Seventh round: Cullen likes Swanson pick

LAS VEGAS -- Matt Cullen has a few jobs. He's a player development coach for the Penguins, working with prospects and rostered players alike throughout the year, mainly on a virtual basis.

But Cullen is also a part-owner of the USHL's Fargo Force, and is on the ice with the team on a regular basis for practices in a skills coach role. Fair to say, he knows the players pretty well. And he endorsed one of them for the first of the Penguins' two seventh-round picks.

The Penguins selected Force forward Mac Swanson seventh overall on Saturday here in Las Vegas. Swanson, 18, is a left-handed shot who can play center and wing. He's listed at 5 foot 8 and 167 pounds and is from Anchorage, Alaska.

"Matt speaks very highly of Mac," Penguins director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor said with a smile after the draft. "He's a big fan."

It's not hard to see why.

Swanson spent the last two seasons in Fargo. In his rookie 2022-23 USHL season, he had great production with 12 goals and 43 assists in 57 games, plus another three goals and seven assists in nine games as Fargo went on to lose in the Clark Cup Final to the Youngstown Phantoms. This year, Swanson hit another level and scored 26 goals and 51 assists in 55 games. He led all forwards in assists, was named the USHL Forward of the Year, and the USHL Player of the Year.

He scored five goals and 12 assists in 12 playoff games as Fargo won the Clark Cup over the Dubuque Fighting Saints, and Swanson won the award for Clark Cup MVP.

"He's just a really exciting hockey player to watch," Pryor said. "He's small, but he's competitive. He's highly, highly skilled and highly intelligent. We were excited to get him, especially where we got him."

The Elite Prospects draft guide called Swanson a "top-10 passer in the draft class."

All these accolades, all this praise, there's got to be a catch, right? How does a prospect at that level fall all the way to the seventh round.

It's his size. He's small. There aren't exactly many 5-foot-8 forwards. One NHL scout told Elite Prospects early in the year that Swanson "is a good kid. The feet are there and the skill level is high.But he’s just too small.”

Swanson's size doesn't seem to be holding him back at the junior level any. But it could start to be a problem when he turns pro and the opposition is bigger, older and stronger. He's got a ways to go before he even makes that move to pro hockey, though. He'll be a freshman at the University of North Dakota in the fall, and through the next couple of seasons he'll at least have some time to add more strength.

Not a lot of seventh-round picks pan out. That's just how it is -- these picks are like lottery tickets. Might as well take a swing at a higher-ceiling, skilled player with that chance.