The Penguins' prospects are playing hockey THIS WEEK!

0:00This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Thank you for making Lockdown your first listen every day. For your second listen, go find Lockdown Fantasy Hockey. Steal Rodin and Flip Living Stone provide daily fantasy tips to give you the edge over your leaguemates all while making you a smarter hockey fan. And lockdown fantasy hockey on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lockdown Penguins Listening and Viewing audiences, we are going to get some kind of penguin hockey in just a few days. The team announced its roster for the upcoming prospect challenge in Detroit, so we take a look at who will be playing in the expectation right after this.

1:07Your Lockdown Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. Welcome into the Tuesday edition of the Lockdown Penguins Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Patrick Damp. You can find me on most social media platforms at Synonym for Wet. Join as always by the one and only Hunter Hodes. You can find Hunter on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can also find our show on Twitter at L.O. underscore penguins. You can also find us on TikTok at Lockdown Penguins with training camp blooming, the preseason not far behind it and the prospect challenge in just a couple of days. Make sure you're following us on those social media platforms and be sure to subscribe across all audio platforms as well as YouTube. That way you're getting the latest updates on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Today, we continue our penguins positional previews by taking a look at the team's defense,

2:14but before we do that, Hunter. Rocky is not far away. The team announced today that they have finalized their roster for the prospect challenge in Detroit. They will take on enjoying the Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, and obviously the Detroit Red Wings from September 12th until September 15th. The penguins, they've got the Blue Jackets first on the 12th at 3pm. Then the Red Wings on the 13th at 7pm. Then we've got some early morning hockey on the 15th when they'll take on the stars at 10.30am. There are quite a few interesting names on this roster, including a couple of players who have NHL experience. So Hunter, take us through this roster. Yeah, first off, before we get to the roster, Elite schedule there for the games. Next on Saturday, I get to watch that for Jean-In-Sac versus Old Dominion, and then Arsenal

3:18comes on at 3 o'clock too. I'll have plenty of screens up for that day. Sunday they'll play right after the steers, so you can go right from watching the Pittsburgh steers to watching the penguins prospects. Then you can watch them during work on Tuesday. 10.30. Just pull up another screen in your office. Just put the penguins prospects on there. Once all games will be streamed on the penguins website, that was a concern for a lot of people. Awesome, included because I'm not in the Detroit area. You're not in the Detroit area. So, we would have been screwed if we were not able to watch the games on the penguins website, but they officially confirmed in their announcement that you will be able to stream them on the website. Now, as for the roster, 27 players, 14 forwards, 10 defensemen, and 3 gold tenders, you have ATLIGHT Calvert there, Jordan Sharan is there, Travis Hayes, Tanner Howe, whom I'm really excited to see. Pierce Bowie, who was selected in the third round. But of course, this is headlined by the Rock Twins Liam and Marcus Rock.

4:18They will both be there. Really excited to see them, Carter Sanderson, who was lighting up the Ruling your Summer Showcase this summer. He will be there as well, McEllian will be there, Bill Zahnan is also going to get the chance to show what he can do. Really excited to watch him in this environment. Defensively Pat, you have Tommy Galvest, so he'll be coming over from Chekia. He's been practicing with his team there. He'll come over here, play in this, and then he'll go back to Chekia for the upcoming season. And then you have Finn Harding, who has been in the system for a little bit, Peyton Kettles, who is coming off an injury, but excited to see him. Jake Lidanovich, who played in one game for the penguins this past season. He'll be there as well. And then Matt Vanico-Novitch is there as one of the three gold tenders. And of course, last but not least, Harrison Brunik is on this roster. I will say definitely a bit surprised considering that I think he is probably too good for this type of competition.

5:19That's the best way I can say it. I was just surprised to see him there. I figured they would put another one of the defensemen there. But, you know, Harrison Brunik will probably go out there and dominate this. So that is kind of a good jumping off place. We are going to hopefully, if we have time, talk a little bit more about Harrison Brunik later on in the show since we are going over the positional defense for this season. But that is kind of the expectation. Harrison Brunik should be a man amongst boys at this challenge. He's obviously got nine games of NHL experience, which he got last season. He has plenty now of NHL experience after being one of the baby penguins best defensemen, if not one of their best players during their Colter Cup playoff run. And he is someone whose name is in the mix to make the team out of camp this year. So he has to really go out and dominate this tournament.

