The NHL draft is literally a lottery. The more picks you have the better chance you will eventually land a regular NHL player. There are high level busts (Alexander Daigle) and there are diamonds in the rough (Pavel Datsyuk). One thing that is common with mostly all defensemen (no matter what style) who reach the NHL level is their ability to display some ability to generate offense before reaching the professional ranks.

Here is a look at current and recent Penguins defensemen and their offensive background before becoming a professional.



Generating offense only gets tougher as you move up the ranks so showcasing some ability on that front before making it professionally seems to have a correlation with success. Even your classic stay at home NHL defensemen for Pittsburgh have shown some ability to produce in college or juniors.

This is an area to track as both Ryan Jones and Connor Hall continue to progress in their development.

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Pittsburgh drafted center Kasper Bjorkqvist with one of their second round selections. Here is some information about him

Don't know anything about Junior A SM-Liga, but Bjorkqvist was second in PPG for players with at least 10 GP last year, and first with more

— Jason (@Jay32600) June 26, 2016

than 20 GP. Being a top scorer in your junior leauge certainly isnt a bad thing

— Jason (@Jay32600) June 26, 2016

Also worth noting he is 18 while most of the guys near him in scoring are 20 or 21

— Jason (@Jay32600) June 26, 2016

Thanks for reading!

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