Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins' prospect Harrison Brunicke could be in the AHL THIS YEAR!

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

A potential agreement between the NHL and the junior leagues this coming season could be a big break for one of the Penguins' top prospects! Patrick and Hunter take today's episode to talk about a lot of CBA changes that are being implemented this season. They begin the show discussing a reported deal between the NHL and the junior leagues that is in the works, which would allow teams to loan one 19-year-old to the American Hockey League. For the Penguins, this could mean getting Harrison Brunicke out of juniors and into the professional game full-time, but would that be the correct move for him and his development? Then, the dive into another aspect of the CBA that will go into place this year regarding salary retention. How will this new rule affect the Penguins' potential trading defenseman Erik Karlsson? Finally, in 2026-27, the NHL season will begin in late September and end by mid-June. They discuss why this is a good idea and what it means for the growth of the sport. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNHL at monarchmoney.com/lockedonnhl for 50% off your first year.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If there is one thing that hockey fans absolutely love talking about in September, it's the collective bargaining agreement. We're going to talk about that and how it affects the Pittsburgh Penguins in this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Your Locked-on Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome in to another edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Patrick Damp.

You can follow me across all social media platforms at Synonym 4Wet, joined as always by the one and only Hunter Hodes. You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can give our show's Twitter account a follow at L.O. underscore Penguins. You can also find us on Instagram at Locked on underscore Penguins. And of course, we appreciate you making us part of your daily routine. Don't forget we're free and available, wherever you get your podcast. as well as YouTube.

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if your first $5 bet wins. Hunter, we got a lot of news over the last 24 hours or so. about the upcoming season. All of it is regarding the collective bargaining agreement. As we know, the NHL and the NHLPA earlier this summer agreed to ACBA that will go into full effect next season, not this upcoming season. So 26, 27, this will be fully in place. However, some of it is actually going to go into effect.

this coming season, the 25, 26 season. And while a large portion of it will likely not affect anything that the Pittsburgh Penguins are doing right now at this moment, there are two big parts of it. One is still being hammered out. The other is officially in place as we head toward the 25, 26th season. But let's start with the part that is still being hammered out. Right now, they are working towards an agreement. with the CHL, the Canadian Hockey League, the major junior leagues up in Canada, a couple

teams in the United States as well, on allowing certain players at 19 to play in the American hockey league. You can see everybody's ears perking up right now in Pittsburgh because one name is coming to mind. Harrison Brunick, will he play in the A.A.S. if he has a good camp. Before I hand it off to you, I want to both say this to our listeners, Hunter, battling a little bit of an illness today, so stick with them.

But the other thing I want to say is this. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I don't want to say that Brunich is bad. I don't want to say that he's not ready or anything like that. Time will tell. But we are in the midst of a rebuild and a retooling right now. And one of the worst things you can do in that moment is to rush young players, especially because we know the penguins are not anywhere near Stanley Cup contention right now.

So needing those immediate reinforcements, needing to get those guys ahead of schedule is not on their checklist. Now, if Brunick shows up like he did last year at training camp in the preseason and really impresses, then it's probably time to have the conversation about should Harrison Brunick return to junior, should he go to the HL, or should he be on the main roster? I agree with that. However, we still have to see if this agreement is in place by the start of the season. Puckpedia was the first one to report this on Tuesday saying that the NHL, the PA, and the CHL are still trying to hammer this out.

Peter LeBrun added today at one of the GMs and coaches meetings. week that the USHL and the CHL made some presentations to the GMs and the coaches. And it's safe to say that the CHL is a bit spooked, a bit concerned regarding this new role. It's right now it's expected to take effect next year. But the NHL is trying to get it worked out for this year. And here's what I will say on this. I get the CHL is a little bit scared.

You got players going to the NCAA. If this goes past one player per NCA, NHL team that is 19 years old will be able to play in the AHL. They won't just have to go back to junior rather than playing in the NHL team. They can continue their development in the AHL, which, especially in the case of Harrison Brunich, that is the best case for him right now. He's not going to learn anything going back to the Cam Woot's Blazers. Could they trade him during the season?

