CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Drew O'Connor has been waiting to get another shot in the NHL for a few months now.
O'Connor, 23, was recalled by the Penguins on Saturday from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the AHL, marking the first time he's been back on the NHL roster and healthy since suffering a reported collapsed lung on Jan. 15 in San Jose.
After O'Connor was cleared to return just over a month later, he reported to Wilkes-Barre, where he worked to regain his strength and conditioning after so much time off. Once he was back to 100 percent, salary cap constraints limited the Penguins' ability to bring O'Connor back up from Wilkes-Barre, forcing him to remain in the AHL. With no recall limits or salary cap constraints in the postseason, the Penguins brought O'Connor back up as soon as it was made possible.
O'Connor's hoping to get a chance to make his mark in the playoffs.
"It's super exciting," O'Connor said of the recall following the team's practice Sunday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complext. "You know, it's an awesome opportunity to be here for the playoffs. I was here for a bit last year during that, but it's kind of a different feel this year. So I'm super excited to be a part of it."
If this season has a "different feel" for O'Connor, it's probably because he has a real chance of making his Stanley Cup playoff debut this time around.
O'Connor's rookie year last season was split between Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre, only appearing in 10 NHL games and no games in the postseason. He earned more NHL time this year in his sophomore season, playing in 22 games in a bottom-six role prior to his injury. After recording just one assist in his rookie season, O'Connor scored three goals and two assists in his 22 NHL games this season.
Beyond just having the opportunity to rehab from his injury, O'Connor found his time in Wilkes-Barre helpful in the second half of the season. He appeared in 28 games after being sent down, scoring nine goals and 18 assists in those games. He skated primarily in a top-six center role, and played on both special teams units.
"It was good," O'Connor said of his time in Wilkes-Barre. "You know, I feel like I got back to 100 percent, I started feeling really good down there. It's good playing a lot of minutes and getting a lot of different opportunities there, so I was trying to make the most of it. The team is doing well there, we got ourselves into a playoff spot there. So it was a lot of fun."
One of those "different opportunities" came in the form of more short-handed minutes. O'Connor was a penalty-killer during his time in college at Dartmouth, but when he went straight from college to the NHL, he didn't immediately jump right onto the Penguins' penalty-killing unit. He did play some time on Wilkes-Barre's penalty-kill in his brief time there last season and had a handful of opportunities during his time at the NHL level, but entering this season O'Connor hadn't had much extended time to work on killing penalties since turning pro/
When O'Connor was down in Wilkes-Barre last month, Mike Sullivan said that the ability to kill penalties at the pro level was something he was hoping to see O'Connor develop more before coming back to Pittsburgh. Since O'Connor would likely be filling a bottom-six role at the NHL level, it would allow the Penguins to more evenly distribute ice time among the forwards, since killing penalties is typically done by forwards in those bottom-six roles.
"He's had a few opportunities in games to help us on the penalty kill," Sullivan said last month. "But that's something that I think he could potentially be really good at, because of his mobility, his size, his reach, and his instincts."
O'Connor slowly became one of Wilkes-Barre's more regular penalty-killers over the second half of this season, and it's those attributes of size, reach, and his instincts that made him successful.
"Up ice, he's been really, really effective on the forecheck on the penalty-kill," Wilkes-Barre head coach J.D. Forrest told me of O'Connor. "He just has a knack for hitting pucks and getting a stick on things and making it hard to make a play out of their zone. He's doing really well in that area. In-zone it's the same, he has that ability to knock pucks down and be in the way. His speed and reach are deceptive, it's a little bit harder for the opponent to read sometimes if they think he's coming a little bit slower. They don't realize how close he is, how fast he gets there. It's still a work in progress for him. It's a lot of the read-react game there and understanding what their power play wants to do. But I think he's been doing a nice job for us lately."
O'Connor said Sunday that he knew that adjusting to the pro level in regards to penalty-killing was something he knew he needed to work on in his game, and he feels like he was able to make strides in that area during his re-assignment.
"I think that time was definitely helpful for that," he told me of penalty-killing in Wilkes-Barre. "I think just the abilities I have with my reach and things like that, I think that's helpful for the penalty kill. So just trying to utilize those and learn the systems a bit."
Sullivan believes that the Penguins are getting a more versatile O'Connor after that stint. Not only did he further develop his penalty-killing abilities, but he spent extensive time at center, something he hadn't done much of at the NHL level to this point.
