EVAN SCHALL / PENGUINS
Felix Robert, Cam Lee, Will Reilly
PENGUINS
Development camp report: Forrest 'really excited' about prospect pool
By TAYLOR HAASE
Sep 20, 2021 • 12:57 PM
CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins' prospect pool is shallow, there's no denying that.
But with an influx of some good, young prospects like
Sam Poulin, Nathan Legare, Valtteri Puustinen, and
Filip Lindberg making the jump to North American professional hockey, joining a number of returning prospects like
Cam Lee, Will Reilly, and
Josh Maniscalco looking to take the next step in their development, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton should be an exciting team to follow this coming season.
The man leading that group is
J.D. Forrest, who will be entering his sixth season in the Penguins' organization and second as head coach of the team in Wilkes-Barre.
I asked Forrest after Monday's development camp practice about the excitement level surrounding this group of young players who could end up in Wilkes-Barre.
"We're really excited," Forrest said. "A lot of young talent on front, and particularly some of the guys that we haven't seen in Wilkes-Barre who have been in our system, draft picks. And then we have some young guys that are returning, like (
Jonathan Gruden), for example, up front, then on the wings with Legare, Puustinen, Poulin, to mention a few. Even on (defense) with (
Chris Merisier-Ortiz) out of the Q. We feel like we have a lot of young talent there that works really hard, and they're motivated. And hopefully in Wilkes we can teach them the ropes and get them prepared to play for Pittsburgh at some point."
Forrest was asked about a number of those players specifically, and offered his thoughts on their skillsets and what he's seen from them in development camp.
On forwards Sam Poulin, Nathan Legare: "Great all week. I mean, there hasn't been anybody in this camp that we can say, 'Ah, geez.' With Poulin and Legare, they have so much talent, and so much potential and they work so hard. You know, you can see it, they want it so bad. So they've been great to work with on the ice and you can see their skillsets. Legare, his shot's really good. He's a really motivated guy, and so is Poulin. And so it's just a matter of getting those things to translate. Again, you're taking a large step and you've got to be able to play with all the players around you. Those guys will figure it out. How fast they do it? We'll see. Hopefully, it's really quick. You know, it'd be great to see them here. But yeah, we're excited to work with them if they're Wilkes-Barre."
On forward Valtteri Puustinen: "He's got a ton of skill, an incredible shot, a really offensively-gifted player. It's always a challenge going from one place to another. I feel lucky because I played over in Finland for a while, so I can relate to him a little bit. You know, I know a little bit of Finnish, enough to like make him laugh, anyways, when I try. We've got
Kasper Bjorkqvist, we've got
Niclas Almari, we've got
Filip Lindberg as younger prospects that can speak Finnish that have been here that can help them out. And so I think that's going to be invaluable to him. But we're excited to see what he can do over here. On the ice, I think he'll adjust, he's a really smart hockey player, and he's extremely good, offensively gifted. Off the ice, you know, that's a tough one. But he's got a good support system here with with the Pittsburgh Penguins and those younger guys that have that have been around that are Finnish."
On forward Felix Robert: "I think he had a little bit different summer than he has in the past. So we're hoping that's going to help him out a little bit. You know, he's a smaller guy, but he plays like he's seven feet tall, and he'll do whatever it takes. So I think it's another one of those scenarios where he is an extremely good player. We love his work ethic and the way he comes to the rink with a smile on his face, and he's a good guy to be around. After having that last season under his belt, I think he's going to come in with some confidence here, and I'm excited to see how he challenges guys and and pushes. We'll see what happens here as the season plays out."
On defenseman Cam Lee: "Cam just needs some more some more time. He was coming from a college where he was able to kind of dictate what's going on on the ice all the time, and a little bit more freedom, because of less consequences by being punished by his opponent. And last year it was a really good learning situation for him with albeit a shorter season. But it was his first look at real pro hockey, and he was able to figure out the things that translate from where he was before, how to get that to work in the American League. Hopefully we can see some of that in his NHL camp here."
On defenseman Chris Merisier-Ortiz: "Really smooth. He's a heck of a skater. He's got a lot of skill. And he makes good decisions with the puck. It's going to be a little bit of an adjustment for him, from being an older guy in a junior league to now being a younger guy in the professional league. But he can handle that. But we really like his toolset. He's looked good out here."
