Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Should the Penguins give Harrison Brunicke a 9-game trial?

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

The Pittsburgh Penguins' 18-year-old defensive prospect Harrison Brunicke continues to impress and that has Hunter and Patrick wondering if he's ready for primetime. The two discuss what has been a breakout camp and preseason for the young defenseman and if the Penguins should consider giving him a nine-game trial or even a spot for the whole year. The two go back and forth on the topic before moving on to the power play and how there continues to be a lot more movement, emphasis on net-front play, and less static play. They discuss how the process continues to be there but it has to translate over to the regular season. Finally, the injury bug is back...as if it went anywhere. The Penguins have a swath of injuries, including to Alex Nedeljkovic, which will put more pressure on Tristan Jarry to start the year. They also dive into an update on Erik Karlsson's status before ending the show.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelPlace your first FIVE DOLLAR bet and you’ll get started with TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS - guaranteed ! Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. 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.

It's Harrison Brunick's world, and we're just living in it. You're Locked-on Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes. You can follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, joined by my host Patrick Damp. You can follow him on Twitter at Centenferwet, and you can follow the show's Twitter at L-O-Rodys. underscore penguins, of course. Thank you all so much for making this your first lesson slash watch of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. And finally, today's episode is brought to you by

Fandul. Place your first $5 bet and you'll get started with $200 in bonus bets. Guaranteed, visit fandul.com to get started. So the Penguins dropped Tuesday night's preseason game against the HL's version of the Red Wings by a score of two to one. The Red Wings get a late goal in the third period with 249 to go. And the Penguins were eight. able to capitalize on a very late power play to tie the game and send it to preseason three and three overtime. And honestly, I'm kind of glad they didn't because I really did not want to watch preseason three on three overtime.

That's just not fun overall. But I did like a lot of what the Penguins did in this game. They very much outplayed the Red Wings overall. Dili Huso, shout to him for the Red Wings in Nett. He was great against the Penguins, mostly varsely lineup. There were some players who aren't going to be on the team this year that were in the lineup. but I would still say this was mostly their varsity lineup. And again, shout out to Billy Huso.

He was great. But everyone knows where we want to start today's episode. And that is with Penguins defensive prospect, Harrison Brunick, and how he very well may have earned a nine-game trial after his performance against the Red Wings on Tuesday night. Now, I understand he was mostly going up against HL players. But to me, I don't care. He did not look out of place at all. And he continues to get some really good reps also.

with Marcus Pedersen. When I was watching Brunuch last night, this skating jumps out to you right away. I mean, I was saying that over the summer when I was scouting him for NHL draft purposes, but his skating, it looks like he's been in the league for five years. He plays like a seasoned vet, even though he's never played an NHL game in his life. The decision-making for him, I also think is very on point every time. I felt like when he was on his former team before, you know,

coming to camp with the Penguins, his decision-making would kind of be all over the place. he also didn't play on that good of a team. But now with, I guess, obviously better talent around him, he's making the right decision every time. I think he's so far advanced than anyone ever thought he would be at this point. I mean, there was that beautiful play on the Raquel goal. He takes the puck up top, skates it down low,

is able to set up that Raquel chance a little bit. And again, that is stuff you don't teach. He is doing stuff at 18 that most 18-year-old defensemen don't do at this point. And I think overall, after last night, and I've been very skeptical about this, I think I am on the train right now where I think you give him a nine game trial to see what he can do. I'm not at the point where you just burn a year of his ELC. I just don't want to waste that considering what this type of year could be for the penguins overall. But I think right now, especially with the Air Carlson situation, it's still a bit cloudy, at least with a week to go until the season starts. I am on board, if they want to, to give him a nine-game trial and see what he can do.

I can't even believe I'm saying that with a week to go until the season, but he continues to impress me game after game, shift after shift, and it's been fantastic to watch. This is going to be very non-committal from me, and it's not because I want to get cold take exposed or anything like that. I'm genuinely struggling with that. this. So I can't imagine what it's like for the likes of Mike Sullivan and Kyle Dubus when it comes to Brunich because everything we've seen from him so far in this preseason has been fantastic.

He has looked like he belongs at least mostly in the National Hockey League. For being an 18-year-old defenseman, that is a very, very, very difficult bar to clear. because like Sullivan said, defensemen is maybe the most difficult position outside of goaltender in hockey because there is so little margin for error when you play defense because one wrong move one way, you give up a breakaway, one missed assignment, the other you give a goal, you give up a goal. So it is a very high stakes, high pressure position when you play at the highest level. So it's really encouraging to see the way he plays.

