Penguins Notebook: No. 1 Pick Sparkles; Growing Goalies

What’s the rush?

Although it remains to be seen how Joel Blomqvist’s lackluster performance in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s playoff series against Lehigh Valley will affect the Penguins’ goaltending plans for the coming season, a two-game snapshot hardly is cause to pass final judgment — positive or otherwise — on a prospect’s NHL readiness.

Still, the history of guys who have become the Penguins’ go-to goalie during the past couple of decades indicates that spending time in the American Hockey League before ascending to the parent club is not a bad thing.

Marc-Andre Fleury joined the Pittsburgh Penguins just a few months after they got him with the No. 1 pick in the 2003 draft, but eventually was sent back to his major-junior team in Cape Breton and appeared in 66 games with Wilkes-Barre over the following two seasons before returning to the NHL.

Fleury’s successor as the Penguins’ top goalie, Matt Murray, played 72 games over parts of three seasons in Wilkes-Barre prior to being summoned to the parent club.

And Tristan Jarry, the incumbent No. 1, spent the better part of four seasons in the AHL, appearing in 141 regular-season games with the Baby Penguins.

Blomqvist has, to this point, made it into 47 regular-season games — 45 of them in 2023-24 — and two during the playoffs with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

If, at 22, he would benefit from more time in the minors, it would border on managerial malpractice to put him in the NHL before he’s ready.

Gone too soon

There is no upside to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton departing the playoffs so quickly.

The franchise loses revenue it could have gotten from ticket sales for future games, for example, and Pittsburgh Penguins officials get an abbreviated look at how prospects perform in high-stakes games. Something that might be overlooked is how promising players who have spent most of the season elsewhere had little time to get acclimated to the systems the Penguins employ throughout the organization.

Two obvious examples are center Tristan Broz, who helped Denver University win an NCAA championship, and forward Ville Koivunen, who was acquired from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade and spent the season with Karpat in Finland’s SM-liiga.

Both look to have the potential to be valuable contributors for a lot of years, and being involved in the Calder Cup playoffs for more than a couple of games could only have enhanced their development.