The countdown begins with an intriguing defenseman that keeps getting better.
The 2025 version of our Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25 countdown list kicks off your Monday morning with a piece of the Jake Guentzel trade coming off a tough college season.
Catch up on the previous entries for this year:
Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25: Graduates and Departed players in 2025
Top 25 Under 25: The best of the rest
No. 25: Quinn Beauchense
No. 24: Cruz Lucius
No. 23: Travis Hayes
No. 22: Brady Peddle
#21: Finn Harding, D
2024 Ranking: NR
Age: 20 (March 2, 2005)
Acquired Via: Seventh-round draft pick (No. 223 overall) in 2024 NHL Draft
Height/Weight: 6-foot-2, 192 pounds
Pittsburgh Penguins President of Hockey Operations/General Manager Kyle Dubas has spent a significant part of his early tenure trying to build up the team’s prospect depth, especially as it relates to the defense.
The team’s 2024 draft class was defense-heavy with four of the team’s six picks that year playing on the back end. That includes Finn Harding, the team’s seventh-round pick and one of a handful of “overage” players that they took that season.
He played his junior hockey for Mississauga and Brampton, steadily improving his offensive production every season.
The improved point production throughout his junior career is encouraging, because at the time of his selection the biggest knocks on him were mostly related to his play and upside with the puck on his stick.
Both Corey Pronman at The Athletic and Dobber Hockey pointed out his potential limitations as a puck-mover as he gets into the higher levels.
From Corey Pronman, at The Athletic.
Harding skates well and makes a lot of stops in the OHL. His puck play is fine in junior, he can make a first pass, but scouts have questions on how he projects with the puck versus men.
Harding is another overage defenseman to add to the prospect pool for the Penguins. Unlike the two previous defenseman talked about earlier Harding is just 19 and one year removed from his traditional draft year. Harding is a defense first defenseman with a powerful stride. With the puck he isn’t particularly flashy but makes solid reliable plays to get the puck on the sticks of his team’s playmakers. He is a player who self admittedly had a bit of a late start on the development curve starting his OHL career a year later than most of his peers.
With this in mind his development track is actually pretty promising. If he is looked at as a late bloomer then his production of 34 points in 68 OHL games becomes a lot more impressive. Either way Harding will need to learn to become more assertive on the ice. Both with and without the puck especially in transition he would wait for the play to come to him instead taking initiative.
To Harding’s credit, he has worked hard to make improvements to all aspects of his game. That improvement was noted by Penguins Penguins director of player development Tom Kostopoulos at this month’s prospect camp.
“Absorbs everything we’ve thrown at him. Throughout his season in Brampton, he was thrown into every different role. He was killing penalties (and) on the power play. There was times during the Christmas stretch where (other players) were at (the International Ice Hockey Federation’s World Junior Championship tournament), and he was playing 30 minutes a night and just eating it up.
“A lot of growth in his game. His skating, it keeps getting better. Speed is always going to be something … that he’s going to have to keep getting better on. But he’s a willing learner. He’s learning how to defend really hard consistently (and) move pucks. Some offensive side to him. Exciting times for him.”
Anytime you are dealing with a seventh-round draft pick you are talking about a player with long odds to make it to the NHL, and even longer adds to become an NHL regular. You have to be insanely lucky to get an All-Star level player. So for as encouraging as Harding’s improvement has been, some reasonable expectations still need to be kept, and his defensive game is going to have to really excel to get him to the NHL given his questions over skating and playmaking.
But the expectations are probably higher today than they were at the time of his selection into the organization.
Right now, that is probably all the Penguins can ask for.
They still have Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson on the right side of their defense at the NHL level for now, but neither figures to be in Pittsburgh a few years down the line. Harrison Brunicke is the team’s best defense prospect, and certainly their best one on the right side, but Harding is making his case to add more depth to that spot in the prospect pool.
At this point he has played just three games in the ECHL, so this season is going to be a big test for him as he steps into pro hockey full time. How he does, and how he improves, will go a long way toward determing whether or not he becomes a legit prospect with an NHL future, or if he is just your typical seventh-round roster filler in the minor leagues.