Oh, absolutely. I think the Blazers could get a pretty good haul for him. But at least for most of this upcoming season, he's not going to learn anything there. And I kind of get a little concerned because I don't want him to develop some bad habits playing another year on that really bad team. I'm really hoping that the CHL can kind of stop being babies about this and come to an agreement with the NHL before the start of the season. I will also say this. It is ridiculous that the NHL took this long to start negotiating with the CHL. You know when this should have started, Pat? Maybe after the season in June. Why are you doing

this right now in September? Camp was about to start in a couple weeks. Why are you all of a sudden starting this right now? Sure, better late than never. But you should have been doing this in June, maybe July. Hell, even before that. That's what I want to say about that. But I would obviously love it if Brunick got to play in the HL this year. But we just have to see if all sides can come to an agreement. Otherwise, it's probably back to junior for him unless he gets the nine game trial.

But if this does get in place, you can put Brunick in the HAL this year. And the next year, Pat, you can put Ben Kindle in the HL. Which would be huge. And I agree with that point that it took them way too long. to get to this point for this agreement, a proposal even. I shouldn't even say agreement because they're still hammering it out. But you brought up a good point about it that I kind of missed out on.

It's not all 19-year-olds. It's not like every team that has a 19-year-old draft pick and prospect that they are excited about can suddenly get pulled away from the CHL or the USHL in play in the AHL. It's one. Every team would get one. And in reality, for most teams and most prospect pools, there usually is one player who you look at their development and you look at their skill set and you think, just like what you were saying with Brune, they're not going to learn anything more from being in the CHL or the USHL. They've done enough there that realistically, it could be a deterrent. on their development because we've kind of talked about this with Brunich last season when he got his

audition at the AHL level after his junior season ended. You could see early in his game, he had some bad habits to work out of because he was a massive fish in a small pond in juniors. And whether it's intentional or not, when you're that kind of player at that level and you're so much better than your competition and your cohorts, you're going to cut some corners. You're going to do some things that at the next level, it's not going to work for you there. It's not going to work for you in the American hockey league. It's not going to work for you in the NHL. And if you give them another year, now granted, most teams and development staffs will tell them,

hey, you need to knock this off. You need to start playing this way to make it to the next level. but it's just human nature. If you know that you can pick the puck up behind your own net, go coast to coast and walk through five guys, you're probably going to do it. But then you get to the American League and those guys are a little bit bigger. They're a little bit faster.

They're better. And you don't want to hamper development by keeping them down in the junior level for that long. Right. I agree with you on that, which is why I'm hopeful that they can somehow come to an agreement. But after Pierre LeBron's update today, it's going to take some convincing for the CHL just because they're a bit spooked, a bit scared. They're kind of crying about it a little bit.

But hey, maybe something changes over the next month or so here. I just don't like that they can kind of hold players hostage like this, where it's kind of screwing their development over a little bit. This player is 19 years old, especially in the case of Harrison Brunich. He is at least ready for AHL minutes. And, you know, Wooksbury head coach, Kirk MacDonald was talking about this during development camp last month when, you know, my co-worker Kelsey Sermak was there. She asked about Brunich. And he even said, like, yeah, he had a couple welked one of the pros moments. But he adjusted very quickly. And he could tell how talented Brunich was. Even though it was a very small sample, you should see his face. He was like, oh, yeah, like the way that he was playing after a couple of rough moments, he could very much see the skill was evident there. So I'd love. to see him get a full season with him if he doesn't make the team out of camp. But TBD, do you want to talk about the playoff salary cap now and why we might not get as many trades at the deadline?

Yeah, we will do that when we get back. Let's put a button on this final segment. So we'll see what happens with this. We'd like to see it happen. We hope they get this figured out because it really is probably best for business when it comes to these young players as well as the big clubs. So we'll keep an eye on that and bring you any updates. that might come from it.

But that'll do it for this opening segment. Like Hunter said, when we get back, we got to talk about some salary cap changes that will be in effect once this season gets going. We'll get into that right after this. Before we do that, though, we've got to tell you about today's first sponsor, and that is Monarch Money. Most people can't even name all of their financial accounts or what they're even worth, whether it's 401ks, properties, investments and everything in between. And that when you don't have the full picture, you can end up leaving money on the table.

