Lukas Svejkovsky had to wait a little longer than he would have liked for his first professional goal.
Svejkovsky, 21, was the Penguins' fourth-round pick in 2020. This year is his first year of professional hockey in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton following the conclusion of his four-year junior career in the WHL last season. He was in and out of Wilkes-Barre's lineup often early this season, but has become a regular as of late as injuries, recalls, and other absences to other forwards have created an opportunity for him.
Svejkovsky went his first 21 games of the season without a goal before finally scoring this beauty of a backhand breakaway goal in a win over Hershey on Jan. 11:
"Super, super relieving," Svejkovsky told me of the feeling in a phone interview on Thursday. "I went a bit longer than I had hoped. It was nice to finally get that one, for sure. It was a nice pick by (Nathan Legare) and then I just was able to skate onto the puck and go in for the breakaway. I just tried to beat the goalie with my speed and try to elevate it and get it up. Fortunately it worked out."
Svejkovsky, who now has a goal and six assists in his 25 games this season, said that it was "frustrating at times" when the goals weren't coming earlier on.
"I just tried to not even focus on it," he said. "I just tried to focus on going out there, playing my game and trying to play my best. I knew it would come eventually."
Svejkovsky is a skilled and versatile winger, a right-handed shot who can play both sides (and has done so for Wilkes-Barre this season). Members of the Penguins development staff often point to his speed as one of his greatest attributes -- and Svejkovsky would say the same himself.
"I think I'm a speedy forward with high skill and a high hockey IQ," Svejkovsky told me of his own game. "I think I can help create scoring chances and make plays and help offensively."
If there's one big knock on Svejkovsky's game right now, it's his size. He's undersized at 5 foot 9, and he was listed at being 170 pounds during the Penguins' training camp. That wasn't so much of an issue in junior, when his opponents are generally smaller and he has more time and space with the puck anyway because of the speed of the game. But in the AHL, players are bigger and stronger, and the speed of the pro game means that Svejkovsky has much less time and space than he's used to. The result is that he gets knocked off the puck more often than he did in junior.
Svejkovsky knows he can't get any taller in the gym, but he can certainly get stronger, and that's been a focus of his throughout the season.
"For me the biggest thing is just getting stronger," he told me. "I'm not the heaviest guy. Just getting more lower-body strength so I can really be good in the small areas like the corners and stuff like that. Our strength staff has been great for me."
Svejkovsky said that typically throughout the course of a hockey season he will usually lose some weight, a product of just being on the ice all the time. Working with Wilkes-Barre's training staff, though, has made this year different. He put on a few pounds already this season ... though, maybe not as much as he thought in a recent weigh-in.
"We have to weigh in every day, but we were away from the rink for like five or six days for a road trip," Svejkovsky explained. "And it's tough for me to gain weight, so if I weigh in at even a few pounds heavier I'll be pretty fired up. But me and (rookie defenseman) Jack St. Ivany were weighing ourselves in and I'm normally like, 176 pounds. But I kept hopping on the scale and I was 183. I was like, 'This can't be right.' I'm not even kidding, I tried it probably 15 times, and 183 every time. I was so pumped up, I was so happy. Then 30 minutes later I found out (St. Ivany) was stepping on the scale every time I went on and somehow got it perfectly to 183. That's a little heavy for me."
Without St. Ivany's foot on the scale, Svejkovsky said that he's still currently weighing in at 176 pounds. Not quite the 13-pound gain he thought he had, but some pretty good progress for the first few months of the season -- about five or six pounds.
Svejkovsky is making strides off the ice too as a first-year pro. Players who come from junior hockey like Svejkovsky lived with billet families throughout their junior careers, so things like cooking and sometimes even laundry aren't things they have to worry about. Svejkovsky relied a lot on takeout at first, but he's been eating more at home lately, with assists to his air fryer and his 18-year-old sister Ava, a defender on the Colgate University women's team who won silver with Team USA at the U18 Women's World Championship last season.
"I've got her working hard, she's been taking care of me a little bit," Svejkovsky said with a laugh. "But in the start it was a lot of Uber Eats and packing up food from the rink, just trying to survive. Then I got an air fryer, that's huge. I have learned to cook a little bit. Not quite the chef I hope to be one day, but I'm getting there."
Svejkovsky can turn to family for some guidance on the ice, too. His father Jaroslav (or "Yogi") played four years in the NHL with the Capitals and Lightning from 1996-2000, and currently works as the skills coach for the Canucks' AHL affiliate in Abbotsford, British Columbia,
"He's been a lot of help for me over the years," Svejkovsky said of his father. "With him working with the Canucks now it's tough for him to catch all the games, but he watches every game that he can."
Svejkovsky probably won't be in line for a call up anytime this season -- there's too many forwards ahead of him in the depth chart right now. His focus this season is just to continue to get acclimated to the pro game. If he can keep making those strides and continue to put on weight in the gym, he could put himself in a good spot coming into next season.
"It's a bit of an adjustment going junior to pro -- everyone is bigger, stronger, faster," he said. "I've just been learning every day. It's been really good, we have a really good group of guys here, the coaching staff has been really good. It's been a really good experience so far and I just want to keep getting better every day."
WBS PENGUINS
Lukas Svejkovsky takes a shot in Hershey.
MORE ON WILKES-BARRE
• Raivis Ansons, the Penguins' fifth-round pick in 2020, scored his first pro goal in the same game that Svejkovsky scored his. Ansons' first one came shorthanded:
• Filip Hallander remains sidelined with an upper-body injury but has resumed skating on his own and has done so for a couple of days now.
• Other injuries include defenseman Colin Swoyer (lower-body injury sustained Jan. 15), goaltender Taylor Gauthier (upper-body injury sustained Jan. 14), forward Kyle Olson (week-to-week, lower-body injury sustained Dec. 21), and defenseman Xavier Ouellet (week-to-week, lower-body injury sustained Dec. 31).
• Ouellet was named the team's pick for the All-Star Classic, which is set to be held Feb. 5-6 in Laval, Quebec, just a few miles outside of the town in which Ouellet grew up. He was already injured at the time of the selection. If he can't go, I'd anticipate a replacement being chosen closer to the time of the event.
• Sam Poulin remains away from the team on personal leave.
• Goaltender Filip Lindberg sustained a lower-body injury on Dec. 21 and returned this week. He was backing up Gauthier when Gauthier was injured on Saturday and made his return in a relief appearance, stopping 18 of 21 shots in a loss. He got the start the following night and stopped 29 of 31 shots in a shootout win. He got the start again on Wednesday and stopped 25 of 28 shots in a loss.
• Alex Nylander and Valtteri Puustinen both are tied for the team-lead in scoring with 30 points each. Nylander has 15 goals and 15 assists in 35 games, Puustinen has 14 goals and 16 assists in 36 games.
• The Penguins (18-12-2-3) currently sit in fourth place in the Atlantic Division, one point behind the Charlotte Checkers for third place with two games in hand.
