7 A and is a -3.  Furthermore, Lukas Dragicevic a draft eligible young defensive prospect who was just upgraded to an A level prospect has 8 G and 32 Pts and is a +1, also in the WHL.

I don’t know about any of you readers, but when our number one pick from this year’s draft and who is barely older than our number 7 pick from the year before is only barely better in terms of Points and +/- and who is significantly behind a kid coming out in the upcoming summer’s draft, that doesn’t give me confidence in our teams ability to judge talent and when to pick players in the top rounds our in the later rounds.

	Po	S	Age	Team	League	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	(+/-)
Belliveau, Isaac	D	L	19	Gatineau Olympiques “A”	QMJHL	16	3	14	17	12	7
Collins, Nolan	D	R	18	Sudbury Wolves	OHL	17	3	3	6	17	-7
Laatsch, Daniel	D	L	20	Univ Wisconsin	NCAA	14	0	2	2	2	0
McCleary, Ryan	D	R	19	Portland Winterhawks	WHL	21	5	7	12	17	-3
Pickering, Owen	D	L	18	Swift Current Broncos	WHL	17	3	11	14	6	2

Goalies

As pedestrian as Casey DeSmith this season and as inconsistent as Tristan Jarry has been (In of all things his contract season – you would think he would be playing for a big contract). It might be time to look at some of the Penguins’ prospects to get some time between the pipes in the ‘burgh.

As great as that actually sounds to me, it obviously is not where our brain-trust is. The Goalie getting the most playing time in WBS is still 33-year-old Dustin Tokarski, 12 Games Played GP), while 23-year-old Filip Lindberg has only gotten into 7 games, and one of those games was stopped due to a power outage.

This Penguins team doesn’t seem to understand what a farm team’s function is.

Tokarski is playing extremely well, making WBS very competitive. However, true prospect Lindberg isn’t getting ice time and not developing. The difference between Tokarski’s play and Lindberg’s isn’t all that great and if given the workload that any forward moving parent club would demand of their farm team, Lindberg just may be playing than Tokarski has.

If it had been up to me, Lindberg would have been given the Lion’s share of the work in WBS and he would have gotten the nod to play any home games where I knew I wanted to rest Jarry. DeSmith, at his age and limited ceiling would only play in emergency situations on the road.

Down in Wheeling, Taylor Gauthier is playing better than last season’s tandem of Alex D’Orio and Tommy Napier did.

	Po	C	Age	Team	League	GP	GAA	Sv%	SO	W	L	T
Gauthier, Taylor	G	R	21	Wheeling Nailers	ECHL	8	2.6	0.911	1	4	4	0
Lindberg, Filip	G	L	23	WBS Penguins	AHL	7	2.67	0.904	0	4	2	0
Tokarski, Dustin	G	L	33	WBS Penguins	AHL	12	1.8	0.939	1	7	2	3

Over in Europe, our Penguins have 2 really good young prospects, Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov. Blomqvist is experiencing a bit of some growing pains. Playing in Finland’s top league, the former 2^nd round draft pick is posting numbers a little lower than last season but his skills are through the roof. Murashov on the other hand, playing in Russia’s top Junior league is dominating. He already has 6 Shutouts, a Save Percentage (Sv%) that is through the roof (0.953) and a Goals Against Average (GAA) that you need a microscope to find (1.47).

Obviously, these 2 kids will not help the current Penguins’ team, but they do represent a bright future in Goal.

	Po	C	Age	Team	League	GP	GAA	Sv%	SO	W	L	T
Blomqvist, Joel	G	L	20	Kärpät	Liiga	15	2.17	0.907	1	4	4	6
Murashov, Sergei	G	R	18	Loko Yaroslavl	MHL	21	1.47	0.953	6	13	5	2
Murashov, Sergei	G	R	18	Loko Yaroslavl-76	MHL	1	2	0.941	1	0	0	0

Forwards

If you have read any of my recent Posts or Replies to my partner in crime Rick Buker, I am none too thrilled over our Coaches decision to strip the Evgeni Malkin line of Rickard Rackell to fix the Sidney Crosby line of its lack of impotence. All Mike Sullivan did, as I wrote to Rick yesterday, was rob Peter to pay Paul. The result of our Coach’s lack of genius was to transfer the impotence to the second line. Sullivan needs to start trying something new.

I don’t have space to waste on my reasons why, but the smarter move would have been to bring up one of the kids from WBS, Valteeri Puustenin or Filip Hållander and give them the spot, Bryan Rust was occupying. And as I wrote in a reply yesterday, I don’t want to hear the hypocritical pushback that the kids need to earn the right to play next to Crosby and give the veterans a pass. If the Kids need to earn the right to play top 6, so do the underperforming veterans.

