As it stands today, the Pittsburgh Penguins have effectively shut the door on many of their young forwards making an impact next season but have left their defense and net wide open. Pittsburgh has moved on from arguably its two best left-side defensemen last year, Parker Wotherspoon and Ryan Shea, as well as their de facto starting goaltender, Stuart Skinner.
The Penguins do have some options internally to fill these holes, but are those players ready? And do the Penguins have a backup plan if they falter?
Pittsburgh has been here before, just last year, when they entered the season with major question marks on the left side of their defense where it looked as though they had no top-four options and would have to consider using Ryan Graves in the NHL. That didn’t really happen, and Shea and Wotherspoon both played well above their pay grades, which is what the Penguins are hoping for once again.
This year, the Penguins are banking on Samuel Girard rediscovering his game, and they are also hoping that one of their younger defensive prospects can step up and live up to the billing that made him a first-round pick in 2022. That player is Owen Pickering, who has languished in the AHL over the past couple of seasons but appeared to carve out a role last year with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and became a key piece of their playoff run to the Conference Finals.
Pickering has all the physical tools to be a quiet, steady, stay-at-home defenseman, but has not been able to put it all together and has seen his stock fall in recent years.
All of that being said, defensive defensemen are rarely flashy and often take longer to develop into NHL regulars. This could be the case for Pickering, whom Jesse Marshall of The Athletic once compared to former Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin. That comparison is especially interesting given the similarities between the two players and Dumoulin’s career arc.
Many people might forget that Dumoulin did not become an NHL regular until he was 24, and he was immediately paired with Kris Letang on the top pairing as the Penguins went on a run for the ages, winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017. Now, that’s not to say that Pickering will anchor the Penguins to titles in two years, but Marshall might be onto something if his assessment of Pickering is correct.
The Penguins are hoping Pickering follows a similar development curve, because they simply don’t have the depth on the left side to make a playoff run unless someone unexpectedly steps up and takes a role in their top four.
The same could be true for prospect Harrison Brunicke, although the Penguins have insulated their 2024 second-round pick by employing Erik Karlsson, Letang and Kaedan Korczak on the right side, who will likely start the year as their starting three. There is also Trevor van Riemsdyk, who was signed on July 1st and can play either side and will likely start on the left side due to the Penguins’ lack of options on that side.
It’s possible that Brunicke might be spending another year in the AHL, but if he forces the Penguins’ hand with good play throughout training camp, it’s possible he starts the season in the NHL. Even if Brunicke does start with the Penguins’ AHL affiliate, the defense core will have some inexperienced players, including recently signed Declan Carlile, who was brought over from Tampa Bay on July 1st and has just 46 games of NHL experience at age 26, with 42 of those games coming in the past year.
The Penguins’ goal is to rely on youth, as they did not re-sign goaltender Skinner, despite his popularity in the Penguins’ locker room. They have left the net to Arturs Silovs and 22-year-old rookie Sergei Murashov. Skinner wasn’t great in Pittsburgh, but he was likely a more solid short-term bet than Silovs, who had a very uneven series last year but shone in the playoffs.
That first-round performance was enough for Pittsburgh to give Silovs a one-year, $2.8MM extension, and he will presumably split duties with Murashov, who is the heir apparent to the Penguins’ starting netminder position. Folks in the Penguins’ organization are very high on Murashov and believe he has the potential to be a superstar in the NHL, something he’s done at every level thus far on his rise to the NHL.
Goaltenders are typically fragile as they enter the NHL and can be finicky if their development falls off track. No team is more aware of this than the Penguins, who have watched the development of previous budding star goaltenders go off the rails in the cases of Marc-Andre Fleury, Matt Murray, and Tristan Jarry.
While Pittsburgh isn’t banking on youth to support their forward group next season, it is clear they are relying on their unproven defensemen and goaltenders to take a big step. The Murashov/Silovs combo has the potential to be a steady stabilizing force for Pittsburgh, but they are also unproven and could be the worst tandem in the NHL. The same could be said for the Penguins defense core, which could be a steady, reliable group back there, or the worst defensive unit in the league.
No one knows how it will all shake out until the games are played, but much like last year, Kyle Dubas is betting on unproven talent to help the Penguins’ older vets carry the team into the playoffs.