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So don't let your financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code locked on NHL at Monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at Monarchmoney.com with the code Locked on NHL. We're back here on the Wednesday edition of Locked on Penguins. I'm Patrick Damp right alongside Hunter. Hodes and we'll touch on this one really quickly to start and then we'll get into one that might be a little bit more confusing for Penguins fans. This first one, we probably don't have to worry about this too much in Pittsburgh this

season. The playoff salary cap goes into effect this year. Essentially, put it simply, the 20 players who will be on the active roster the night of the game, it has to be cap compliant. So like Hunter said, that is probably going to affect a lot of deadline deals this year because there's not going to be the LTIR loopholes. There's not going to be ways to circumvent the salary cap. The 20 players who will be on your active roster the night of the game have to be at or under the salary cap come the post season. Overall, I'm lukewarm on.

this. I think most teams at this point in the best general managers, they know how to work this thing inside out. They know where they can find the spare change under the cushions. They know how they can work the numbers to make it work out. On the other hand, I've just never been a fan of a hard salary cap. I think it limits a lot of things. I think the NHL's hard salary cap did its job when it first came onto the scene by getting a lot more teams financially viable in helping some teams along

rather than putting some teams at disadvantages. But at this point, I've made my feelings felt on the salary cap. I think at this point, it's time for a luxury tax. It's time to make it so when teams are ready to go, they can take a big swing. But this one,

it's whatever to me. This is going to be the initial trade deadline next year. Homer just, you know, sleeping in his bed from the Simpsons. That literally is going to be the trade deadline next year. You'll get some deals. I don't know if you're going to get a lot of blockbusters, Pat, because the double retention is also going away. That is not going to be a thing.

So how that affects the penguins, like they can still trade, you know, for example, Eric Carlson, they can retain on his contract, but you can't send the contract to another team to have them also retain it. Like, that's just not going to be a thing anymore. the Penguins are going to be the only team that's allowed to retain in that situation. As for a playoff cap, I get why a lot of teams, you know, GMs, I get why a lot of fans like it. For me, it's kind of whatever. Like, I want to see more chaotic deadline deals.

I get that that's going to be going away now and maybe some GMs are happy about that. Not really me. Like, I kind of want it to be a bit spicy. You know, it doesn't have to be at the NBA's level where you see their trade deadline, and go crazy every year. But I still want the natural trade deadline to be fun. And I feel like this is kind of, this is going to kind of knit that in the bud. Yeah.

I get why they're doing it, but did you really have to do it? Yeah. Like that's that's kind of where I sit on it because I understand that in the last five years, there have been, even the last 10, really, a couple of champions who have circumvented the salary cap and worked with worked within the boundaries of the LTIR rules to kind of give themselves an advantage. But at the end of the day, that's sports, man. Like you find every advantage you can find. And I say this all the time, whether it's about hockey, football, any sport, professional sport, at least. The best coaches and managers walk right up to the line and tell you, I didn't

cross it. So it's not like these, unless we find out that they were faking injuries or lying about things, which if you know how injuries and health related matters are dealt with in pro sports, you have to really, really do some dark things to get around what is in place. Like you can't lie about injuries or your organization is going to be in a lot of trouble. Yeah, did they probably say, oh, you know, he could probably come back in five weeks, but we're going to be safe and push it to seven or eight, which at the end of the day, an injury is an injury.

You can reagravate it at any time, but I digress. Let's get into the other part of it that you quickly touched on, and that is the double retention rule. So I saw a lot of confusion among Penguins fans for this because we know what we have been talking about all summer, and that is potentially trading defenseman Eric Carlson. A lot of people saw the double retention news and got a little spooked because they thought, wait, are they going to be able to trade Eric Carlson? Because San Jose is still retaining salary on his contract.

So does that mean the penguins now can't? They worded this very ambiguously, but I want to say the answer is yes. the penguins can still retain salary on an Eric Carlson deal. The double retention rule means you can't bring in a third party. So essentially, the penguins can't trade him to say, let's go with Chicago, just a team off the top of the dome, a team that's not trying to win,

a team that has salary cap space, and then Chicago can say, all right, we'll flip him to a contender and will retain a million. that can't be done anymore. So whatever happens with an Eric Carlson trade, the penguins can retain up to 50% of what they currently are paying him, which would get it down to about $5.5 million. But whoever they trade him to,

if they then want to trade him, they can't retain anymore. Right. So the double retention, it's going away. I still believe you're going to see teams get pretty creative at the trade deadline. You just obviously can't have that. double retention situation. They'll be creative when it comes to making moves again.