But I also have the worry of him being, and this isn't even getting into what you were hinting at with entry-level contracts, the salary cap and everything else. I really worry what this would do for his development, because they're very clearly is a really good defenseman in Harrison Brunick. He is, if he continues to develop the way he seems to be developing now, this is a guy who could be on the Penguins for the long haul. What I worry about is the fact that he's 18

and the fact that he has not played the grind of an NHL schedule. And you don't want him to hit a rookie wall in December or January, and you're in the midst of a fierce playoff battle, which you're going to be in the Eastern Conference with how good the Metropolitan Division is and how good the Atlantic division is. It's going to be really difficult to get into the postseason this year. So you really have to consider that if you get to games 45, 50, 55,

and the way he's playing, he's not going to be a seventh defenseman who plays every few nights. If they keep him here, he's pretty much going to have to play every single night, with a few exceptions. You may give him a rest night here and there and let somebody else step in. But if he hits that rookie wall, not only does it hurt his development,

it hurts this team's goal of getting back to the Stanley Cup playoffs. And that is a very rough place to be in. At the same time, you look at the way he's been playing. And I had this discussion with you and our friend Andrew last night. Yeah, it's preseason. Yeah, it's hard to glean a lot of things. But when you're just looking at individual performances

in the process in which they're played, there is a lot to like about this kid. The way he stepped into the play on that goal, that's a veteran move. A lot of 18-year-olds would be hesitant to make that play. He is very, very advanced when it comes to reading pressures in the defensive zone. He's able to reverse the puck.

He's able to get away from pressure. He's able to make a great first pass. He's willing to shoot from the point, which be still my heart. We have been waiting for, a defenseman ready to do that. So this is really difficult for me. I think, end of the day,

it hinges a lot, like I said yesterday, on what happens with Eric Carlson. If he's not healthy and ready to go come opening night, you know what? Give him nine games, let Carlson heal up. And after nine games, give him a pat on the head and say, kid, you're a whole heck of a lot closer than we thought you were. Go dominate and juniors next year, you're going to be on this team.

Right. And I do think if they give him the nine game trial, I think no matter what, they're probably going to send him back to his junior team after just because, again, you don't want to just burn that first year of the ELC for the sake of doing it. And also, part of me doesn't think that they would scratch Jack St. Ivany for a full year either, right? I just don't think the organization is going to do that for a full season. I think maybe to start the season, if Brunick does get this trial and you want to scratch St. Ivony for a few games, yeah, totally fine with that, even though I like St. Ivony quite a bit on the bottom pairing. but if you want to get a look at Brunick during a trial, you're going to have to put St. Ivanie up,

and you're going to have to also put Brunick with someone who, I think he can play well with. I mean, Ryan Graves on the bottom pairing, they were experimenting with that a little bit today during practice. I got to say, I'm a bit nervous about that because I don't want an 18-year-old kid kind of just babysitting a veteran who's been in the league for a while. And considering how bad Graves was last year,

I just don't know how good of a pairing that would be in an initial game, especially next week against the Rangers when they come down for the first game of the regular season. Again, I just continue to be wowed by him overall on nightly basis. I mean, there was another play last night. He jumped into the player for another chance, almost scored a goal before right after that. He shrugged a defender right off him along the boards like he was nothing. I mean, he really is a treat to watch.

The underlying numbers for him last night were also just fantastic. He played almost 15 minutes of five-on-five ice time. When he was on the ice, the penguins had 70% of the shot attempts, 83% of the expected goals, 81% of the scoring chances, and finally, all five high danger chances. That was a clinic from Brunich along with Pedersen right next to him. Yeah, and maybe I'm being a little too cautious.

Maybe he is the real deal. No, you're fine. I've been skeptical right there with you, but I think last night might have convinced me again that if they want to do this, if they want to give him a nine-gang trial, I would be totally okay with it. And I think end of the day, I'm with you, I'm perfectly fine with a nine game tryout,

but I would be very, very hesitant to give him an ELC and keep him in the NHL just because I don't want to see his development stall. I don't want, and what I'm about to say is an extremely, extremely loose comparison. So don't let your hair on fire over this one. I don't want him to go the way of Olimata. I think Olimata had a stupendous rookie season. He played a whole heck of a lot better than anybody could have ever expected him to play. He forced their hand and made himself a part of the team.

