TAKING STOCK
An outsider’s view of the Penguins prospect pool two years into the tenure of Ron Hextall as GM
Around this time every year, with draft picks and top prospects being exchanged in deadline deals, I like to check in with one of the top media analysts in that realm, Chris Peters, to get his feelings on the prospect pool for the Penguins.
One quote from Peters, who now works for FloSports, perfectly summed up where things stand after Ron Hextall’s first two years as their general manager.
“I don’t think they’re dead last anymore, so that’s good,” he said with a laugh.
Yes, the Penguins under Jim Rutherford always landed at or very near the bottom of lists ranking the league’s top talent pools. Hard to quibble with the Hall of Fame executive’s approach. Those two Stanley Cup banners will fly forever.
His successor, Hextall, has been more reluctant to surrender future assets. That had the fan base, begging for a blockbuster trade, in a furor this week. I will share my take on that in Point Shots elsewhere on this page. For now, let’s focus on prospects.
Hextall drafted Owen Pickering and Tristan Broz with early-round selections. He dealt for Ty Smith and Filip Hallander. He signed several college free agents. The prospect pool is definitely a bit deeper. But how many make a splash?
“It is marginally better because there are more players, but it’s certainly still in the back portion of the league,” Peters said. “They’re very low on impact prospects. The addition of a guy like Pickering lifts the whole system, because I view him as an A-level prospect, a guy who could be a top-four [defenseman].”
Pickering, the 21st overall selection in 2022, isn’t viewed as an elite prospect. He didn’t crack Team Canada’s roster for this year’s World Junior Championships. His box-score statistics in the Western Hockey League are not exceptional.
But Peters sees improvement, saying the 19-year-old is “very much on track.”
“I don’t necessarily think this year has gone amazingly well for Pickering. But I think he’s on a very comfortable development pace,” Peters said. “He’s not a guy that was going to be ready quickly. There was always a rawness to his game.”
In his eyes, Smith is a notch, maybe two, below Pickering. He was the 17th pick in 2018 but the New Jersey Devils gave up on him, sending him to the Penguins for John Marino. Peters thinks Smith’s time in the minors isn’t a bad thing.
“It’s something that New Jersey didn’t really have the luxury of doing because they took him in the first round. If you send him down, everyone freaks out,” Peters said. “He still has to prove that he’s an everyday NHLer, which he hasn’t yet. But I think his offensive upside remains very high.”
Peters thinks Smith probably can only top out as a puck-moving defenseman who plays sheltered minutes at 5-on-5 and runs your second power play unit.
Among their prospects currently in the American Hockey League, Smith is the only one Peters believes has decent odds of being a major NHL contributor. He thinks Sam Poulin could become an effective role player. But Poulin remains away from the organization for personal reasons, losing development time.
No, he did not forget about Valtteri Puustinen. Peters wonders if he is a “tweener” who can light up the American Hockey League but won’t last in the
NHL.
Beyond Poulin, Puustinen and Hallander, there is not much at forward. One position where the Penguins do have depth and some upside is in goal. Joel Blomqvist, a second-rounder in 2020, could arrive in North America next season. Little Sergei Murashov is putting up eye-popping numbers in a second-tier Russian league. Both Filip Lindberg and Taylor Gauthier have a shot.
But what are the odds that at least one will become a No. 1 netminder?
“They all have a chance to play, but I think it’s pretty low that any one of those guys ends up becoming an NHL starter,” Peters said. “There’s only 32 jobs.”
With Blomqvist in particular, Peters doesn’t feel the Finn has made a big leap over the past year. None of Pittsburgh’s prospects really have, per Peters.
The closest thing, he said, would be what Broz is doing in his sophomore NCAA season after the winger’s high-profile transfer from Minnesota to Denver.
“He’s in a better situation now both personally and hockey-wise,” Peters said. “And now he’s an impact player at the college level as a sophomore, which is a good place to be. Is he going to be a star prospect? No. But he is showing that he is going to make it.”
Prioritizing draft prospects from the college ranks has been one philosophical shift under Hextall and right-hand man Chris Pryor, compared to Rutherford.
“Those guys have a little bit longer of a development timeline. That is kind of in line with what Hextall and Pryor and Nick Pryor had been doing in Philly,” Peters said “The reason to draft players like that, especially if you’re the Penguins, is that you won’t have to use contracts on those guys for a few years.”
The biggest difference from the previous regime, though, is that Hextall has tried to squirrel away assets, whereas Rutherford used his as trade chips.
“That comes from up top. That’s the Hextall impact. That helps a lot,” he said.