Whenever a Penguins prospect like Filip Hallander or Filip Lindberg leaves and signs elsewhere, comment sections and social media blow up with the same refrains:
He knew he'd never get an opportunity with the Penguins!
Young players know they have no future in this organization!
Mike Sullivan's fault!
Ignoring the facts that, one, Sullivan isn't the one who recalls players and, two, the Penguins were so tight against the salary cap this season that they couldn't afford to recall anyone from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton for much of the year, the narrative that the Penguins have trouble signing and keeping prospects due to a perceived lack of opportunities in Pittsburgh just isn't rooted in reality.
The Penguins have had only two prospects sign elsewhere in the last two seasons that they would have preferred to keep -- Kasper Bjorkqvist returning to Finland last summer, and Hallander returning to Sweden this offseason. Both players were set to become restricted free agents and had deals lined up to return to their native countries well before the AHL season even ended.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning, Hallander cited his family -- he has a wife and an almost-two-year-old son -- as a primary reason for his return home.
"We wanted a slightly more stable everyday life," Hallander said in the interview. "There has been a lot in the last two years with travel and such. We felt that we want to be able to be all together, as a family and spend everyday together."
The SHL club Timra that Hallander signed with is his hometown team, and he came up through Timra's youth system. He played for Timra at the start of the start of his career, and hinted in the Sundsvalls interview that he would have preferred to stay there longer than he had initially -- "It was difficult then how it ended, and I couldn't decide everything, because I had an NHL club that had quite a lot to say about it," he said. Hallander similarly expressed a feeling of unfinished business with Timra in Timra's press release after he signed, saying that "coming back here has always been in the back of my mind since my last game (in 2019)."
Hallander did acknowledge in the Sundsvalls interview that had he been more of an NHL regular, it would have made his decision more difficult. But again, he cited the desire to play for his hometown team, which has gotten stronger over the last year in his absence, as the ultimate deciding factor.
"If I had been allowed to play even more in the NHL and had a great chance at it, then I might have stayed," Hallander said. "But considering how things have gone for Timra this season and all the players who have come home, it was a fairly easy choice."
Bjorkqvist also expressed some level of dissatisfaction with his usage in the Penguins' organization after he signed with Karpat in Finland. He thought he had more of an offensive dimension to his game and would have liked more than the bottom-six, defensive role he was given here.
"I am not happy with my time in the AHL," Bjorkqvist said in Karpat's press release after the signing. "Even though I was able to do things that made me promoted to the NHL, my game was still not as good there as I would have liked. I feel like I’m a more versatile player than I was there."
Bjorkqvist, for the record, went on to play on Karpat's third and fourth lines this season and finished 16th on his team in scoring with five goals and five assists in 36 games. He was pointless in Karpat's first-round playoff loss. So, he might just not be the top-six point-producer that he wants to be.
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Kasper Bjorkqvist in a preseason game.
Other "examples" people like to throw out there of prospects snubbing the Penguins' organization are usually based on misinformation, and are often laughable.
One I still see regularly is what happened with 2019 fifth-round pick Judd Caulfield. Caulfield just wrapped up his senior season with North Dakota this year and declared his intention to return to college for a fifth season, an option he had due to the NCAA granting athletes a fifth year of eligibility because of the effects COVID had on multiple seasons. The Penguins then traded Caulfield's rights to Anaheim for the rights to defense prospect Thimo Nickl, and Caulfield promptly abandoned his plans to return to school and signed an entry-level deal with Anaheim.
The misconception is that Caulfield had no intention to sign with the Penguins, so he was traded so they could get something for him without losing him for nothing. That's not what happened. If that was Caulfield's intention, he could have just left school and become an unrestricted free agent this Aug. 15. From a conversation I had with a source in the Penguins' hockey operations department at the time, what actually happened was the Penguins had no desire to sign Caulfield. They saw him as a real project who had a low chance of panning out, and not worth one of their 50 contract slots. Caulfield had the sense that he wouldn't get many contract offers from NHL teams if he did hit free agency, so he was going back to school for a fifth year in an effort to improve his stock and land a contract on the open market afterward. When the Ducks took a gamble on him, Caulfield jumped at the opportunity to sign a contract.