And he eventually became what he was supposed to become, a middle-paring to-bottom-pairing defenseman. And because he had such an unexpectedly good rookie year, the expectations for him were way out of whack. And I don't want to see him end up in that same category where he's catching flack for not being this top-paring elite defenseman when in reality you watch the game that Brunick plays. He is pretty much a two-way defender.

And he is just going to make simple, smart decisions with the puck, simple smart decisions in the defensive zone. And he's not going to wow you. He's not going to become, you know, Kail McCarr, he's not going to become Eric Carlson, but if he has such a rocket tied to his back in his rookie year, there are going to be inflated expectations that he's never going to meet. So end of the day, if he gets the nine game trial, especially with Carlson, maybe going to be on the shelf here for a little bit, I would love to see what he does.

And then next season, I want to talk about him having a spot on this roster when we break camp. Yeah, and that would be full, full time. Because again, at this point, I'm with you. I don't think he's going to be on the team for full season and have them burn a year of his ELC for the sake of it. I do think, again, if he gets that nine-game trial, I think that's probably going to be it before he goes back to junior. And then we can see at that point also, Pat,

how he dominates with his junior team as well. One of my buddies, Doug, was texting me about Bruneick during the game last night. And his comp was kind of like Marino blended with Paul Martin at his peak. And honestly, I can see it. Like, you can see semblances of both. of their games in Roonick. And again, it really has been such a fun treat to watch him play throughout the preseason. And honestly, I expect him to get one of these last two preseason games later on this week.

But I think that will do it for this first segment. Coming up in the second segment, we're going to get to some of our other thoughts and analysis based on this game against the Red Wings, including how the power play, even though the unit didn't score, I think we're continuing, at least in my opinion, to see a little bit more progress overall with that unit. But before we get to that, we have to tell you all about our first sponsor, and that is Fandall. Hey, NFL fans, you can start the season with a big return on Fandall, America's number

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So individual player performances outside of Brunick, I thought Sidney Crosby was obviously great once again, but, you know, that's a ho-home statement, I think, at this point. I thought of Guinea Malkin, when he didn't take that hilarious penalty like he does during the regular season, I also thought he had a very good game. Marcus Pedersen, I thought he was pretty sound as well. And I'll say, Owen Pickering, too. There was a play, especially in the second period where he was trying to prevent a rush chance, and his long leash prevented that puck from going to the center for a nice pass overall

versus winning chance. Again, I thought overall Pickering had a pretty good game again. Don't think he's going to be ready for the NHL this year, but I do think he'll be an option in Wilkesbury unless some more injuries come up throughout the year for the Penguins. But for this segment, I really want to discuss the power play once again. I very much know that the power play did not score last night. I understand, but that said, I continue to see signs that this unit could look a bit different once the regular season starts.

And granted, people, if they revert back to how they played last year on the power play, Pat and I will criticize accordingly. We're only going off what they're showing us right now. We want to see it continue the regular season because we think this could lead to more powerplay goals. But if they fall back into old habits, we will be objective and we will criticize the unit like we always have overall. Now, overall, with this power play, I continue to.

to like more movement. Everyone is moving around. You're seeing a beginning Malkin move to all areas of of the ice, including the goal line. I really like that overall with him. I just, especially now as he's gotten older, I don't like him just sitting up at the point. I think they're prone to too many shorthanded chances. We all know how Gino is, again, not good defensively overall. You've got to be moving him around a little bit. I like that they're doing that. There's also, again, more of a shoot-first mentality. They were firing quite a few more pucks to the net last night. They also seemed at least right now to get rid of the drop pass that I have hated for a long time. Now, granted, they did go back to the drop pass during the regular season last year.

I hope they don't this time, but it's not been there for most of the preseason, which is important. But you also have, again, more net front play. There's not a lot of staticness on the power play. I'm continuing to see good things for this unit. I think the main thing was last night, Puck just didn't go in the back of the net. that Dili Husa made some incredible saves for the Red Wings. But other than that, I felt the process was very much there. That's really the story of last night's game overall.