I just don't think it's going to be, you know, the big block. The big blockbusters. Excuse me. So, you know, that also goes, you know, for, you know, Rust, Raquel, they decided to trade one of those two or both of them at some point as well. So that does affect the penguins in that way, but it's also, it's a league-wide thing. Now, yeah. And again, to the point I was making earlier about all the saps,

calorie cap stuff. This is one, I know these are going to be in kind of conflict with one another when I say this because I know that one, NHL general managers are the most risk-averse humans on the planet by and large. They, between the NHL's point system, which makes them look competitive and gives you the appearance of parity, they're always going to fall back on, oh, you know, We were only a few points out. We're doing okay. You know, don't fire me because I didn't do everything I could. But on the other hand, the amount of AGMs, accountants, lawyers, everybody else in between,

they know the ins and outs of this. They pour over this. They have people dedicated to the salary cap, to the CBA. So they're going to find every loophole. They're going to find every backdoor way they can to make sense. some of this work out because as I was talking about, it's a triple hard cap salary cap league. So at this point, they have to be able to do that because their hands are so tied by you can't go over this number. You can't spend more than this. You can't do X, Y, Z. So a lot of this,

and I'm sorry to our audience because you're probably snoring away at this point because we're talking business with the NHL. But I do think like you said, they're going to find ways around this. They're going to find ways to make this work. And realistically, it's probably going to be kind of what we've seen just with more steps. Rather than these big three team trades, we're going to see Team A and Team B make a trade. a few days, a few weeks, whatever pass, they trade them again, and that's going to be their way around it.

So they'll probably find a way to get angry at GMs for that. But that to me is my prediction of how that's going to work. There are probably people smarter than me listening to this. They're going to say, actually, no, you're not going to be allowed to do that. Feel free to let me know in the comments and on social media because not a lawyer, not an accountant, not an NHLGM.

I don't know all the ins and outs of this, but that is my interpretation of it. We are going to end the segment here, though, and when we come back, we got one more thing to touch on for the CBA rolling agreement that will go into effect this season. Hallelujah, we're getting an earlier start to the season.

We will talk about that and a few other thoughts about the CBA when we come back right after this. But before we do that, we got to tell you about today's final sponsor, and that is Fandul. The NFL season is just one day away when the birds and the Cowboys kick off the NFL season on Thursday night. And Fandul is making sure you're ready for kickoff with a can't miss offer. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if that bet wins, they can get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Fandul, it makes every game more exciting whether you're watching your hometown team or just keeping an eye on your fantasy lineup.

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As reported by Pierre Lebrun, the NHL has begun putting together its regular season schedule four. Unfortunately, we got to wait until the 26-27 season for this. This season will begin in late September, and the Stanley Cup will be awarded in mid-June. And the preseason will officially be shortened. And the regular season will be 84 games. I will say this. Initially, I was a little annoyed at 84 games just because 82 is already so much hockey.

But they are doing this the right way. Rather than continuing to have these absurdly long pre-seasons where some teams are playing upwards of seven or eight games, they're taking some preseason games away in adding meaningful games. If that's the way they want to structure it, I'm totally cool with adding regular season games so long as you're taking away preseason. because we know even the teams that are not Stanley Cup contenders are rebuilding and do want to take extra looks at young guys, you don't need seven or more games in the preseason to do that. If you don't know if somebody's going to make your roster or even make your professional organization before sending them back to juniors by the fifth or sixth game,

you might want to reevaluate your coaching and management staff rather than, your roster. Well, that, Pat, and also, like, even during the NFL preseason this past year, we got to the third game, I'm like, all right, I'm done. I could watch maybe one preseason game, two, if that, I don't even want three anymore. Let's just shorten it down to two. I'm just so over the preseason in general. So that is a good change. But they are making this change for the regular season, 84 games, so that you can get the other divisional teams four times. You mostly play right now your divisional teams four times outside of a couple where it's three meetings. Well, I think with this, that's going away and you're going to be playing all your

divisional teams four times. For me, though, is that really enough to extend the schedule? My opinion, no. The season's already long enough anyway. The good part about this, though, is that it will be starting in late September. That is very good. I don't care that the NFL and college football are in full swing. You can start it in late September, and you could award the Stanley Cup earlier. Hell, before this year, we were, looking at Stanley Cup almost being awarded in July. Like, I don't need that, man. I don't need this going into late June.

