Let’s jump back in time to the 2021 prospect pool for the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was not a very good time for the youth in the organization, considering that the Pens only made one first round pick from 2016-21 during their period of maximizing the contending window in those days. Part of the price for banners that will hang forever is a willingness to sacrifice assets for the future.
As you’ll see in the list, the Penguins did that in a major way. Pittsburgh ranked 29th in prospects rankings from The Athletic in Feb. 2021 and were 29th again in Feb. 2022. Not much was expected, and now a few years later it’s clear that lived up to the billing with only three players currently in the NHL and minimal overall impact from the pool at this time.
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#25: Santeri Airola: I always liked Airola’s style as a puck mover in the limited looks from the summer development camps he attended in Pittsburgh. In the end, he never signed in North America and has played in the Finnish league his whole career. Now 25, he had his best season for producing points in 2025-26 for SaiPa Lappeenranta with 34 (11G+23A) in 57 games. In the end, he turned out to be a pretty decent player in that league.
#24: Jan Drozg – Drozg stayed in the Pens’ organization until 2022, mostly as an AHL player. Then came four middling years in the KHL before going to the Austrian league in 2025-26.
#23: Will Reilly – Reilly also stayed with the Pens in the AHL through 2022, won the ECHL Kelly Cup with Florida in 2024 and last year played for the KHL team in Shanghai. Pretty interesting career journey for him.
#22: Clayton Phillips – A former third round pick in 2017, Phillips never got his career on track. He only played one game with WBS in 2022 after finishing up at Penn State. He then played for two different ECHL teams in 2022-23 outside of Pittsburgh’s organization and retired.
#21: Chase Yoder – Always saw a lot of Brandon Tanev in the fellow Providence product of Yoder, but he didn’t grit/effort his way to the big time. The Pens didn’t sign Yoder, who finished up his five collegiate seasons in 2025. Last year was his first pro year, split between ECHL (27 points in 39 games) and AHL (five points in 23 games) on an AHL contract.
#20: Kirill Tankov – Tankov, only 24 years old, still has his rights retained by the Pens but it doesn’t look like he’s in the plans for the NHL team. His career hit a bump in the road after suffering a neck injury in 2022, but he did graduate to a full-time KHL spot this season and scored 13 points in 42 games.
#19: Raivis Ansons – Ansons has hung on the very fringes of the organization, he got an entry level contract but couldn’t win a full-time AHL job by the end of it. He signed an AHL contract with Wilkes for 2025-26 and again split time between the ECHL/AHL this year. He has played two playoff games in the current WBS run, but has mostly been a depth player/scratch.
#18: Lukas Svejkovsky – A fourth round pick in 2020, Svejkovsky found his high scoring rates in the WHL and ECHL couldn’t be carried up to the AHL level (19 points in 66 games split over two years with WBS). He’s played in Finland the last two seasons.
#17: Judd Caulfield – Caulfield was traded to Anaheim and has spent his entire three-year pro career with their AHL team in San Diego. Now 25, he did set career-highs in goals (17), assists (21) and points (38) this season, proving to be a decent AHL option.
#16: Jonathan Gruden – Gruden looks like he peaked in 2023-24, playing 13 games with NHL Pittsburgh as an injury call-up. Since then, it’s been a downward trend – his role and points went way down with Wilkes in 2024-25 as organizational priorities shifted and he was traded to New Jersey. Gruden’s spent all his time in the Devils organization with their AHL team in Utica as a nice AHL option.
#15: Kasper Bjorkqvist – Injuries did a number on the 2016 second round pick, who opted to leave the Pens’ organization in 2022 and head back to Finland where he’s played the last four seasons with fairly middling stats (three goals and 12 points in 30 games in 2025-26).
#14: Jordy Bellerive – Another instance of injury derailing a career, Bellerive was never able to get back on track after an off-ice injury. He played in the AHL until 2024, with the Pens until 2022 and ended up playing in the Swedish lower league in 2024-25 and signed with a Slovakian team in 2025-26.
#13: Cam Lee – Lee has played in the KHL for the last four seasons after leaving WBS in 2022.
#12: Drew O’Connor – O’Connor is a rare success story for this pool, scoring 17 goals for NHL Vancouver last season and working on a $5.0 million contract ($2.5m per year). He improved his skating enough to become a solid NHL player.
