Penguins Youth Movement Begins; Top D-Man Prospect Called Up
The Pittsburgh Penguins took another step in their youth movement Friday morning when the team announced they had called up top prospect defenseman Owen Pickering from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
Pickering, 20, was the Penguins first-round draft choice (21st overall) in 2022. He played increasingly well during training camp and the preseason and was one of the Penguins final cuts of training camp. This is his first professional season.
Read more: Finally. Pickering Pumped for Penguins Moment; “I Know What to Do” (+)
The 6-foot-5, 200-pound left–handed defenseman has one goal in 12 games, and is a plus-5.
The Penguins face the Columbus Blue Jackets Friday night at Nationwide Arena. Pittsburgh Hockey Now will update the story if Pickering is available tonight or if there are any corresponding transactions.
The Penguins have reportedly been active on the NHL trade market and there are no known injuries to the Penguins primary left side defensemen: Matt Grzelcyk, Marcus, Pettersson, or Ryan Graves. Ryan Shea has been serving as the seventh defenseman.
The Penguins recalled forward prospect Vasily Ponomarev on Thursday. 2019 first round pick Sam Poulin made his season debut, playing in his seventh NHL game, on Wednesday night against the Detroit Red Wings.
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Maybe there is something to the rumor of Petterson and DOC to the Oilers?
Was someone waived to make room on the roster or am I missing something? Lizotte and Hayes on IR were replaced with Nieto and Ponomarev. Blomquist goes down and Poulin comes up. How does Pickering fit under the 23 man roster?
I think Nieto is still on LITR, probably an update coming shortly.
Eller?
This. Eller made 2.45M. Sending him to Washington for only picks opened up a lot more cap space for the team. Glass and Hayes are on IR, and Lizotte likely heading there as well, possibly LTIR. With all the moves, Penguins still have a bit over 1M in cap space left.
Current roster shows 24 skaters + 2G. 3 on IR, Nieto, Hayes and Glass. Lizotte and Letang are out.
Exactly. You cannot bring one up and go over 23 roster positions without a corresponding move. And the way Nieto move was presented was that he was called back up. So Dan, what gives?
I see the youth movement as well underway, it just takes time and we started from scratch. Hextall left the roster completely tied up with bad contracts and little flexibility. Dubas first had to undo a lot of Hextall’s mistakes then we started going after futures with the trade of Jake. Now we have 14 or 15 players who are 26 or under that are in the nhl or close to breaking through and a boatload of top 3 draft picks to build more quality in that younger group over the next few years. I know folks want to trade… Read more »
What happend to Harrison Brunicke?
Why is he not playing? Could not do any worse than current d-men.
He was sent down to his junior club. Cannot be recalled this year.
He was assigned to his WHL team, so he can’t be recalled this season
I may be wrong but Graves didn’t play the last 10 minutes of the last game … hopefully he isn’t concussed…he actually was playing pretty well
Good to see a young guy like Pickering receive a promotion. Now send Letang and his -10 rating back home to Montreal. The Canadiens need a d-man and have young forwards to offer in return. It’s called a win-win, girls and boys . . .
Letang is one of my favourite players but I’m willing to admit he may need to go. If we could package something together and get Kirby Dach…
Do you think the DOC and Pett trades will each include another player from our roster? Like, “Here – you can also use this guy too, it’s a set”.
Time for Sid and the kids. Should be fun to watch!
Beats the hell out of Sid and the Geezers, that’s for damn sure.