I mean, you have to. And yes, here we are again, Penguins fans. We're going to say the dreaded phrase that everybody's tired of hearing in Penguins land, they got goalied. But it was a tremendous performance from Villahuso. He was under siege all night long. and he bent, but he sure is held it and break. And you have to tip your cap to that.

But to your point, I loved what I saw from the power play last night. And I know I've been saying it on the show to where I'm using the word urgency. I'm going to change that now to something different. They don't have urgency on the power play. They do, but I feel there's a better way to describe it. And that's an attack mentality. They are attacking. You look at a lot of everything that they,

did last night, and it was with the mind of we are going to attack the net, whether it was guys getting into shooting positions, they're not being a hesitancy to shoot the puck, or when there was a shot, there was anywhere between two to three guys in front of the net at the end of the play. And if whoso were to give out a rebound, there was going to be a penguin there to snatch up that rebound. And maybe it's not your traditional, what you're used to seeing, guy who plants himself in front, plays the screen, plays game record to pull a defender away, as soon as there's somebody even so much as close to a shooting position, this is what I noticed. There's one to two, maybe three guys going to the net, and they're waiting for a rebound.

They're waiting for a tip. They're at the very least going to force the goalie to cover the puck and give them an offensive zone face off. So this attack mentality, if it carries into the regular season, is really encouraging. I also, like you said, I love the fact that they are rotating everybody around the ice. You watch one of their later power plays in the game.

There was a moment where I think if Gennie Malkin started on one wing behind the net, circled all the way around, was on the opposite wing, went back around. And yeah, you don't want him roaming, so to speak, but they're filling in lanes. It's not just movement for movement's sake. it's okay, Gino sees this guy going low, so he's going to rotate up high. When that guy starts rotating up high, he's going to rotate back around and get low. When the guy at the point has the puck, they're going to rotate to the net.

And this ability to want to shoot and to want to attack and to want to put the penalty kill under duress for the majority of the time they have possession, that's going to lead to goals because you're going to find those mismatches. You're going to get the goalie going left to right when you shoot it. And assuming they continue this buy-in and keep this going, I think we're in for an improved power play this year. And if they can bank some early points, especially with the power play, we might be getting ready for playoffs come late March, early April. Well, let's just see how it starts out in the regular season first before we say that. But I definitely get what you're saying overall. But like I was saying to you and Andrew last night, yes, I understand it's preseason.

Yes, I understand I'm putting the card a little bit ahead of the horse. but I'm applying what we always say about preseason. I'm watching the process. I'm watching the performance. I'm not worried about the outcomes just yet. Watching this process of the power play is extremely encouraging. Right. And I just want that process to carry over to the regular season

and not have them revert back to old or just flat out bad habits like they did last year. Because in the preseason last year, I remember this as well. They kind of got rid of the drop pass for a little bit, but then they brought it back to the regular season. And now they've gotten rid of it again. And hopefully it's gone forever now because Tar Reardon is not the power play coach anymore and David Quinn is overall. So I like that. And then with just, you know, the movement, the emphasis on the net front play, I want all of that to carry over to the regular season as well.

I want to see how this unit looks the first couple of weeks before we can be like, okay, now this is fully back. But again, to your point, what we're seeing is at least encouraging. And if that can continue to take the results. about the drop pass thing because it does look like it's gone. But I will add this caveat. If they do it during the regular season, you can see that there has been a shift in their breakout to the way they're attacking the blue line,

the way they're attacking into the offensive zone. If they're going to do it, the thing that it looks like they'll be able to actually do this year is attack the opposing blue line with numbers. When they did it last year, they would have two or three guys all the way up high, and then they would have the fourth guy coming in, drop pass, fifth guy comes,

and everybody's just kind of standing there. There's a lot of puck support happening on this breakout now. So if they're doing this, the chances are there will be puck support there for them to have options going into the zone. Last year, the drop pass just put whoever was the person receiving the pass on an island going into the offensive zone to where they either had to skate into a one-on-three and lose possession

or do a half of a dump-in that just completely killed any momentum. If they're going to do this this year and they have the puck support in numbers, I'm fine with it. But if it reverts back to what they did last year where you're putting the puck possessor on an island, throw that in the garbage, set it on fire, and then launch it into space. Right. And we never want to see that again.

But I just go back to your overall point about, you know, the players crashing the net. That's exactly what happened, you know, in the play that Malkin hit the crossbar, for example. Then Rakel hit iron yet again. You had two or three guys coming down right near the net mouth to try and get the loose change and put in past Ville Huso. Again, more of that on the power play as all.