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#11: Joel Blomqvist – Blomqvist has been with AHL Wilkes the last three full seasons. He’s worked his way towards being one of the better goalies in that league, only to find himself passed up by a younger prospect who has been a little better in Sergei Murashov. His upward path might be blocked now, to no real detriment of his own with his contract running out this summer. Where his future plays out will be interesting to see.
#10: Isaac Belliveau – Belliveau played two seasons with PIT, split between ECHL/AHL, then was traded to Buffalo. He was able to avoid the ECHL but only appeared in 36 AHL games this season for Rochester. He’s another player who has been great in the Juniors and ECHL as far as production and role but struggled to make much of an impact in the AHL.
#9: Calle Clang – Clang was traded to Anaheim as part of the Rickard Rakell trade. He’s made his way up to being AHL San Diego’s most used goalie in 2025-26 but his stats look unremarkable with a career AHL save percentage under .900.
#8: Filip Lindberg – Lindberg played 26 total games with WBS from 2021-23 then the goalie opted to go back to his native Finland where it looks like he’s held down a backup position for four different teams in the last three seasons. His high ranking was the result of being dominant in college from 2019-21 at UMass but his path didn’t stay in that direction much longer.
#7: Nathan Legare – A member of the NJD organization since 2024, Legare has been remaking his game from scoring forward into a physical lower liner. He’s played four total NHL games with the Devils in the last two seasons, working mostly out of AHL Utica where he scored 13 goals and 20 points in 65 games this season. Skating concerns and a lack of scoring touch ended up limiting the ceiling for the former third round pick.
#6: Tristan Broz – It feels like Broz, still just 23, has been around forever. The 2021 second round pick spent three years at college and has become one of the better and more clutch players in the AHL (11 points in 13 games on the current WBS run). Unfortunate timing on injury/illnesses has limited him to only one NHL game, though there could be more ahead in the near future.
#5: Valtteri Puustinen – Always a prevalent point producer in Finland and the AHL, Puustinen got a serious look with Pittsburgh and scored 20 points in 52 games in 2023-24. It didn’t quite come together for him for long at the NHL level and he was traded to Colorado – where he is still active on the AHL Eagles playoff run (giving the possibility of Puustinen to play WBS in the Calder Cup Finals, if both win their current series).
#4: Filip Hallander – Hallander’s had quite the journey, playing mostly in the AHL from 2021-23, opting to sign with a Swedish team where he spent two seasons, and then a return to the NHL in 2025-26. A blood clot issue shut down his season in November, what happens from here with that remains outwardly unknown. He is under contract for 2026-27 with Pittsburgh and could be a fringe player in the lineup, assuming the health situation is cleared. Seemingly just as easily, he might not be an NHL option with other younger players pushing for a lineup spot, plus re-signings of players like Connor Dewar and Blake Lizotte.
#3: Samuel Poulin – Poulin’s time with the Pens came to an end late in 2025, being a part of the Stuart Skinner/Tristan Jarry trade. He didn’t sniff NHL Edmonton for the rest of the season, playing 49 games with AHL Bakersfield to wrap up the year. Poulin qualifies as a Group VI unrestricted free agent this offseason, his next step remains unknown at this point.
#2: Pierre-Olivier Joseph – Appearing mostly as an AHL player from 2019-22, Joseph made the jump to full-time NHLer in 2023. It’s been spotty since then, changing teams three times in the last two seasons. He caught on with Vancouver for 2025-26 but was a depth player appearing in 31 NHL games for the worst team in the league. His contract is up, Vancouver could opt to keep his rights as a restricted free agent if they choose to do it under new management.
#1: John Marino – Marino was traded to New Jersey in 2022, endured some up and down seasons and was moved to Utah in 2024. He’s appeared to find a good fit with the Mammoth, appearing in the second most TOI for them in the playoffs and a close third in the regular season. In 2025-26 Marino finally broke his single-season point best of 26 from his rookie year with the Pens in 2019-20, where he scored 36 points. Amazingly, he’s still got one more season to go on the contract that Pittsburgh signed him to back in January of 2021, which is like a hockey lifetime ago considering all the changes to the Pens and for Marino since that point.
