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Penguins camp poised to have more intrigue than recent years |
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Today is the beginning of training camp for the Pittsburgh Penguins. On the surface it looks like a team heading into 2024-25 that will have similar results to the prior two years. A team who could slip into the playoffs as a lower seed or find themselves on the outside looking in for the third consecutive year.
The bottom six is pretty wide open with a lot of players on the same tier. It will be a matter of preference and who is playing well at any given time. While I don’t think the ceiling is particularly high for the bottom six I feel as though this is as much of an open competition as we’ve seen in years.
The most intriguing part of camp for me, and I imagine others, will be if Rutger McGroarty can hang with the NHL’ers and make the big roster coming out of camp. The motivation for the trade involving McGroarty and Brayden Yager was that McGroarty has a quicker perceived timeline to the NHL. McGroarty had a successful prospect tournament over the weekend. He needed to look better than his peers and I believe he did. He had points in all three games (Penguins were 3-0) and got under the skin of opponents. It was a nice appetizer to what will be a taller task, replicating the performance against men.
Adjacent to McGroarty is Tristan Broz who also had a really good tournament
Broz capped off the tournament with four points, largely connecting with Avery Hayes for his hat-trick. Broz was noticeable every time he hit the ice, making some excellent passes, winning loads of offensive zone faceoffs, and even getting a little physical at times. The 21-year-old is set for his first season of pro hockey, and I’m excited to see what he can do after being such an integral piece of the University of Denver’s national championship last year. Broz loves open space and can seemingly pick his shot from anywhere – although he’s better as a playmaker. This was my first time catching Broz in person and I was thoroughly impressed.
Broz is one of those players who can potentially help the Penguins do the quick retool on the fly instead of needing the full rebuild if he can continue to build off of this performance and make the leap. The Penguins definitely need something like this to happen. It appears Broz has a puncher’s chance to make it happen even if it isn’t this upcoming season.
Harrison Brunicke also turned some heads
Harrison Brunicke, RHD, Penguins: The Penguins’ roster had a little more juice than it has in years past thanks to the additions of Rutger McGroarty (who was top billing and answered the bell with points in all three games and a couple of posts, showing his knack for putting himself in good spots and a willingness to go get pucks and finish checks), Vasiliy Ponomarev (who stirred the drink and showed good puck protection for a smaller player), Ville Koivunen (who made plays off the rush and flashed comfort and handling with the puck on his stick in the offensive zone) and Sergei Murashov (who impressed in net), but it was 2024 second-rounder Harrison Brunicke who had people talking. The 18-year-old started the tournament on the Penguins’ third pairing but was their best D all week. He was involved all over the ice with his high-end skating ability and good length, impressing especially off the rush both ways. He transported pucks, joined the play and escaped pressure. He looked confident on the puck and atop the umbrella on PP2. He nearly finished several good looks. He had a third assist on a goal that he started but didn’t get credit for on the score sheet.
I thought he looked like a better pro prospect than first-rounder Owen Pickering. If he can build on this, look for him to play his way onto the 2026 Canadian world junior team — Hockey Canada head Scott Salmond was in the building this week. —Scott Wheeler
Great news to hear newly drafted Harrison Brunicke getting some positive attention right away. Slowly, but surely the Penguins are building up their prospect pool and eventually they will hit on some of these players.
Here’s the roster for camp and there’s also a newsworthy bit of information slipped into this tweet, Erik Karlsson is day to day. We are so early in camp I’m not going to give it much thought unless it starts to bleed into a 7-10 day thing. It is completely understandable to be cautious with Hall of Fame players in their 30’s because there’s nothing for them to prove at camp.
We’ll see how things go and who stands out at what should be one of the more interesting camps in recent memory.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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