CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Tristan Broz compared the transfer portal in college hockey to the NHL's free agency process.
"When I went in the portal, it was pretty crazy," he told me after Day 2 of the Penguins' development camp. "I was getting a lot of phone calls. But I tried to wrap it up pretty quick."
Broz, the Penguins' second-round pick in 2021, was a freshman last season for the University of Minnesota. He spent much of the season on the left side of the Gophers' third line, and recorded six goals and five assists in 36 games. With the Gophers having a couple of strong incoming freshman forwards, including 2022 first-round picks Logan Cooley and Jimmy Snuggerud, it looked like it was going to be difficult for Broz to earn top-six playing time in Minnesota.
When the defending national champion University of Denver called after Broz entered the transfer portal, Broz knew pretty quickly where he wanted to play next season.
"I think it'll just be a really good fit for me at Denver," Broz said. "It'll be a place where I think I can kind of develop a lot on the ice, but I think more so off the ice is as a person, as a human being, and learn to be a professional, learning to take care of every detail off the ice."
Denver head coach David Carle said that the Pioneers think that Broz's "skillset and hockey sense will mesh seamlessly into our offense."
Broz's transition into college hockey was more difficult than he anticipated, as former Penguins director of player development Scott Young explained to me.
"It was trying to explain to him that college hockey is very difficult when you come in at your age," Young said. "You're playing against some guys that are six years older than you. You're coming on to a really good hockey team, that returned a lot of players from the year before, and they were good the year before. You don't want to hear that. He said, 'Well, I think I'm good enough to play on this ice with them.' Absolutely. But just understand that you don't just come in. I think it's a common thing with a lot of players when they're getting recruited hard by a team. They're getting shown so much love by a college team, and then they come in, and then it hits you pretty hard on how difficult it is to transition."
Through his first 17 games with the Gophers, Broz recorded just two assists and no goals.
"I would say it was a learning process," Broz said of that period. "Mainly, I think once you get to that level, everything becomes so amplified. Every detail off the ice, on the ice, everything you do makes an impact on your performance. I think it's just a big learning process. I think I obviously started out the year slow and didn't have the start I wanted, or didn't really have the year I wanted. But I think in the long run, the lessons I learned from pretty much all of that I think I will carry with me for a long time in my career."
Broz did have a turnaround in the second half of the season, and recorded six goals and three assists in his final 19 games. I asked if he could pinpoint anything he did that led to that increase in production, and he credited the confidence he had to start making plays and taking shots himself.
"I think that was maybe a little bit of my problem at the beginning of the year," he said. "I came into a big program and maybe was a little wide-eyed, and looked to pass the puck a little too much. I think I just stopped kind of deferring to my teammates and obviously made plays there. I still made the passes, but also had the confidence to take the puck myself and to drive the play with my skating."
In addition to his skating, Broz describes the best parts of his game as his stickhandling, and his hockey sense, ability to read a play and find his teammates. He's versatile, with the ability to play both wing and center. While he has a comfort level at both wing and center (and played mostly wing as a freshman), he prefers playing center because it allows him to make better use of his skating abilities.
As Broz makes the jump to Denver, his main focus is just finding consistency in his ability to use those strengths on a regular basis, and continuing the rise he began in the second half of his freshman season.
"It's really just getting the most out of all those tricks in the bag," he said.
For now, Broz is just focused on learning all he can at Penguins development camp before he heads back to college. This is his first development camp in Pittsburgh, having missed last summer's event because of conflicts with the college hockey schedule. Now that he's finally in Pittsburgh a year after being drafted, he's relishing the learning opportunities that camp presents.
"It's pretty humbling just to be in this locker room and to be surrounded by by all the Penguins' staff and wearing the logo on the ice," he said. "It's certainly humbling and it kind of reminds you what you're working for. It's been really special."
PENGUINS
Tristan Broz in the Penguins' development camp.
MORE FROM CAMP
• Goaltending prospect Joel Blomqvist missed yesterday's session because British Airways lost his gear on the flight over from Finland. He was the first guy on the ice for Day 2, wearing his own all-black pads and helmet featuring his team Karpat's logo. His luggage arrived just in time on Monday morning.
"It was a little bit stressful when we got off the plane in Pittsburgh and waited for the bags and they didn't show up," Blomqvist told me. "Yeah, I was pretty pretty sad the first day, I couldn't go on the ice. So that's really unfortunate, but I'm glad they showed up this morning."
Blomqvist said it was a relief, because initially he wasn't sure they'd show up at all before camp ends on Thursday. He had tried tracking the bags online, but nothing turned up. He said he and the Penguins discussed the possibility of Blomqvist borrowing another goalie's set of equipment, but he said that doing so would have been "Pretty hard, goalies have pretty individual equipment."
• Today was broken up into three sessions -- A goalie-only session, with Blomqvist, Taylor Gauthier and Filip Lindberg participating, as well as Casey DeSmith, who is in town still rehabbing from his core muscle surgery. The second session was skills coach Ty Hennes leading the skaters in skills drills, while Blomqvist, Gauthier, Lindberg, and goaltenders Tommy Nappier and Nolan Lalonde worked with goalie coaches at the other end of the rink. The last session saw the skaters divided up into two groups to run through different drills, with Nappier and Lalonde serving as the only goalies on the ice.
• Matt Cullen joined the group of coaches helping out with the different sessions today. Not a bad guy for these guys to learn from.
• I did this feature on forward Corey Andonovski last season when he was in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton following Princeton's elimination from the postseason. I caught up with him today to talk about something a little different: His friendship with Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett.
Pickett's fiancee is Princeton soccer player Amy Paternoster. Andonovski and his girlfriend were both student athletes at Princeton and in the same friend group as Pickett's fiancee, so Andonovski and Pickett became good friends through that connection
"Within the last year we've become pretty close," Andonovski said. "It's pretty cool seeing his progression through being at Pitt and then getting drafted and all that kind of stuff. We're pretty good pals."
Andonovski signed with the Penguins as an undrafted free agent in March, and then the Steelers drafted Pickett just a month later. Andonovski will most likely start the year in Wilkes-Barre, but he joked that he already has a place to stay in Pittsburgh in the event he gets called up.
"We've kind of joked about it," Andonovski laughed. "I'm like, 'If I'm ever in Pittsburgh, I'm staying in your apartment, so hopefully you have an extra room!' I don't know where I'm going to end up to start the year, but hopefully it's here. I'll have a friend to hang out with beside my teammates, so it would be be pretty cool."
Pickett's ready for his buddy to join him in Pittsburgh. On Andonovski's last Instagram post, Pickett commented, "Have your room set up and ready to go."
• Sabres forward Zemgus Girgensons was here working out in the gym. His wife is from Pittsburgh and they have a house in the area that they stay in during the summers. Girgensons is a free agent next summer, he might be someone that would like to come play in Pittsburgh.
• Funny story: There were a bunch of kids from youth teams here today to watch camp. When I was walking in there was one team of kids gathered in the lobby, next to where the five replica Stanley Cups are displayed. One boy points out all of the Cups, and the boy next to him goes, "Hey, my dad has one of those!" The first kid asked who his dad was, and the second one goes, "Mark Recchi!" Recchi actually has five Cups: One with the Penguins (1991), one with the Hurricanes (2006), and one with the Bruins (2011) as a player, and then two more (2016, 2017) with the Penguins as a development coach.