This year, we were into the second half of June. For all the upcoming seasons, I wanted to be in the first half of June. Hell, let's do the first week of June. I've seen some people saying Memorial Day weekend. I'd be fine with that too. Honestly, gives more time for, you know, maybe more moves to happen, more teams to scout before the initial draft and all that. Because this past year, the cup was awarded, and it was right to the draft,

right to free agency. It was a little too quick, in my opinion. So I'm glad they're bumping this up. I'm glad they're bumping this down in the Stanley Cup final up. But how about we keep bumping it up even more in future seasons? The other thing I will add about that is even 10 years ago, I get it. I get it to an extent. The NFL is king.

You are never knocking the NFL off its perch. Hell, they are so far. ahead of every league in North America and it's not particularly close. Just look at what's happening this week. They are going to have a game on YouTube, on Friday. That's it. They're going to a free platform that everybody has access to if you've got the internet because they know they can get away with it.

But on the other side of that, it's not 10, 15 years ago where everybody has, or mostly everybody has linear cable. and you don't have a bunch of different devices. You don't have a bunch of different streaming services. Rest and peace, stream east, by the way. That is going today. Yes, rest and peace, stream east. We would, but we would never do something like that.

I would never, ever, ever. Watch games. No, no, no, we never do that. But anyway, uh, the point being is when you were competing on linear cable for ratings in advertising revenue, going up against the NFL was a legitimate challenge, because you were never going to beat them. The only time the NHL ever did something like that was when they still had novelty,

when they had the guts to put the Winter Classic on January 1st and go up against college football. But even that was pre-college football playoff. And it was also a novelty where people went, I've seen this bowl game for decades already. I want to see what this outdoor hockey game is all about. Now you've got a bunch of, different streaming services. I'm sitting here recording this show right now. I've got two screens in

front of me. I go into my living room. I've got a laptop. I've got an iPad. I've got a TV. You're able to compete with the quote unquote compete with these other sports because everybody is using multiple screens. So yes, you want to make sure your marquee moments have their own days. the Stanley Cup final, the NHL draft, your winter classics, your big matchups. But in all reality now, you have so many different options to tune in. And so many people have multiple screens, whether it's phones, laptops, tablets, TVs, gaming consoles, you name it. You're going to be able to say, hey, yeah, you can watch the Steelers, whoever game on Sunday. But as it's wrapping up, pull out your laptop, pull up ESP,

PM Plus and you can watch the Penguins game while you've got the Steelers game on your TV. And again, you don't have to beat them every single time. But when your big marquee events are happening, that's when you want to do, you don't want to counter program. But the rest of the season, go for it. Start early. Yeah, it's going to suck going against college football in the NFL. But you know you can make this work because there's so many platforms now.

I think you just have to pick your battles. That's really it. Like you don't want to go up against any of the. college football games. I think you also go up against NFL playoff games. Sunday night football, for example, you're just going to get clobbered at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We have to pick their battles right. They have to strategize how they want to do it. And we know that at this point, yeah, the Stanley Cup final and the NBA final are going to go head to head. But those two leagues actually do a pretty good job against each other by saying, all right, if game one NBA finals is Monday night, Stanley Cup final, game one is Tuesday.

game two is Tuesday night. Game two is Wednesday night. They're good at alternating. So I like this earlier start. I like the less preseason games. And you know what? For once in your existence, NHL, let's take some risks. Let's try and let's evolve.

But that is going to do it for our Wednesday edition of the Locked on Penguins podcast. Remember, this is our last week of three a days. So we will be off tomorrow. And we will be back with a new episode. for you on Friday. We're going to pull out some fan take Fridays for you and any news that happens between now and then. But for now, for Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you as always for tuning in. We'll be back on Friday.