Making it to the NHL, the top hockey league in the world, is the dream of everyone serious hockey player. Unfortunately for most junior hockey players, there’s only so many spaces available for a hockey player at any given time, and many players go their entire young adult lives missing out on the big time by varying degrees. (Technically, there are 736 such opportunities available across the NHL’s 32 teams, 23 spots per team.). As an example, Sidney Crosby was the first and one of 230 players selected in the 2005 Entry Draft. Of those 230 players, 111 played at least one game in the NHL, meaning the majority of those players taken in the draft never got the chance to play in the NHL. That group includes the 13th, 14th, and 16th overall picks. In fact, draftees never playing a single game in the NHL is the rule and not the exception, so it really is a remarkable feat when a player does make it to the NHL, drafted or not.

For the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight there will be two players taking their rookie skates at Madison Square Garden: 18-year-old Ben Kindel, the 11th overall pick from this past summer’s draft, as he will be centering the third line; and 19-year-old Harrison Brunicke, taken in the second round last summer, who will be on the third pairing with Caleb Jones. It’s been a long time since the Penguins had a teenager on their roster; Daniel Sprong made 18 appearances for Pittsburgh in the 2015-16 season, but his impact was pretty minimal as he only scored two goals in a very sheltered fourth-line role, the sort of treatment we came to expect from former Mike Sullivan when it came to prospects. Current (and new) head coach Dan Muse on the other hand seems to be giving the young guys the chance to prove themselves rather than assuming they won’t or giving preference to a veteran. (It doesn’t hurt that the Penguins have several players, including Bryan Rust and Kevin Hayes, on the injured list to start the season, freeing their spaces up for the rookies to have a chance.)

Pittsburgh will gradually be turning to its younger players on a regular basis over the coming years, as their aging veteran core eventually ages itself out of the lineup. Crosby is 38; Evgeni Malkin is 39; Kris Letang turns 39 in April; Erik Karlsson is 35-and-a-half. I don’t expect the likes of Kindel, Brunicke, Rutger McGroarty, or any of the other under-25 guys in the franchise to replace any of those guys, be it their productivity, their leadership, or whatever. It would be a nice surprise if they did, but right now the expectations for those guys is to find their place and be their best. If they can impress the team enough to justify their continued spot in the lineup (beyond the nine-game limit the NHL has set for rookies to not start the clock on their entry-level contracts), that is going above and beyond. It will take quite some doing for that to happen, because I don’t think the team is ready for those players to be regular, full-time NHLers yet at this point in the rebuild, so for now Ben Kindel and Harrison Brunicke should simply focus on doing their best and having fun.

On the other side of the benches will be some familiar faces, starting with the aforementioned Mike Sullivan who has taken his talents to Broadway to help a New York Rangers team rebound from their disappointing fifth-place finish in the Metropolitan Division last season. It was a down year across the board for the Blueshirts, but particularly for goaltender Igor Shesterkin, who was well off of his typical Vezina-caliber performance. It didn’t help that they weren’t very good defensively either; the Rangers were in the middle-of-the-pack in terms of goals allowed, but they allowed the sixth-most shots-on-goal, theirs was the fifth-worst expected goals against, and they were in the top ten of Corsi-against and Fenwick against as well. Adding Vladislav Gavrikov in the offseason should help stabilize the blueline, and Sullivan will definitely work on that as well.

The Rangers too will have a rookie making his first appearance in the NHL tonight, albeit at the age of 22: Noah Laba, New York’s fourth round pick in 2022. He will be Kindel’s counterpart centering the Rangers third line, which on its own will be interesting to see. Not quite as highly anticipated as when Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine first faced off against each other, but we’ll take what we can get!

LGP