Kyle Dubas and company have been busy adding
The Penguins have made significant efforts to boost the amount of young talent that has entered the organization lately. They just made 13 draft picks and have traded some older NHL talent for prospects along the way as well.
It can be hard to wrap your head around it all, so think of this as a Top 25 Under 25 primer.
We’ll set the stage for the upcoming list of the top talent in the organization by first looking at exactly which young players are around the Pittsburgh pipeline these days, in no specific order and based off players who either have NHL contracts or appear on the Pens’ reserve list.
NHL level
Ville Koivunen
Rutger McGroarty
Joel Blomqvist
Owen Pickering
Phil Tomasino
Vladislav Kolyachonok
—It’s possible the Pens could bring in another goal or quality defender to bump Blomqvist and Pickering temporarily off the NHL roster. But these players should all be at the NHL level at some point in 2025-26, potentially in major roles in a few of their cases.
AHL level
Sergei Murashov
Avery Hayes
Tristan Broz
Tanner Howe
Emil Pieniniemi
Sam Poulin
Chase Pietila
Finn Harding
Daniel Laatsch
Chase Stillman
—The AHL might need to reload a little before many of these players go up to the NHL for anything other than injury-necessitated short-term cameos. The future could be bright for a few of these players, with the key words being “future” and “could”, there’s still a lot of developmental time to go for most on this list.
Lower non-pro levels (Canadian Junior, NCAA)
Harrison Brunicke
Ben Kindel
Bill Zonnon
William Horcoff
Peyton Kettles
Brady Peddle
Charlie Trethewey
Joona Vaisanen
Quinn Beauchesne
Travis Hayes
Carter Sanderson
Gabriel D’Aigle
Max Graham
Ryan Miller
Jordan Charron
Luke Devlin
Mac Swanson
Cruz Lucius
Kale Dach
Zam Plante
This segment is where the bulk of the efforts to improve the pipeline are currently at right now, including all the names from the 2025 NHL draft and promising teenager Harrison Brunicke. It’s still Juniors or NHL for Brunicke for one more season before he will be AHL eligible. For now, this list is mostly back-burner players where the Pens will hope for a lot of development to start paying off 2-3-4 years down the road. If you subscribe to the “NHL prospects as lottery tickets” theory, Pittsburgh is loaded up with chances to see results somewhere, the difference between success and failure coming down to just how many end up paying off. The raw material on hand is as nice as it’s been for the Pens in going on 20 years, without any exaggeration as they look to reset by building up via young players.
Europe
Melvin Fernstrom
Mikhail Ilyin
Kalle Kangas
Emil Jarventie
Kirill Tankov
Vasily Ponomarev
Fernstrom and Ilyin are under NHL contract but it’s already been confirmed both will be playing in their native homelands of Sweden and Russia, respectively in 2025-26. Their contracts will slide and not start ticking away until they start with the Pens’ organization. This is a wise move, both of these players are super-young and can benefit from another year at home, where both are in somewhat similar situations of getting good roles for mid/lower-level clubs.