Hållander is tied with Puustenin for the lead in scoring for WBS with 16 Pts. Hållander leads the club in +/- at +12 and Puustenin checks in with a not too shabby+6. Hållander has been Mister consistency picking up 6 Pts in 8 GP in October, good enough for 2^nd on the team in scoring while notching 10 Pts in 9 GP in November. Puustenin on the other hand started off a little slow with only 5 Pts in 8GP October but 11 Pts in 11 GP in November.

Hållander’s and Puustenin’s 16 Pts are not great, but they do check in tied for 39^th in the AHL.

After Hållander and Puustenin, there isn’t really much to talk about. Even though he is getting top line action, even starting games, Poulin hasn’t done much. Drew O’Connor seems to have cooled off from his heady days after coming here. Alexander Nylander does put up offensive numbers but seems to not know what to do when he doesn’t have the puck.

As for the other players I would like to see, they seem to be suffering from the same short sightedness crushing Lindberg. Nathan Légaré is suiting up for games but not getting much quality ice time. Raivis Ansons, Lukáš Švejkovský, and Corey Andonovski don’t even seem to getting to suit up consistently.

	Po	S	Age	Team	League	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	(+/-)
Andonovski, Corey	RW	R	23	WBS Penguins	AHL	15	3	2	5	27	1
Ansons, Raivis	RW/LW	L	20	WBS Penguins	AHL	9	0	1	1	2	-2
Caggiula, Drake	C/LW	L	28	WBS Penguins	AHL	15	3	6	9	6	0
Frasca, Jordan	C/LW	L	21	WBS Penguins	AHL	0	0	0	0	0	0
Glover, Ty	C/LW	L	22	WBS Penguins	AHL	7	1	1	2	0	2
Gruden, Jonathan	LW	L	22	WBS Penguins	AHL	17	3	2	5	15	1
Hallander, Filip	LW/C	L	22	WBS Penguins	AHL	17	6	10	16	2	12
Legare, Nathan	RW	R	21	WBS Penguins	AHL	18	2	0	2	9	-2
Nylander, Alexander	W/C	R	24	WBS Penguins	AHL	19	6	7	13	6	-2
O’Connor, Drew	LW	L	24	WBS Penguins	AHL	17	5	8	13	16	2
Poulin, Sam	W	L	21	WBS Penguins	AHL	11	4	0	4	4	2
Puustinen, Valterri	RW/LW	R	23	WBS Penguins	AHL	19	7	9	16	6	6
Švejkovský, Lukáš	C/RW	R	20	WBS Penguins	AHL	12	0	3	3	2	-2

If we look at Europe and the Juniors, there isn’t much there. Kasper Bjorkqvist has been a disappointment for me. I liked him and wanted to see him develop. Kirill Tankov, another player I really wanted to see here in Pittsburgh had a serious injury at the start of the KHL season.

	Po	S	Age	Team	League	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	(+/-)
Bjorkqvist, Kasper	W	L	25	Kärpät	Liiga	20	3	2	5	8	5
Broz, Tristan	C	L	20	Univ of Denver	NCAA	14	2	2	4	8	3
Caulfield, Judd	RW	R	21	Univ of North Dakota	NCAA	15	5	1	6	10	6
Devlin, Luke	C	L	18	West Kelowna Warriors	BCHL	18	3	8	11	7	0
Plante, Zam	C	L	18	Univ of Minn-Duluth	NCAA	6	1	2	3	2	0
Tankov, Kirill	C	L	20	SKA-Neva St.Petersburg	VHL	1	0	0	0	0	0
Yoder, Chase	C	L	20	Providence College	NCAA	15	5	6	11	2	6

So that is the state of our Penguins. Is there any help there? Who knows? The only way to find out is to find out.

Odds and Sods

Taking a peak at some former Penguins Prospects still playing hockey but elsewhere we find that the player our esteemed Coach, Mike Sullivan extended a contract to this past summer, Dominik Simon has 2 G and 1 A in 20 GP in the Czech league and is a -5. In the meantime recent castoffs Radim Zohorna has 3 G and 9 A for 11 Pts with the Calgary Wranglers and is a +5 while Anthony Angello has 5 G and 1 A for the Springfield Thunderbirds and has the same +/- as Simon, -5.

	Po	S	Age	Team	League	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	(+/-)
Angello, Anthony	F	R	26	Springfield Thunderbirds	AHL	18	5	1	6	35	-5
Simon, Dominic	F	L	28	Sparta Praha	Czech	20	2	1	3	4	-5
Zohorna, Radim	F	L	26	Calgary Wranglers	AHL	18	3	9	11	9	5

Hmm…….