Lindberg is another player who left as a restricted free agent this summer to return to Finland, and is a name I've seen mentioned by fans as an example of another player jumping ship. Lindberg was limited to 26 games in Wilkes-Barre over the last two seasons with multiple long-term, unrelated injuries. When he was healthy this season, he struggled. He was fourth on the depth chart of the four goaltending prospects in the system, behind Joel Blomqvist, Sergei Murashov and Taylor Gauthier. With Gauthier and possibly Blomqvist playing in Wilkes-Barre next season, plus the possibility that a veteran No. 3 may be signed this summer, there was no place for Lindberg in WIlkes-Barre and was highly unlikely to be re-signed anyway.
People have tried using the same "prospects see no future in Pittsburgh" narrative with 2021 seventh-round pick Kirill Tankov signing a two-year extension in Russia last week. But as was explained in that story, Tankov lost all of last season with a broken neck, and so he obviously wasn't coming over to North America yet anyway. He'll still be the Penguins' property after that contract in Russia expires, after which he will hopefully be back at his usual form and have some valuable extended KHL time under his belt.
Other "lost" prospects who weren't re-signed last summer? Forward Jordy Bellerive -- not qualified by the Penguins, didn't get NHL offers from anyone, signed an AHL deal with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Forward Jan Drozg -- also not qualified by the Penguins, took nearly the entire summer to find a contract anywhere, ended up in a bottom-six role for a non-playoff KHL team. Forward Justin Almeida -- not qualified by the Penguins after spending the bulk of his three years in the ECHL, and not even playing anywhere professionally this season. Defenseman Will Reilly -- not qualified by the Penguins, didn't get NHL offers from anyone, signed an AHL contract with the Tuscon Roadrunners. Defenseman Cam Lee -- also not qualified and didn't receive any NHL offers, signed in the KHL with a non-playoff team. Defenseman Niclas Almari -- again not qualified, and signed with a team in Finland. Goaltender Alex D'Orio -- not qualified, didn't have any offers in North America, and signed with a team in the second-tier Swedish league.
The prospects not brought back weren't brought back for a reason.
But what about the total lack of undrafted prospects signed to entry-level deals this year -- surely that's a result of the Penguins getting snubbed by prospects who see no future here, right? No.
When a couple of college free agents who had previously attended Penguins development camps signed NHL entry-level deals elsewhere this spring, I asked someone in the Penguins' hockey operations department if they had made offers to either player. They hadn't. They hadn't seriously tried for any of the prospects in the free agent market, because they saw this as a weak class of free agents with players who were unlikely to pan out, and so not worth one of their 50-contract slots. "They're getting signed, but how many of them will actually become impact players?" I was told.
But last spring and summer, when the crop of free agents was pretty strong, how many did the Penguins sign? Six -- goaltender Gauthier, forwards Corey Andonovski, Ty Glover and Jordan Frasca, and defensemen Jack St. Ivany, Colin Swoyer. That's an absurd amount for one year, and at least several of those players had interest from multiple teams.
Obviously, the Penguins' prospect pool is one of the weakest in the league, if not the weakest. In an ideal world, all of the players the Penguins drafted would work out, and there would also be a wealth of really good free agent prospects on the market each summer to bolster the prospect pool. But that's just not how it works.
As seen by the glut of prospect signings on the free agent market last season, Pittsburgh is still a pretty appealing landing spot for young players. The lack of a strong prospect pool can actually help there, because prospects don't have as much competition for spots.
When young players play well enough to earn a spot, they earn a spot. Sam Poulin and Jonathan Gruden both made their NHL debuts this season. Alex Nylander (who isn't exactly a "young" player at 25 anyway) played his first NHL games in two years after taking some much-needed time to develop his game away from the puck in Wilkes-Barre, and even got a tryout on Evgeni Malkin's wing.
Yes, the Penguins had success in 2016 and 2017 bringing up waves of young players in Wilkes-Barre. The prospect pool is significantly weaker now after years of trading away top picks and prospects. The best players in Wilkes-Barre now aren't on the same level as the likes of Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, and others.
The narrative persists regardless.
