Pittsburgh Penguins 2023-24 Forwards

We don’t know yet who exactly will be in the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup when the puck drops in October, there could be a young inexperienced prospect who unexpectedly steps up to take on a big role, but we do know that somebody will be gone as they currently need to clear several million to get under the salary cap. We have a pretty good idea of which player will be gone, as he happens to make $5M a year and doesn’t have a No Trade Clause, but there is a lot of uncertainty in who will play where in the depth chart and even which will be waived to get sent down to play in the AHL. So with that in mind, let us take a look at the 20 forwards who played at some point over the past two seasons.

The reason I am looking at multiple seasons is because it gives us a larger sample size to work with, although even so only 14 of them skated over 500 minutes during that span and only 10 of them played significant minutes during both of those years. The reason for looking at 2021-23 specifically is because the NHL average scoring was significantly higher than it has been in over a decade, while the shortened 2020-21 season was significantly lower then expected, and 2021-22 is when the league expanded to 32 teams. The data I used comes from Natural Stat Trick and we are primarily focusing on 5-on-5 data as the sample sizes for power play and penalty kill are quite small, and I create the charts by making everything relative to the league average.

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Player Usage

Time on Ice

Drew O’Connor

The last remaining Restricted Free Agent that the Pittsburgh Penguins have yet to come to terms with, Drew O’Connor is slated to go to an arbitration hearing a few days from now. Because the time to re-sign him is rapidly closing there has been a lot of speculation about his expected value, the tweet I saw earlier that prompted me to write this post was speculating that the team would be seeking about $900k while O’Connor is likely hoping for $1.5-2M a year.

This struck me as absurd, I cannot fathom a world in which we are talking those kind of figures for a player like O’Connor. Yes, there is potential, but an arbitrator determines your value based on what you have accomplished, not speculating about possible future success. We have seen far too many players who seemed to have potential based on their AHL numbers fizzle out when it came time to move up to the NHL full time. He has done nothing to earn that kind of payday, and I want to take a dive into the data to reflect on this.

2023-24 Pittsburgh Penguins Goaltenders

The Pittsburgh Penguins currently have six goaltenders under contract: Tristan Jarry, Casey DeSmith, Alex Nedeljkovic, Joel Blomqvist, Taylor Gauthier, and Magnus Hellberg. They also tendered a qualifying offer to Restricted Free Agent Filip Lindberg in order to retain his player rights, although he has already signed a contract to play in Europe so he won’t be back in the AHL this fall. Although a recent article in The Athletic seems to have overlooked this and had Lindberg as fifth on the depth chart and forgot the prospects even exist.

The recent contract Jarry signed has cemented him as the franchise starter, so barring an unforeseen setback he is a lock to be the #1 goalie and we are just trying to figure out who his backup will be and what the goaltending situation will look like in the minors this year. Since the other two have just signed, and as he has a higher salary and the Pens are currently over the cap looking to shed big money contracts, the speculation is that DeSmith will be traded off before the season begins. However, the statements from Dubas have suggested that they may leave it until training camp and wait to see which of the three is the better backup.

Blomqvist and Gauthier are waiver exempt and have no NHL experience, so we can presume they will indeed be in the minors. Although depending on which of the NHL goalies they keep and who will clear waivers it will certainly cut into the playing time and development of these young prospects. They could even find themselves pushed down the the ECHL, Gauthier spent almost as much time with the Wheeling Nailers last year as he did in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Since I am looking at NHL data from the prior two seasons we will gloss over these prospects and just focus on the other four netminders.

2023 Pittsburgh Penguins Draft Day 2

The 2023 NHL Draft has concluded and the Pittsburgh Penguins added six new players to their prospect pool. After the 1st round was finished I took a deep look at #14 overall pick Brayden Yager, so today I want to see what they got on Day 2. The Pens had picks at #91 in the 3rd round, #142 in the 5th round, #174 in the 6th round, and #217 and #223 in the 7th round.

There have been a lot of complaints on Twitter with armchair GMs bemoaning the Pens choices and who should have been picked instead. So for those people I want to assure them that this draft still has former General Manager Ron Hextall’s fingerprints all over it. Director of Amateur Scouting Nick Pryor was a Hextall hire and the son of former Assistant GM Chris Pryor. Two of the eight amateur scouts working in North America were hired by Hextall: Matt Mangene and Krissy Wendell-Pohl.

But perhaps more telling, especially given the number of prospects chosen from overseas and who were on the rosters of international tournaments, is that Hextall hired the lone European amateur scout Lukas Havlicek, one of two global crossover scouts Garrett Peters, and one of three European scouts Alexander Khavanov. And considering the situation in Russia and their current ban from international play Khavanov would have been their primary source of information from behind the Red Curtain. Even their top pick Yager, he was taken out to dinner at the Draft Combine by the scouting staff without Kyle Dubas being present, so their plans to target him stem from the mind of Hextall’s scouts.

The height and weight I have listed comes from the Draft Combine for the lone player who was present, the IIHF World Juniors and Hlinky Gretzky Cup rosters for the other two Finns, and the individual team rosters for the last two players. The stats I got from EliteProspects and am just going to combine their totals over the prior several seasons in either adult league or top juniors appearances.