"One of the things that's really helped Drew is that experience of playing in all situations," Sullivan said. "He played heavy minutes down there on both sides of the puck and it gave him an opportunity to get involved in the penalty kill and get repetitions and experience in all of the details in how we're trying to kill. I think that experience is invaluable for him. It just helps him when he plays at this level, it makes him more versatile for us. He's played center a fair amount as well, now he has a comfort level there. We have the ability to use him at center, we can use him on the wing. He's a real versatile player."
It doesn't look like O'Connor will get the opportunity to play at the NHL level just quite yet, though. He didn't participate in any of the line rushes Sunday, working as the lone extra forward in the session. But with what he's able to contribute in a bottom-six role, and the added versatility and experience he gained from his time in Wilkes-Barre, it wouldn't be surprising to see him get a shot at some point this postseason.
"I'm just taking it day-by-day right now," O'Connor said of waiting for that opportunity. "I'm just trying to work hard in practice, be a good teammate, all that. I think whatever happens happens, and we'll see how it goes."
MORE FROM PRACTICE
• Tristan Jarry (broken foot) and Jason Zucker (lower-body injury) were the only two absences from practice. Sullivan said afterward that he'd categorize both of them as being "day-to-day."
"We don't expect to have them for the first couple of games, I will say that," Sullivan said. "But their status right now is day-to-day, we'll update you guys as we go."
• Brian Dumoulin was a full participant and is fine after leaving the Penguins' last game in the third period after he appeared to get cut by a skate in the chin area.
• The Penguins lines and pairings that were the same as last game:
Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust
Danton Heinen - Evgeni Malkin - Rickard Rakell
Brock McGinn - Jeff Carter - Kasperi Kapanen
Brian Boyle - Teddy Blueger - Evan Rodrigues
(Drew O'Connor)
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Mike Matheson - Chad Ruhwedel
Marcus Pettersson - John Marino
(Nathan Beaulieu - Mark Friedman)
• The first power play was Kris Letang, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust
• The second power play was Mike Matheson, Jeff Carter, Evan Rodrigues, Rickard Rakell, Danton Heinen, with Kasperi Kapanen rotating in for Heinen and Rakell at different times.
• Assistant coach Todd Reirden was back on the ice for practice for the first time since undergoing knee surgery on Feb. 14. Reirden had been working practices and morning skates from the bench since March 8. Reirden got stick taps and fist bumps from players when he took the ice.
• It was a pretty lengthy practice, close to a full hour.
• Crosby's father, Troy, was in attendance.
• Heinen on playing alongside Malkin and Rakell on the second line: "Two highly skilled players, for sure. Two guys that can see the ice so well, make high-end plays. I think for me, it's trying to get the puck in their hands, try to complement them anyway you can, try to get to the net, try to get open if I can, and they'll find you. That's kind of my role."
• Letang on his confidence in the Penguins' goaltending entering playoffs: "Tristan, Casey (DeSmith) and Louis (Domingue), they're all terrific goalies, hard workers. Every time they've been in games, they played really well. You see their confidence building as they played even more. Pretty happy with all three of them."
• Letang on entering these playoffs as a pending unrestricted free agent and if it's something he's discussed with Crosby or Malkin: "I mean, people have been talking about it for the last three years. So I mean, we all know about it, we don't have to discuss it. We know what it is. We just look at it as an opportunity to solidify what we did throughout our career in Pittsburgh and keep it going. So that's our focus. That's what we talked about, just winning another one."
• Per Mollie Walker of the New York Post, the Rangers used these lines and pairings in practice:
Chris Kreider - Mika Zibanejad - Frank Vatrano
Artemi Panarin - Ryan Strome - Andrew Copp
Alexis Lafreniere - Filip Chytil - Kaapo Kakko
Dryden Hunt - Barclay Goodrow - Kevin Rooney - Ryan Reaves
Justin Braun - Adam Fox
K'Andre Miller - Jacob Trouba
Patrik Nemeth - Braden Schneider
Ryan Lindgren would typically be on that top defense pairing but missed Sunday's practice with a maintenance day.
• Rangers forward Andrew Copp, when asked about what comes to mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh: "Uh, Stanley Cups? The big three of Crosby, Malkin and Letang. Three players that have all won three Cups together and know what it takes this time of year. They've seen it all. So I'd say those are the three that come to mind. And what comes to mind with Pittsburgh obviously, the team has made the playoffs I believe 16 straight years, which is obviously very, very impressive. A good team. And looking forward to the challenge."