But I think that I'll do it for the power play talk. One more thing before we hit to break. I really like that Mike Sullivan has been starting to do the Crosby, Malkin shifts together at five on five, but after some penalty kills. He was doing it a little bit last. year. And I know some people will disagree with me when I say this. I want to see them do it a bit more this year. At the very least, it provides a spark for the team if they need it. And B, it can lead to

more offense. The underlying numbers last year before it were actually pretty good. The on-ice results, they got to be a little bit better. But I do think if you give them more reps together like they used to have a bit earlier in their careers, I do think the numbers will eventually become positive. And I do think that could be a situation where Mike Sullivan could take advantage of some teams right after the Penguins kill a penalty. Make it situational. If it's in a tie game or they're down a goal or two, I'm fine with it then. But if you're up or it's early in a game, let's keep that in our back pocket just because

you don't want it to become a trend that teams defend against. But overall, yeah, I agree with you. There should be plenty of moments this year where those three see the ice after a penalty kill. Right. I do think Tide game, if you're trailing, it definitely works better because I don't want another backbreaking goal if the penguins are up one, for example, trying to defend a lead in the third period. I think after you kill a penalty, you can just send out your regular lines and then you can try to defend a lead that way. I guess one more thing as well, the goal that Jari allowed with less than three minutes to go, I'm not going to crucify him for it just because it's preseason. It's definitely one that I think he'd want to have back overall, but again, I'm not really going to crush him for it. The regular season starts to. next week. The Penguins will be needing him quite a bit to start the regular season because today it was revealed that Alex Nadelkovich star his backup is week to week with an injury, which means, again, he will be starting the lion's share of the game to start the year while Joel Blumquist, it looks like, is going to be the backup. And that's part of what we're going to discuss in the

final segment right after this. All right, we're back here in this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes, joined by my host, Patrick Dam. So, Pat, the Penguins injury curse my friend it knows no bounds buddy we are fully back with injuries at this point for the penguins so you have brian rust he did not practice today with a maintenance day so he's probably battling something small you have vastly panamara who did not return for portions of last night's game he is day to day with an upper body injury blake lazott he has a concussion so he has to get out of concussion protocol before he can play and then Alex nedelkovich is still now week to week with upper body injury. So even though the regular season has not started yet, the Penguins injury

curse has returned in a pretty big way. And as I tease before this final segment, the Penguins will need Tristan Jari at his very best to start this season. They need a big start from him, considering they won't have Ned to start the year. And they'll also need to see what they have in Blumquist. He is going to be the backup to Jari to start the season. And it looks like he's going to be making his debut in the first week of the season because remember the penguins have that back to back basically right away. So we're going to find out pretty quickly how Blumquist adjust to the NHL game. So I know we've talked a lot about goaltending throughout the off season. Man, they're going to need it now. They really are. And okay, you know what? Everybody, let's all get together

here. Let's head over to PPG Payne's arena. Let's bring some sage with us. Let's burn it around the building and get these these bad vibes out of here because holy crap we can't escape this there are injuries left and right and we also just and this is a larger conversation that we'll have later on but the nchl has got a short in this preseason it's been happening across the league it's not just the penguins maclin solom when i was in j last night yeah patrick linae is out it's it's just it's not a good situation i don't think we need seven to eight games for these teams to figure out who's going to make their roster. I know they don't want to lose their money or revenue and all that, but eventually your product's going to suffer

because big names are going to get hurt. But I digress. Yeah, for Joel Blumquist, this is it, man. And I'm pretty confident in him because he very easily, after that first preseason game, could have thrown it in the tank. And was it his fault? No, that was a wildly overmatched roster in that game. Buffalo pretty much played their NHL team and the penguins were playing pretty much everybody who's on the bubble or going to be in the minors or back in junior. So he was fed to the wolves in the first game. But since then, in every appearance, he has looked perfectly solid. He has made the saves he's need to make. He has just been able to make some very acrobatic saves and he looks comfortable. And that is the biggest thing.

