Penguins Prospects Update: McGroarty turning a corner in Wilkes? Brunicke makes Canada selection, Howe emerges

Some updates about the Pens’ top prospects

In lieu of a prospect update this month, we’re going to instead focus on a couple of the biggest and most important developments going on with the Penguins’ top prospects.

It doesn’t get any bigger for the organization than Rutger McGroarty. A late summer trade brought McGroarty to Pittsburgh. He impressed in the prospect tournament in Buffalo, then played a heavy workload of NHL games. Unexpected injuries late in camp to Bryan Rust and Blake Lizotte opened room for McGroarty to make the NHL club as his impressive preseason ended, but the team returned to enough health to send McGroarty down to the AHL for more ice time and development.

As a top player in the NCAA ranks and one of the best in his age group as proven in tournaments like the World Juniors, the funny thing was McGroarty had a very tough acclimation period to the AHL. He didn’t score a goal in his first eight games, and only recorded one assist along the way. His coach said the requisite nice things about player performance being better than point production but the slump was real, and perhaps suggested that McGroarty would require more development time than anticipated.

However, the saga continues and the worm may have turned for McGroarty getting a breakthrough. He has produced five points (2G+3A) in his last six games in Wilkes, and his last game (an assist plus the game-winning goal against powerhouse Hershey) was the best game McGroarty has had this season.

He talked about his early season AHL slump on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins Podcast with Nick Hart:

“I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten off to the start that I wanted here in Wilkes, so I feel like just sticking with it every day, coming to the rink with a great attitude. Lean on everybody around you as well, especially when you have a locker room like this you need to take advantage of that. So come in, laugh with the guys, get back into it. Score a lot of goals in practice and then eventually you’ll pop one and then you never look back. Once you get rolling, you get rolling. The number one thing you need to get your confidence back is you can’t fake it, you can’t go around it. You have to go right through it and just work every single day.”

McGroarty saying “eventually you’ll pop one and then you never look back” and then a few days later scoring a late third period go-ahead goal against the best team in the AHL sure does feel like a launching point towards continued success.

When Pittsburgh acquired McGroarty, an idea was floated that he would be able to contribute quicker than the player he was trade for in Brayden Yager. This may still prove to be true, Yager is younger and won’t even turn pro until the 2025-26 season (where an instant NHL roster spot is not guaranteed). McGroarty was actually acquired because almost any and every prospect ranking service you can find ranked him as a slightly better prospect than Yager. There was reason to hope McGroarty would ascend to the NHL quickly, however penciling a 20-year old with no pro experience on a line with Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin is a big leap.

In this day and age of immediate gratification and expectations of instant results, McGroarty is going to take a little while to develop and round out his game. The first part of the season was reason to wonder exactly what was going on, but the last few weeks have been positive ones and hopefully will serve to launch McGroarty’s pro career.

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The astronomical rise of Harrison Brunicke has taken another step with his selection to Team Canada’s national junior team selection camp ahead of the WJC tournament in a few weeks.

Brunicke’s emergence in Pittsburgh training camp was one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises the team has had in a long time. He fell just short of playing NHL regular season games and was returned to his WHL team for the junior season. Unfortunately, Brunicke suffered a broken wrist a few weeks ago, but luckily he is still in the mix to make the Canadian team.

Simply being named to the selection team is telling of his rise that an 18-year old, mid-second round pick. Of the 10 defenders they are bringing in, one is the 2025 expected top-3 pick Matthew Schaefer. Seven were drafted in 2023. Only two came from the 2024 draft (Brunicke and 11th overall pick Sam Dickinson).

Considering Brunicke was the sixth Canadian defender drafted six months ago, it’s a monumental rise. Hockey Canada was part of Brunicke’s huge leap in 2024 by seeing his strong play at the WJC-18 tournament that helped put him on the radar to become a mid-second round pick, and now Brunicke has a chance to end 2024 by making the U-20 team. Strong and impressive stuff from a player where the future is looking so bright and promising.

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Sticking with the Pittsburgh second round picks from 2024, Tanner Howe is having himself a time following a trade from a bottom-end WHL team (Regina) sent him to the Calgary Hitmen.

Howe has recorded eight points (3G+5A) in just four games with Calgary, after putting up only seven (6G+1A) in 10 games with Regina. Howe hadn’t had much to work with in Regina since Connor Bedard left in 2023, seeing him get to a better team with more skill to work with and immediately popping off with a ton of points is an encouraging signal.

Howe will join Brunicke at Canada’s selection camp. It’ll remain to be seen if he can find a role on this team at age-18 but it has been a positive development to see two Pittsburgh prospects pop up at this camp.