Members of the Penguins' amateur scouting staff are scheduled to convene here next week to begin final preparations for the NHL draft, which will be held July 23-24.
The scouts and Ron Hextall, along with other front-office officials, will discuss the merits and minuses of the prospects, discussions that eventually will yield the rankings the team will use when making its selections.
Not that Hextall likely will have to refer to the list very often during those two days.
The Penguins, after all, currently own just five selections. Three of those are in the seventh round, which also is the final one.
Their others are in the second and fifth; the rest have been traded away.
The No. 1 belongs to Minnesota (Jason Zucker trade), San Jose has the third-rounder (Patrick Marleau), Arizona owns the No 4 (P.O Joseph, Alex Galchenyuk) and Edmonton possesses the sixth-round choice (John Marino).
The Penguins have qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs for 15 consecutive seasons, and routinely have sacrificed draft picks -- especially those in early rounds -- in return for immediate roster upgrades that management believed would enhance their chances of winning a championship.
That's something they've done three times during those 15 years, so it's not hard to justify such an aggressive approach. Especially when the Penguins are the only team since Detroit in 1997 and 1998 to win consecutive titles.
But all of those investments in trying to attain short-term objectives have come at a predictable cost to the Penguins' depth outside of the NHL. Indeed, their pool of promising prospects is among the most shallow in the NHL.
"It's probably not as deep as some other teams in the league that kept their draft picks over the years," assistant general manager Patrik Allvin said Wednesday.
Perhaps that's being charitable, but it's not as if the Penguins' organizational depth chart is devoid of young talent that could be capable of contributing in the future.
Management seems genuinely excited about the potential of two goalies drafted a year ago, Joel Blomqvist and Calle Clang. Samuel Poulin, Nathan Legare and Valtteri Puustinen will move into the American Hockey League next season -- if they don't challenge for a spot with the parent club -- while Drew O'Connor and Kasper Bjorkqvist also have NHL potential. And Joseph flashed some exceptional ability at times when pressed into service in the NHL early in 2020-21.
Penguins scouts have, in fact, done a pretty good job of identifying players with at least a kernel of NHL promise who merit being selected as drafts are winding down.
"I think our staff has done a good job at finding players in the mid- to later rounds," Allvin said. "Obviously, those players need a little longer in order to play (in the NHL), but I would say that we've done a decent job."
Puustinen, a right winger who was the 203rd player picked in 2019, has become pretty good evidence of that.
He had 17 goals and 23 assists in 54 games with HPK Hameenlinna in Finland's SM-liiga after being drafted, then put up 21 goals and 20 assists in 51 games in 2020-21.
"He's had two really good seasons in Finland," Allvin said. "He made the World Championship team and didn't play in all the games, but he gained experience with that."
Puustinen, whose entry-level contract with the Penguins kicks in next season, is smallish -- he's listed at 5 foot 9, 183 pounds -- but any player who drops into the seventh round figures to have at least one significant blemish.
The challenge for scouts is to recognize the prospects who have a realistic chance of overcoming those flaws. Especially the scouts for teams that own three seventh-rounders and never have their full complement of early picks.
"The later you go with the draft, the more long-term (development is needed) for players," Allvin said. "You're looking for maybe a little bit of a raw prospect, a guy who would need some more time, whether it's in college or in Europe. You're looking at raw-type of players."
The kind the Penguins have had a pressing need to turn up for much of the past decade and a half.