On defenseman Josh Maniscalco: "Josh just needs to continue to work the way he's been working. I feel with him, a lot of it is decision-making and processing the game. He's another guy that came out of a college where we feel like he had a really long rope to do what he wanted out there, just because he had more talent and a little more physical ability than the other guys. So he just kept getting thrown out there. It's the same thing where if you make some mistakes in this arena, you get punished pretty badly. And he just has to learn when to pick his spots, how to pick the spots, and just play more within a system where the other players around him can have a feel for what he's doing as well."
On defenseman Will Reilly: "Another guy that had a really good season last year, and took a lot of steps. But for him, he's got to find that daily grind element for his game. The American League, the NHL, it's tough every single night. And Will's a big kid, he's strong, and he can play tough. We just need some consistency from him. You know, we really like what he can do with the puck. He's got a great shot. I don't know if you were watching out there, a couple of bombs today. But he just needs to find a consistency in those grinding areas of the game, and we think he can do that."
On defenseman P.O Joseph: "Everybody saw when he came up to Pittsburgh early in the season last year what he's capable of doing. From that, it's just doing it all the time, which is not an easy task, when you play in the amount of games he did, as well as he did. If you're going to have a low game, just not having it so low. That comes with maturity and playing and just having some confidence in that. As far as his build goes, he works really hard on that. He doesn't need to be heavy, he just needs to continue to work on his quickness. He's already quick, the skating, those are the tools that give him success. And he's a real committed guy. He works in the offseason, very hard, and he had a great one this year. I'm excited to see what he can do."
MORE FROM DEVELOPMENT CAMP
• The afternoon followed a different format, with a formal practice first at 10 a.m., followed by a small-area games competition an hour later. Players would go head-to-head three-on-three, two-on-two, or occasionally one-on-one, like here with Maniscalco (gold) and Lee (black):
•
Mike Vellucci took the ice for practice for the first time this camp, while the rest of the NHL coaching staff and management watched from the box above the ice.
Brian Burke joined management in the box for the first time all camp.
• Gruden had one of the highlights of the day, dropping to block a shot at the goal line during one of the small games.
• These were the lines and pairings used in the formal portion of practice, presented in no particular order:
Valtteri Puustinen - Sam Poulin - Jonathan Gruden
Shaw Boomhower - Felix Robert - Kyle Olson
Filip Hallander - Sam Houde - Nathan Legare
Justin Almeida - Lukas Svejkovsky - Josh Williams
Cam Lee - Ryan McCleary
Niclas Almari - Dylan MacPherson
Isaac Belliveau - Josh Maniscalco
Chris Merisier-Ortiz - Will Reilly
• Forrest was head coach of Team USA at the U18 Hlinka Gretzky tournament this summer, and got an early look at some draft-eligible players for next summer. Team USA finished in fifth place.
"You know, it's totally different," he said of the experience. "You've got 17 year olds, and particularly this season a lot of those guys barely had any game time last year with the pandemic and everything. Many weren't able to play at some of the higher levels that those kids are able to play at usually. We had a couple of major junior guys that didn't even play. Not to mention just being out of a bubble after a long time. So it was interesting from that standpoint. And then the hockey itself, it's a great tournament. It's a really tough one, you've got to start off with a bang right away becaue he's so short. We started building but it was just a little bit too late. But the players got better every day. The work was there. And it was really good experience and I hope it will serve USA Hockey well in the future."
•
Sidney Crosby skated on his own with
Ty Hennes in the morning,
more on that here.
• Hennes,
Tom Kostopoulos, and
Andy Chiodo led an informal practice on the other sheet of ice that included goaltenders
Tristan Jarry and
Casey DeSmith, forwards
Sam Lafferty, Zach Aston-Reese, Teddy Blueger, Bryan Rust, Jeff Carter, Kasperi Kapanen, Danton Heinen, Jake Guentzel, Evan Rodrigues, Brock McGinn, Jason Zucker and
Brian Boyle, defensemen
Mark Friedman, Juuso Riikola, John Marino, Mike Matheson, Chad Ruhwedel, Brian Dumoulin, Marcus Pettersson, and
Kris Letang.
• Boyle is the big guy on the black team in this clip who starts skating up the right side of the ice, closest to the boards.
• A group of depth players that included Joseph,
Radim Zohorna, Drew O'Connor, Jordy Bellerive, Jan Drozg, Alex D'Orio also skated after the NHL group, but I didn't get a full head
www.nhl.com
