Can the AHL provide help in the NHL for the Penguins?
The Wilkes-Barre/Scrantion Penguins won two out of three games this past week. WB/S team writer Nick Hart had the following synopses of the games:
Wednesday, Jan. 8 – PENGUINS 6 at Toronto 3
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton started its Canadian excursion by lighting the lamp six times. Ville Koivunen scored a hat trick and had four points, while other goal-scorers included Emil Bemström and former Marlies defenseman Filip Král. Filip Larsson posted 36 saves for his fifth-straight win.
Friday, Jan. 10 – PENGUINS 6 at Belleville 1
The Pens notched six goals again in a rout against the Sens. Avery Hayes, Sam Poulin and Valtteri Puustinen all scored on Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s first three shots of the game. Former Ottawa Senators Boris Katchouk and Boko Imama tallied in the second period, and a shorty by Poulin rounded out the offense. Joel Blomqvist wowed with 39 saves on his 23rd birthday. Rutger McGroarty also nabbed a career-high three assists.
Sunday, Jan. 12 – PENGUINS 3 at Belleville 4
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s season-long eight-game point came to an end in heartbreaking fashion. Two goals by Bemström and a beautiful power-play strike by Hayes couldn’t stack up to a hat trick from Belleville’s Wyatt Bongiovanni. Bongiovanni completed his hat trick with 2.2 seconds left in the game.
Overall, 2024-25 is shaping up to be an excellent season at the AHL level for the Penguins. They currently sit second in the Atlantic Division, and are even first in points percentage. For whatever you want to say about Kyle Dubas, he entered the Pittsburgh organization when Wilkes-Barre was among the worst AHL teams. Through the investment of bringing in better AHL level players on NHL money contracts and plugging in talented young players, the Penguins have left the basement behind and become one of the strongest teams these days in the AHL.
While that is all well and good, having a strong minor league team is of minimal benefit while the NHL club struggles. It leads to the inevitable question, which players currently in Wilkes might be able to help out at the top level?
The goalies — Joel Blomqvist recently celebrated his 23rd birthday and is off to a second very fine season in Wilkes (.912 save% in 12 games, 2.93 GAA, 1 shutout and a 6-4-2 record). Blomqvist is the top prospect at his position in the organization right now, but the work of free agent signee Filip Larsson (.927 save%, 2.44 GAA, 4 shutouts and a 7-4-2 record) can’t be overlooked either. Larsson, 26, has yet to play in the NHL after spending 2020-24 back in Sweden. Considering that Pittsburgh has some of the worst goalie inputs at the starter and backup position, it’s not a huge stretch to state that both of their AHL goalies might be in better form at the moment than both of their NHL goalies. Does that mean the Pens have the stomach for drastic roster movement to shuttle Tristan Jarry or Alex Nedeljkovic off the roster and call-up a minor league goalie? It hasn’t happened yet. But poor goaltending has been at a breaking point these last few games and if the team wishes to attempt to salvage their season, bringing up a minor league goalie and giving them an opportunity to play NHL games is worth consideration, even if it means potentially carrying the awkward three healthy goalie setup.
Ville Koivunen — Koivunen ranks second among AHL rookies this season with 27 points. At 21 years old and still in his first full North American season, the Pens may want to slow-play his development and give him plenty of time at the AHL level to acclimate, grow and gain experience. However, the NHL roster could use a skill infusion. Several players in the middle-six right now in Pittsburgh (think Cody Glass, Drew O’Connor, Anthony Beauvillier) are providing little to no production these days. Koivunen’s NHL future might not start until some NHL pieces get cleaned out around the deadline, but at some point this season he should be considered to get a look in the top league.
Vasily Ponomarev — Whenever Dubas talks about Ponomarev, he says the 22-year old is close to making the jump to the NHL. Ponomarev might be starting to push the issue, he’s got eight points (2G+6A) in the last seven games with Wilkes, and is at an even point/game rate over his last 19 games with as many points. Ponomarev projects to be a lower line player and that production won’t follow him in kind to the NHL, but it looks like he has more juice than many of the lower line options in Pittsburgh.
Rutger McGroarty — This is probably in the “not yet” file, but McGroarty has shown growth and improvement during his AHL apprenticeship by scoring 16 points in his last 22 games (and eight points in his previous eight games) after a slow start of just one point in his first eight games in Wilkes. The 20-year old might be in store for a full year of development down on the farm, but his game and upside could always be tapped into when the team feels he is ready to make the jump back up to the NHL.
Unfortunately, none of the names above are defensemen. Pittsburgh already called up Owen Pickering, who has played his way into staying in the NHL lineup but for now the cupboard looks bare in the AHL in that regard. Sebastian Aho could be an NHL/AHL swing player and has a lot of recent NHL experience, but injuries have dogged his 2024-25 season. Aho hasn’t played for Wilkes since Jan 4, and has only been able to play in six games since Dec. 1. It doesn’t look like he will be an option to provide that much more or different from the current players at the bottom of the NHL depth chart like P.O Joseph or Ryan Shea at the moment.
Right now the Penguins don’t have a ton of NHL ready talent on the periphery to call on from the minor leagues, but they do have some options. The possibility in net to see if one of their hot AHL goalies can offer better goaltending than they’ve been getting this season stands out the most, but over the second half of the season they should definitely start looking to make room for players like Ponomarev and Koivunen to step in and move on to the future.
In some ways, this eventual and slow progression was always in the plans to happen, but the NHL team’s recent struggles should only provide more motivation for Pittsburgh to consider accelerating the process as they can to move on from NHL players who aren’t cutting it.