Penguins get promising glimpse of future in impressive season-opening win

It has been more than 20 years since the Pittsburgh Penguins have had to go through an actual rebuild, but after three straight non-playoff seasons, the time has arrived for them to do it again. Even though they still have a handful of future Hall of Famers (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson) on the roster, and even though have been one of the NHL's most successful teams since the start of the 2005-06 season, it is pretty clear this season is all about a youth movement with an eye toward the future. 

The Penguins got a promising look at that future in Tuesday's 3-0 season-opening win against their former head coach, Mike Sullivan, and the New York Rangers. For the Penguins, first-year head coach Dan Muse earned his first win as an NHL head coach after serving as an assistant for the Rangers a year ago.

While the coaches made the headlines pregame, the game itself was all about the players. Specifically the Penguins' young players. 

Penguins youth makes promising debut

The Penguins spent the better part of the past two decades going all-in on potential Stanley Cup runs, and it is impossible to argue with the results. During the Crosby-Malkin-Letang era, the team appeared in four Stanley Cup Finals and won the Stanley Cup three times, and it had a nearly unmatched run of success over that time.

The trade-off with all of those all-in seasons is that it depletes a farm system by trading draft picks and prospects. It reached the point two years ago where the Penguins had one of the worst farm systems in the league and almost no young talent on their roster.

A lot has changed over the past year-and-a-half in that regard, and the Penguins now have a rapidly improving farm system (with still a lot more draft picks in the coming years) that has gone from the bottom of the NHL into the middle of the pack. There is an actual young core of talent making its way into the NHL, and Tuesday's lineup featured five players age 24 or younger.

That list included:

• 18-year-old rookie forward Ben Kindel (the No. 11 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft)
• 19-year-old defenseman Harrison Brunicke
• 22-year-old forward Ville Koivunen
• 24-year-old goalie Arturs Silovs
• 24-year-old forward Philip Tomasino

That list will grow when 21-year-old forward Rutger McGroarty (one of their best young players) returns from injury at some point in the near future. Pretty much all of those young players stood out on Tuesday. None of them looked out of place.

Silovs, who was acquired in an offseason trade with the Vancouver Canucks, was rock-solid by making 25 saves in his shutout performance, while Koivunen had some strong chances and just missed his first career NHL goal when he rang a shot off the post in the second period.

The two most impressive performances from that list, however, were the two teenagers: Kindel and Brunicke. 

It remains to be seen whether or not they will play the entire season in Pittsburgh or get sent back to their junior league teams. However, not only did neither one of the look out of place on Tuesday, but they were among the Penguins' best players. They were also trusted in clutch situations in the third period to help protect what was, at the time, a 1-0 lead. That is unheard-of responsibility for players that age, and they handled it with poise and confidence.

They are the players who have the type of upside that could make them the focal point of the next great Penguins team in the future. They are still a long way from reaching that point, but Tuesday was an outstanding debut for both of them and the team as a whole. They did not just beat the Rangers; they significantly outplayed them and completely locked the game down in the third period in a way recent Penguins teams have not. It has to make Penguins management and their coaching staff extremely excited.