Penguins Notebook: Pens Passed on Six Top Prospects?! GMs Want LTIR Changes

The good news is that Rutger McGroarty was No.23 on Sportsnet’s top 23 Under 23 list. The bad news is that the Pittsburgh Penguins passed on SIX of the other prospects who are fighting their way to the NHL. The Penguins passed on two players in the 2022 NHL Draft who made the list and four in the 2023 draft.

The list, compiled by Sportsnet’s amateur scouting experts Jason Bukala and Sam Cosentino, can be read here.

The Penguins prospects will practice Thursday morning and then travel to Buffalo for the Prospects Challenge. This will be our first look at several prospects in Penguins sweaters, including McGroarty. So, this seems the right time to analyze the lack of draft hits over the last few years.

The Penguins’ recent change at the top of amateur scouting and player personnel is likely a good thing, too. New vice president of player personnel Wes Clark has a strong track record stemming from his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs, including one player drafted 28th overall who made the Top 23 list.

No, former Penguins director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor’s track record was not so hot.

It would seem that Pryor, who left the team this summer to take a similar job with the Colorado Avalanche, fumbled the first pair of drafts of which he was in charge. The 2022 NHL Draft in Montreal was stacked with first-round talent, extending into the second round. With the 21st overall pick, the Penguins selected Owen Pickering, who may well become a productive NHL player.

Pickering will make his professional debut this season, most likely with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. After being drafted as a 6-foot-3, 179-pound defenseman, Pickering sprouted to 6-foot-5, 200 pounds. However, he was cut early in the selection process for 2024 Team Canada and did not distinguish himself in his eight-game professional debut at the end of the 2022-23 season. He failed to register a point in eight games but posted a minus-9 rating.

However, the list of the players the Penguins passed on in the 2022 Draft is significant. Danil Yurov, who lit up the KHL last season with 21 goals and 49 points, was selected 24th overall by the Minnesota Wild. He ranks fifth on the Sportsnet list, behind electric Philadelphia Flyers prospect Matvei Michkov (7th overall) and ahead of the San Jose Sharks’ Will Smith (4th overall) and Washington Capitals prospect Ryan Leonard (8th overall).

The other player the Penguins passed on in 2022 is the U.S National Team Development Program’s Jimmy Snuggerud, who was selected 23rd overall. The right-wing exploded for 13 points at the 2023 World Junior Championships, helping the U.S. to a bronze medal. In 2024, he teamed with McGroarty, who was the Team USA captain, to win gold in 2024. Snuggerud is a gritty shooter and is returning for his junior season at the University of Minnesota.

Pickering still projects as a mobile, first-pass type defenseman and very well could become a solid NHL contributor, but the two players selected immediately behind him project to be impact players.

The Penguins had the 14th overall pick in 2023 and selected Brayden Yager. Perhaps the happy ending is that Penguins president of hockey operations/GM Kyle Dubas was able to upgrade the pick by swapping Yager for McGroarty. However, if he hadn’t, the near handful of players whom the Penguins passed might have made Penguins fans pretty upset.

Yager recently ranked only 85th on the Elite Prospects Top 100 list.

Gabe Perrault, drafted 23rd overall by the New York Rangers, ranks 13th on the Sportsnet list. Perrault is torching opponents–in his final juniors season with the USNTDP, he potted 53 goals and 132 points. Last season, as a freshman at Boston College, he shredded for 19 goals and 60 points in 36 games. He was high on many amateur draft boards but slipped on draft day.

Right-shot defenseman Axel Sandin-Pellikka is a swift and agile skater with elite speed. He’s still filling out, but projects as a power-play quarterback who could stick on an NHL blue line for a long time. The Detroit Red Wings snagged him at No. 17.

Easton Cowan lasted until the back of the first round in 2023 but is pushing hard to make his NHL debut with the Toronto Maple Leafs this season. Last season, he had 34 goals for the London Knights in the regular season, then posted another 10 goals and whopping 34 points leading London to the OHL championship and Memorial Cup appearance.

He is one of those rare high-compete players who can score. Because his big breakout didn’t come until last season, he lasted until pick 28. The other top 23 prospect the Penguins passed in 2023 is Calum Ritchie, who may crack the Colorado Avalanche roster this season. He was the 27th overall pick but projects as s top-six forward who knows his way around the defensive zone, too.

Six players, each of whom could be ready to crack the Penguins’ lineup this season or next, but the Penguins did end up with McGroarty and Wes Clark. So, it may have a happy ending, but if the Penguins want to rebuild, hitting a few home runs at the draft wouldn’t hurt, either.

LTIR Changes?

A couple of teams have won the Stanley Cup in recent seasons with a team that would have far exceeded the salary cap. In 2021, the Tampa Bay Lightning stashed winger Nikita Kucherov on the long-term injured reserve list after he had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip. He was skating for weeks, but the team couldn’t afford to activate him. So he remained on LTIR until the playoffs when the salary cap was not in effect.

In 2023, Vegas Golden Knights captain Mark Stone’s back injury flared up in January, and he was unable to play for the remainder of the regular season, but like Kucherov, he was ready for the playoffs.

Fans cried foul because the teams used the extra salary cap space to acquire players at the NHL trade deadline. It seems GMs cried foul, too. However, no one seems to know how to solve the problem.

Speaking at the NHL media tour in Las Vegas, deputy commissioner Bill Daly addressed the question but offered little in terms of a solution.

“(GMs) would like us to continue to consider making some kind of adjustment that would alleviate some of the concerns around that,” Daly said.

“We’ve had preliminary talks with the players’ association just so they’re aware of the issue. They read about it, too,” Daly said. “And I don’t really know what the players’ view of it is. So, it really would depend. I don’t know what the receptiveness would be to try and address it. And it probably depends on how complicated the fix is.”

Because the NHL salary cap is calculated daily when teams acquire players at midseason, the acquired player doesn’t count at the full cap hit. For example, if the Penguins traded for a player on an expiring contract who makes $5 million, they do not need $5 million of salary cap space at the time of the trade. Instead, the player’s salary cap hit is calculated based on the remaining days of the regular season.

Figuring out the math is not for the faint of heart. Daly said it wouldn’t be fair to penalize teams who played by the rules and acquired players they could afford at the deadline only to charge them full price ($5 million) by instituting the salary cap in the playoffs.

It seems there is an appetite to fix the problem but nothing resembling a proposal to fix it.