We have seen enough goalies in our time in Pittsburgh who have come in to be backups. Look uncomfortable. They make saves. They do the job they need to do as a backup goalie, but you sit there. And every time there's a shot on net or extended possession, you're wince in a little bit and thinking, oh, God, is the damn going to break here? And for Blumquist, I'm not seeing that. And now, obviously, this could change going into the regular season because you're going to

start seeing actual NHL talent and it's not going to be mixtures anymore. But by all accounts, this kid is ready to go. So I'm confident in him holding down the backup spot until Ned's healthy again. And then you send them back on down to Wilkes Bear and say, go dominate there. And we'll talk next year. Yep. And it looks like as of right now, his NHL debut will come next Thursday, a bum quest that is, against the D.J.

Wright Red Wings, because the Penguins will open in the season a week from today against the Rangers, that'll be Jari. And then, of course, as I said, they'll go to Blumquist for that Thursday game. And then we'll have to see how often Blumquist plays until Nadelcovic is ready to go. Could get a couple more starts before then, but he'll definitely play in that Thursday game against the Red Wings. Another update, this time it's more positive on Eric Carlson. So he made an appearance on the Lute podcast, part of Golf Digest. That's an interesting podcast that Eric Carlson went on overall. I did not expect to see that today on my Twitter timeline. And he said that he plans on playing in the Penguins preseason opener, despite the undisclosed injury that he's

dealing with, the quote was, yes, that is the plan. And he has been continuing to skate, excuse me, this is the second straight day that Carlson has been on the ice. So Pat, very good news there. It is. And I agree with something Sullivan said about a player like Eric Carlson, where you know how good he is, you know what he's capable of. Assuming he's in shape, it's not going to take him two weeks to get up to speed. He's an elite hockey player. He knows what he's doing.

He's been doing this for a very long time. So while I'm still very concerned about what his status is, just because of the setbacks of the fact that last week, they had to go out of their way to address what was going on with him in his absence. So I still have that level of concern on the fact that we don't know what the injury he is. We don't know how long it's going to affect him. But at the same time, I agree with Sullivan's assessment that this guy's not going to take too long to get up to speed. Now, we want him to be more comfortable in the system. We want to be more comfortable in the organization, all that.

But the player individually, I am not all that worried about him being ready for NHL games. He's one of the best defensemen of this era for a reason. Right. I think he'll be totally fine once he eventually gets healthy. And with that, I'm excited to see also what the new look powerplay looks like with him quarterbacking it because I do think he's going to get most of those duties overall, even though I felt like also Chris Lattang has been doing a very good job quarterbacking that top power play unit as he's done throughout his career with the penguins. Last but not least, the penguins made a few more roster cuts on Wednesday.

They reassigned Avery Hayes and defenseman Dan Renuff to the Wilkesbury Scranton penguins. So they'll be going for the third camp in preseason. And then they also put three players on waivers, Mac Hollowell, Mark Johnstone, and Jimmy Huntington. Pat, no surprise there. None really. And I think all the guys that you mentioned there that are going to have to go through waivers, I think they'll be safe.

I don't see a lot of teams going after them. And I think Avery Hayes, this is the smart play for him, similar to a lot of these younger guys. For their development, you want them to play. You don't want them to be sitting on the bench or sitting in the press box. you want them to get as much playing time as possible, build their games, develop their games, get better, build confidence, and then before you know it, they're up here as full-time contributors to the NHL roster.

So no real surprises, but we'll see all these guys do in the AHL and talk ourselves into them becoming NHLers here in the near future. Agreed. And I should also say about the Blake Lazot concussion, obviously, hopefully he comes back ASAP, but I will say this does potentially open the door for another young player to potentially be in the lineup next week. You know, maybe it's two of Pollyarva or Cody Glass or Valtaripusin being in the lineup outside of maybe just one of them being in. But again, really hope Lizott is okay and that he comes back ASAP because the Penguins will definitely need him throughout the regular season with how good I think of a bottom six center that he is overall. But I think that would do it for today's episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to listen to slash watch this episode. Pat and I will be back with another show for you all on Thursday before closing out the week on Friday. Yeah, even my dogs downstairs to tell me that the show is over at this point. But we'll have another episode for you all on Thursday, then Friday, and then next week, we get the regular season going. We'll have a full season preview episode. We'll have bold predictions as well before previewing opening night against the Rangers and then the next game against Red Wings and so on and so forth.

We are super excited to get this season. fully running, I think, at this point. But again, that would do it for this one. Thank you all so much for tuning in. We appreciate it. And we'll be back on Thursday.