A different kind of awards
Now that another season is over, an irreverent different type of end of season awards for the Penguins.
Guy who played a surprising number of games: The Pens dressed an abnormally high 42 different players over the course of the season, there are no shortage of good choices for this one. Boko Imama (16 games) got into the lineup probably more than expected. P.O. Joseph signed over the summer in St. Louis and somehow found himself back in Pittsburgh for 25 games. Owen Pickering got 25 NHL games in his first pro season for a more pleasant surprise. Winner: Joona Koppanen, Koppanen played a handful of games for the Pens in 2023-24 but ending up as the team’s third line center on game 82? Playing double-digit NHL games (11)? Didn’t see that one coming.
Guy who surprisingly did not play a lot of games: Many had Jack St. Ivany written in ink for the NHL lineup last summer and he only appeared in 19 NHL games, none of them after November 29th. It was disappointing that Vasily Ponomarev only played seven games (mostly at the end in garbage time) the same number as Sam Poulin who has become a full-time after-thought at the NHL level. Valterri Puustinen looked like he graduated to the NHL last season and only got 13 games in the show this time. Winner: Sebastian Aho, we thought he would wind up in the NHL for a large number of games but between injury and whatever else Aho didn’t play in any at all.
Somethin’ for nothin’ award: The Pens got a lot of players for free in the last year, or sometimes even players other teams paid assets for in order to ship away (Cody Glass, Kevin Hayes). Joseph came over for “future considerations” (aka: nothing), Vladislav Kolyachonok was claimed off waivers…We’re not going to count Philip Tomasino or Conor Timmins/Connor Dewar since minimal draft picks going the other way isn’t literally nothing.. Winner: Cody Glass. In exchange for paying his $2.5 million cap hit for 3⁄4 of a season, the Pens got a 2025 third round pick and a 2026 sixth round pick from Nashville, plus a 2026 third round pick and a couple low-end prospects to send him out to New Jersey, while also getting Glass to fill bottom-line minutes and do an OK job there. That’s win/win/win for getting something for nothing (and better than Hayes, who drew slightly more trade return but also carried a two-year commitment at a higher rate).
Bounce-back of the year award: This one is pretty easy, a player went from 15 goals in 70 games last season up to a career-high in 35 in 2024-25. There were some health reasons to explain the low output, playing much of last season in a shoulder harness, but congrats are due for a big turnaround. Winner: Rickard Rakell
Oh we wish you would have won the bounce-back of the year award: Honorable mention to the well-meaning thought process of “maybe he’ll settle in better during his second year on the team” with Ryan Graves, who almost went the whole season without recording a point and was a frequent healthy scratch when he wasn’t a root cause for so many bad defensive plays against. Winner: Tristan Jarry. Jarry followed up his career-worst season of 2023-24 (19-25-5 record, .903 save%) with an even worse 2024-25 that saw him get sent to the AHL on two separate occasions. Not exactly the response you’d hope for from a franchise goalie on a $5+ million dollar a year contract. Who knows what the future holds, at least he started on an upward path in the last five weeks or so.
Best newcomer: Pickering, Tomasino and Timmins all had their moments. Rookies Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty very happily provided a boost and some hope for the future at the end of the season. But none of them are winning. Winner: David Quinn. The Pittsburgh power play went from 30th in the NHL (15.3%) in 2023-24 with a 31st ranked net power play to factor out the goals against up to the 6th best power play (25.8%) in the league and a 5th ranked net power play this year. Quinn as assistant in charge of the power play completely revitalized that group.
The “worst” newcomer (insert Grandpa Simpson walking in and right back out gif): Vincent Desharnais thought he had this award in the bag after only a 10-game, 34 day stint with the Penguins (acquired Jan 31, traded away March 5) that didn’t go so well on the ice. He was mistaken. Winner: Luke Schenn. This trade appears to the world like Kyle Dubas picked the pocket of Nashville GM Barry Trotz. Trotz spoke of the PIT/NSH transaction as him including Schenn in the deal in exchange for Pittsburgh adding a fourth round pick. The 35-year old Schenn kindly asked Dubas to re-route him to a contending team, and the Pens did so by sending Schenn out the door two days (and zero games) later to Winnipeg for a second AND fourth round pick. On second thought, maybe that makes Schenn technically the best newcomer…
Best game of the season: Winner: 9-2 win over Montreal, December 12th. The Pens scored six straight goals in the third period to turn a 3-2 lead into a 9-2 laugher by the final buzzer. Matt Nieto scored what would be his only goal of the season and Noel Acciari added one too. It was a great game. This is a personal bias award, because it was fun to go to Montreal, amazing city and unreal hockey environment. Then to watch this game spiral into a big win made it all the better.
Worst game of the season: Is it too dramatic to say the first game of the season? The Pens gave up a goal 2:24 into the year and left the home ice to boos down 3-0 after the first period, going on to slide to a 6-0 defeat. In the recap we wrote:
“On one hand, there’s no sense in over-reacting to one game’s results. On the other hand, the Pens look like a piecemeal team of older stars mis-matched with random spare pieces jettisoned from their old teams for not being that good (because, well..that’s what they are)….It is only one game but it’s not a good first glimpse at what could lie ahead.”
Well, that ended up proving to be way too accurate for much of the six months to come. The Pens weren’t good enough to shake that first impression and improve into anything consistently better, earning their own top-10 draft pick for the first time since the 2005-06 season. Winner: 6-0 loss on October 10th to NYR
A goalie on my team scored as many or more goals than me award: Shoutout to Alex Nedeljkovic for making this possible, that goal against Buffalo in November seems like a long time ago now. Winner: 16-way tie* between: Nathan Clurman, Vladislav Kolyachonok, Ville Koivunen, Sam Poulin, Emil Bemstrom, Jack St. Ivany, P.O. Joseph, Vasily Ponomarev, Vincent Desharnais, Matt Grzelcyk, Ryan Graves, Rutger McGroarty, Owen Pickering, Matt Nieto, Joona Koppanen, Boko Imama..You can cut some slack to McGroarty and Koivunen due to a limited amount of games played but aside from those two prospects and Pickering, this list also doubles nicely as a good place for a list of “players it would be best aren’t back in Pittsburgh next year” to begin.
(*We showed mercy and scratched Tommy Novak and Conor Timmins, since they scored enough on their first teams this season)