Getting your Penguins fix (Penguins)

Penguins

Getting your Penguins fix

By Ryan Wilson

Apr 23, 2024 • 11:27 am

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As we navigate a second consecutive year of no playoffs for the Penguins attention shifts towards the teams battling it out in the first round. We are a ways away from significant roster moves for the Penguins. One thing you can do this year if you are looking to fill that Penguins void in your life is shift your attention to the baby Penguins.

Ville Koivunen is one of the prospects that came over in the Jake Guentzel trade and it will be really interesting to see how he looks in the AHL. He had a very successful season in Liiga playing for Karpat this year. He had 56 points in 59 games and then added 13 points in 12 playoff games. He has an offensive pulse. According to NHLe his regular season with Karpat is the equivalent of a 35 point NHL season. This has potential to be built upon. On a team with terrible depth scoring a 35 point player on a rookie contract would be a nice change of pace for the team.

Owen Pickering is the Penguins former first round pick back in 2021. He is finishing up his junior career in the WHL and will be a full-time professional from here on out. His development has had some interesting turns, no fault of his own. His growing spurts caused literal growing pains which made it hard to train and then hockey injuries have gotten in the way of training as well. As a result he hasn’t put on as much muscle as he has intended. He’s 6’5… and 185 pounds.

There was a time when he was getting taller so quickly that he’d show up to training sessions with his strength and conditioning coach Matt Asmundson “literally having growing pains.… “Not the cliché, the actual thing,… Asmundson told The Athletic.

The first time around, he fractured his wrist on a hit from behind in Moose Jaw during the first game of the WHL preseason with his Swift Current Broncos. This year, he hurt his ankle in the summer, which prevented him from training his lower body and cost him another trip to Buffalo for the Penguins’ rookie tournament as well as another opportunity to make his NHL preseason debut with the big club. It also ate into his season and may have cost him a spot on Team Canada at the 2024 world juniors — a team whose summer camp he was invited to as an 18-year-old two years ago after he’d been named a top three player for the Canadian under-18 team that spring, but whose selection camp he didn’t get the invite for as a 19-year-old.

The next few years are going to be big for Pickering and his ability to keep building towards a successful NHL career. While the hurdles haven’t been self-inflicted the rest of the league doesn’t slow down for others to catch up. Another run in the AHL playoffs will be good experience before what I would anticipate as a very motivated and detailed offseason training program.

If the AHL isn't your thing, or you don't have access and you’re looking for a Penguins related rooting interest, we still have Jake Guentzel to watch in the playoffs and he’s doing Jake things

He had 25 points in 17 regular season games with Carolina and now has two points in two playoffs games. The Hurricanes and Guentzel are poised for a solid run.

Lastly, Geno doing good things for the community

Thanks for reading!

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