CRANBERRY, Pa. -- In hindsight, John Marino set the bar a little high for defensemen turning pro after college.
When the Penguins signed right-handed defenseman Josh Maniscalco last August following his sophomore season at Arizona State, the Marino comparisons were inevitable. Marino had just made the jump from Harvard to the NHL, playing in 56 games in his rookie season and finishing eighth in Calder Trophy voting.
"Everybody brings Marino up when they talk about Josh," then-GM Jim Rutherford observed at the time.
Maniscalco's rookie professional season went a bit differently.
Maniscalco spent the entire year in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and spent most of that time as a healthy scratch. He only appeared in eight of Wilkes-Barre's 32 games last season, recording no points, four penalty minutes, and a plus-1 rating. He did score a goal in Wilkes-Barre's preseason:
Despite the limited game time, Maniscalco told me after Saturday's development camp practice at the Lemieux Complex that he still believes last season was a good development year for him.
"Yeah, absolutely," he said. "I think just living that pro lifestyle and kind of developing the sense of everyday is a battle and just learning what's expected certainly goes a long way. And I think taking that into this year will help out drastically and I'm excited to get things going."
When Maniscalco was first scratched in Wilkes-Barre's third game of the season, I asked Wilkes-Barre head coach J.D. Forrest whether Maniscalco's absence was injury-related or a coaching decision, and Forrest spoke about the competitive nature of the lineup, confirming that Maniscalco was a healthy scratch.
"This is a competitive from the inside-out team," he said. "No one can get comfortable with their spot. When guys do get chances, then they step up. It's an opportunity there."
As the season went on and Maniscalco was still out of the lineup nearly a month later, I again asked Forrest about Maniscalco, and he spoke about being pleased with how Maniscalco was working to get back into the lineup.
"He's been great," Forrest said. "He's had a really good attitude. It's not easy when you're starting to play pro, in particular with a couple of guys back in the lineup that were up in Pittsburgh earlier. That's a hard nut to crack, to be an everyday player. He's got some things that we've talked about where he's focusing on it in practice. He's making the most of his time on the ice. He's paying attention to particular players in our games and trying to learn from watching. I'm sure when he gets an opportunity, he'll step in and be just fine. But he's had a really good attitude throughout this whole thing, and that's not always easy to do."
After the season, Forrest said that he thought that Maniscalco had become "much better suited to play" at the AHL level as a result of those practices.
On Saturday, I asked Maniscalco what specifically the coaching staff wanted to see from him in those practices, and he said that it was more of the "little details" of the game. He also wanted to get more athletic and quicker in order to be successful at the professional level, and he continued to make progress in that area this summer.
Maniscalco, who is listed at 6 foot 2 and 205 pounds, trained at a facility called Elite Edge in Malvern, Pa., just outside of Philadelphia over the summer. The facility is run by Chris McCarthy, a former forward who played six professional seasons in the minor leagues until his retirement in 2020.
"It's just a lot of one-on-one stuff," Maniscalco said of his work over the summer. "A lot of just different movements, becoming more athletic, doing things that my body's not used to."
That increased athleticism and speed should set Maniscalco up for better success this coming season. In the limited game action Maniscalco did see last season, he said that the pace of the game was the biggest difference from what he was used to in college.
"In the AHL, everyone's going 100 percent of the time," he said. "Going, going, going. And because it's so close to being the NHL. In college I just feel like it's not as go, go, go all the time."
Forrest, when asked about Maniscalco's progress during development camp, seemed encouraged by the steps Maniscalco took last season.
"Josh just needs to continue to work the way he's been working," he said. "I feel with him, a lot of it is decision-making and processing the game. He's another guy that came out of a college where we feel like he had a really long rope to do what he wanted out there, just because he had more talent and a little more physical ability than the other guys. So he just kept getting thrown out there. It's the same thing where if you make some mistakes in this arena, you get punished pretty badly. And he just has to learn when to pick his spots, how to pick the spots, and just play more within a system where the other players around him can have a feel for what he's doing as well."
For Year 2, Maniscalco is continuing to keep his expectations reasonable. While some may have hoped that he'd make the leap to the NHL in his rookie season, he knows that he's not quite there yet. For Year 2 in Wilkes-Barre, his focus is just to continue to get better every day, and continue to get closer to that goal of playing in the NHL one day.
"My goal for this year is definitely just to continue my development," he said. "You know, I've been working with (Tom Kostopoulos, Scott Young, Forrest, Kevin Porter) for a while now, and I just want to continue to develop in what they had me working with."
He'll take the lessons he learned from the sidelines last season and use them to keep taking those steps in his development.
"What I take most out of that is just learning to be ready," he said. "Come to the rink every day, not knowing what to expect, but just give my 100 percent and see where it goes. And when my name is called, I know that I'll be ready to go."
