Penguins’ Légaré Shines in Buffalo

Our Pittsburgh Penguins shuffled off the Boston Bruins up in Buffalo.

The first tilt, opening off the 2022-2023 season, where players donning the jersey of our seafaring
Sphenisciformes took the ice against another team in anger was contested yesterday during the Buffalo Prospects Challenge. Our Penguins’ Prospects pummeled and bruised the Bruins or at least their cubs. They jumped off to a fast start potting several Power Play Goals (PPG) to take a 4 – 0 lead, before coasting to a 6 – 4 win.

Perhaps the most important part of yesterday’s Power Play (PP) outburst was drawing the penalties to garner those all-important opportunities. And if you are wondering how our Penguins got on the PP so often, let’s credit former 3rd round pick Nathan Légaré from 2019. Banging bodies all over the ice, the young Right Wing (RW), who impressed me in his inaugural camp but so many people got very down on last season, banged bodies all over the ice–getting under the skin of the little teddy bears from Boston; getting under their skin badly enough to cause them to take penalties (Pen).

The Penguins’ Head Coach of their farm team in Wilkes Barre – Scranton (WBS), J.D. Forrest, coached the game. After the game Forrest felicitated the physical frenzied feast flaunted by our favorite flightless fowl’s Forward. Forrest wasn’t the only one to praise Légaré’s play yesterday; many pundits taking in the game concurred with the Penguins bench manager’s assessment.

Part of me is wondering what our friend Rick Buker is thinking. Hey Rick, how would you like to see the Penguins employ an instigator with a physical edge?

Légaré wasn’t the only Penguins Prospect to shine, Sam Poulin, Filip Hallander, and Valterri Puustenin. Poulin got the game’s 1^st Goal (G) 90s into the game on a PP. Hallander got the next G, also on the power play. Puustenin got the team’s 3 G, once again on the PP. Hallander added another G while Légaré, himself deposited the biscuit in the net.

Few will long remember what this incarnation of our Penguins did yesterday. Prospect Challenge games are quickly forgotten, and our Coach seems to quickly forget the good that our prospects do, but long remembers their mistakes. I am wondering right now, if any or all 4 of these young guns continue to  build on the foundation they are laying, will anyone in this organization have the wherewithal to bench and/or bury in the minors underperforming veterans, even if it means risking losing them to the waiver wire and actually field THE best team the organization has to offer?

I am not saying any of these players still will be firing on all cylinders against NHL quality talent, as they were able to do against other prospects. Comparing yesterday’s prospect challenge to NHL games is like comparing apples to oranges, but I loved what transpired up in Buffalo. Maybe, just maybe, we will see the first draft pick taken under Mike Sullivan’s reign to wear the Black-and-Gold on opening night. Maybe, just maybe, Sullivan will remember how he won his first Cup — without a roster full of dinosaurs and other fossils, but with mentors and young guns.