Jordan Frasca had to wait a little longer than he would have liked for his AHL debut.
Nearly three months, to be exact.
Frasca had a strong start to the NHL training camp up in Pittsburgh. He got into a preseason game in Columbus in the Penguins' split-squad preseason opener on Sept. 25 and scored the lone goal in a loss. It was two days later in practice when Frasca got tripped up in a drill and fell back on his ankle, suffering a high ankle sprain.
It was awhile before Frasca could even put weight on that ankle, let alone skate. After a lengthy rehab process Frasca was finally cleared to return last week, and was sent down to Wheeling to get some much-needed playing time.
With Drew O'Connor recalled to Pittsburgh and an illness spreading through the Wilkes-Barre locker room and sidelining Filip Hallander and Lukas Svejkovsky, Frasca was recalled from Wheeling after just two games and made his AHL debut in Wilkes-Barre in the Penguins' 3-1 win over the Hershey Bears on Friday.
Frasca didn't earn any points in the win, but he did get named the No. 3 star of the game for standing up to one of the AHL's top heavyweights in the third period.
Bears forward Kale Kessy is a goon. A veteran in his fourth season in Hershey, the 6-foot-3, 212-pound Kessy has appeared in 292 AHL games over his 10 professional seasons and amassed 750 penalty minutes and just 42 points. He's in Hershey for one reason, and it's to fight or otherwise intimidate opponents. And with Wilkes-Barre and Hershey playing each other 12 times each year, Kessy is the No. 1 villain in that I-81 rivalry.
Wilkes-Barre has an enforcer who typically goes head-to-head with Kessy in Jamie Devane, but Devane has been sidelined for over a month with a lower-body injury, leaving Kessy fairly unchecked in this game.
It was midway through the third period, the Penguins led the Bears by three goals and things were getting chippy with the Bears looking to get a spark. Kessy was coming off for his shift, and Frasca was coming on. Kessy, looking to stir up some trouble, blocked the open bench door and wouldn't let Frasca make the line change.
Frasca, who is listed at 6-foot-2 and 183 pounds, wasn't going to let himself be intimidated by Kessy and tackled him into the Penguins' bench:
I asked Frasca after the game about that moment.
"My instincts just took over," he said. "He was waiting at the bench and wouldn't let me get on, so I decided I needed to stick up for myself. I couldn't let him get away with doing anything dumb."
Head coach J.D. Forrest said that he's "never really seen anything quite like that" in a game before.
"He wasn't looking for it, he got forced into it just trying to make a routine line change," Forrest told me. "I thought he did a great job of handling himself. I don't think he shies away from the physical part of the game. Stuff happens, and Frasca did a great job."
Both players got 10-minute misconducts for continuing the altercation, and Kessy got an extra two-minute minor for roughing prior to the altercation being taken into the bench. After Frasca served his time and exited the penalty box, he got a big ovation from the home crowd in appreciation of his efforts.
Beyond standing up to Kessy, Frasca had a fine AHL debut. He centered the Penguins' fourth line between Ty Glover and Raivis Ansons, and showed no hesitation in going to the hard areas of the ice like the net-front and being physical.
"Frasca is a smart player," Forrest said afterward of his initial impressions. "He made some good plays defensively."
For Frasca, he sounded relieved to just finally be back on the ice and playing after his injury caused such a disappointing start to his pro career.
"I felt good," Frasca said of his debut. "There's always more room for improvement and growth. I was just happy our team was able pull it off and win. But for myself, I believe I can still keep getting better. It was a hard, long recovery process and I'm here now and grateful to be here."
He said that the recovery process was "really tough" and not always one that happened in a linear fashion, forcing him to work hard at having a good mindset.
"There were some days where it was hard and I had some setbacks," he said. "But then some days it felt good, it was just very inconsistent. But the best part was I learned a lot off the ice and learned a lot about myself and how to keep a good attitude that I knew it was going to get better. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel."
Frasca spent much of the first two months of the season watching the game from the stands, paying particular attention to the different centers to see what it took to be successful at the AHL level. He took part in every team meeting and took notes on things he hoped to put to use on the ice in the near future. Since he couldn't even skate for a good part of the rehab process, he said he focused a lot on just visualization of the concepts. The team told Frasca early on in the rehab process that the plan once he was healthy was to send him down to the ECHL for a few games, where he'd be able to play big minutes and get acclimated to the pro game.
"It was super important," Frasca said of his two games in Wheeling. "It's just a learning curve with dealing with different things and getting back into rhythm."
I spoke with Frasca back in the team's development camp and asked him what part of his game he thought he needed to improve the most to find success at the pro level. He said that his biggest focus was his skating -- having a strong first three steps, improving his single-leg strength, and just improving his overall speed. He was working a lot on his edge work on the ice, but a lot of the work was off the ice -- getting stronger in the gym, improving his nutrition and cutting down on his body fat.
Given that the nature of Frasca's ankle injury had him not even able to put weight on it for some time, let alone skate, I asked him Friday if he thought the ankle injury was a setback for him in his goal to become a better skater.
"You know what? There's some areas where when I was first coming back, where I was like, 'Oh, this is tough,'" Frasca said. "But I think because of my injury I had to focus on it way more and have got to pay attention to those little details. So I think in the long run, it's going to help me."
Moving forward, Frasca is looking forward to contributing to his team in other ways. He had offensive success in his last season in the OHL with the Kingston Frontenacs, scoring 42 goals and 45 assists in 61 games, numbers that have to be taken with a little grain of salt given that he was an overage 20-year-old on a stacked team playing in a junior league of mostly teenagers. He's not going to be putting up those kinds of numbers at the AHL level, but he's focusing on just playing the right way and chipping in offensively when he can.
"I want to continue that (scoring) at the pro level, but at the pro level it's most important being a valuable asset for my team, whether that's defensively, killing penalites, I've got to focus on playing the right way," he said. "Then hopefully, the offense will come. Today was the first step in that, and I've got to keep going with each and every game and keep learning."
