The Penguins don’t play until tomorrow so I decided to take a minute to check out some information regarding a player who is currently playing for the Baby Penguins. That player is Oskar Sundqvist.

Sundvist is probably the top rated center the Penguins have that is currently not up with the big club. He has 18 NHL games to his name and four points. As we look beyond the 2016-17 season there is potential for the Penguins to lose both of their bottom six centers. Matt Cullen is going to retire so right off the bat there is an opening for a fourth line center. Nick Bonino may be a cap casualty as the Penguins won’t be able to spend big on Bonino relative to what the market will probably bear. In house that leaves Jake Guentzel, who is a natural center, as a candidate for some work at the center position in the NHL and also Oskar Sundqvist.

Prior to the 2015-16 season Sundqvist dealt with a severed tendon injury to his thigh which certainly had a negative impact on his ability to train in the offseason. He did eventually make it to the NHL, but it had more to do with injuries than performance. When we look at player performance in the AHL we should be looking at offensive output. This is because the AHL does a horrendous job of keeping stats and offensive output is one of the few things that you can rely on being accurate. Offensive output is a fairly decent indicator on if they will be able to make the leap to the NHL. It doesn’t mean that player will produce offense in the NHL just that they are capable enough to play in that league. Here are the benchmarks I personally use.



During the 2015-16 season Oskar Sundqvist was in his 21-year-old season. The benchmark for that age is 0.7 points per game. In 45 AHL games Sundqvist had 17 points for a 0.37 points per game average. This was below the aforementioned standard. It was a little bit alarming considering it was only about 50% of the expected output for a probable NHL player. It wasn’t a great year for Sundqvist in the AHL as it pertained to his path to the NHL as a full time player.

The encouraging news is that he has improved in 2016-17 and he is a lot closer to hitting the benchmark than he was last year even though at 22 years old that benchmark is now 1.0 points per game.



I added Jake Guentzel and Dominik Simon because those are the other notable forward “prospects” that have played for the Baby Penguins this season. Simon is in his 22-year-old season and is coming up short of the benchmark. Guentzel is also in his 22-year-old season and has exceeded the benchmark. If you throw in his playoff run from last year it jumps to 1.19 points per game. Guentzel has found early success in his small NHL sample size.

Teddy Blueger would have been a player to track but he was injured in training camp and has yet to play in any games this year.

With Matt Cullen retiring and Eric Fehr being a likely candidate to be traded the Penguins will need to fill that fourth line center role. Oskar Sundqvist has improved in 2016-17 and is a lot closer to being a reasonable option for that promotion than he was at this time last year. We are only a quarter of the way through the season, but the early returns are more encouraging than they were at this time last year.

Thanks for reading!

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