6:19Another player that I think you can also apply that to his bills on it. Because we saw how great he was when he joined the baby penguins at the end of the year last year. And he looked more than ready to become a full-time professional player, less than a lot of these guys who you know when you go down this roster that players like the Ruck Twins, they're going to go back to junior Pierce Bowie. He's going to go to juniors and then college. And then a couple others who you know are still a couple of years away from turning pro. So watching this over the weekend and into next week, those are the two names that I'm looking at the closest where these two have to and probably should dominate in this tournament. Yeah, I'm with you on Zonin as well. He was great for junior when he came back from injury last year. He was especially great. And he got to Wilkesbury. We talk all the time how he knew this system right away.

7:21He'd been studying it during his junior season because he expected a call up to Wilkesbury once the season was ended. And then it was a seamless transition for him once he got there at the end of the season into the playoffs. So I expect him to also play well. I also want to see what Jake Livanovich can do. Pappy only got to see one game from him at the end of the season since the penguin signed him. So I think starting this season in the A H L has no A H L experience just yet, but he has plenty of good years in the NCAA, plenty of good years in the US H L as well. How does he do in this environment, considering again that he's probably going to start this season in the A really excited to see what he can do as well. Malik McGowan keep your eye on him as well from the O H L. I liked what I've seen from him before. So that's another name as like a sleeper for this tournament. So definitely keep your eye on him as well. Travis Hayes he's been playing well in the Sioux fourth round pick in the 2025 NHL draft. And then Tanner Hal McKellan would love to see what they can do.

8:24They've obviously had some H L experience to date. So I want to see how they do in this tournament as well. Right now I kind of expect them to also be two of the penguins best players in this environment. But you know, I'm just excited that we can watch their prospects go against these other teams prospects. The goal for them should be to win this thing because the lineup, it's very good compared to where it's been in other years. But especially this year, it's really good. And I think the goal for them again should be to win this thing. That's kind of where I wanted to put a bow on this segment is you look at the other organizations that are going to be involved in this challenge. Obviously you've got the host Detroit Red Wings. We know the kind of issues that they're having right now. They don't have what I would describe as a weak prospect pool, but they have missed on a lot of draft picks and that's been heavily publicized over the past couple of years. We know the Dallas stars are a team that is in go for it mode right now.

9:28They have a couple of guys in their system because that's just what Dallas is good at. They're really good at identifying later round talents that stick around in their system. So overall, you look at the teams involved in this. It's pretty much the penguins in the blue jackets who are the two teams that are going to have the quote unquote deepest prospect pools. So if you're the penguins organization, you want to go into this prospect challenge with the expectation that you're going to win it because you have a couple of players that you expect to hopefully become NHL contributors much sooner rather than later. And you've got a couple of good prospects that you expect to be NHL contributors in a year or two. So these are a lot of players who are further along the development track than they have ever brought to these tournaments in years past. So this is, it's not in the grand scheme of things, all that important, but it is a nice

10:33little bell weather for us to look at and say, okay, where are these prospects right now and how are they reacting to playing in a sort of professional environment? Well, it's way more, I'll say this, you can take way more out of this than you can out of anything the development camp. I mean, heck, I don't really talk about a lot of the drills that you see. Like yeah, it's cool. You see them shoot. You see these passing drills to handling. And you can talk at least a little bit about how some players do during those, the scrimmage tournament, but the players at that point are only going at about 60-ish percent. I think for a prospectormally like this pat, they're going close to probably around 90-ish percent, if not higher. Like they're going mostly full-go and you can take a lot more out of it, which is another reason why I'm excited about this. Other surprise from me, no Gabriel DeG. I thought he would be one of the goalies that would go, but I guess they didn't want to do it. They wanted to put up a couple other goalies there, but you know, I think it's a little bit of a missed opportunity because I wanted to see more out of him, but at the end of the day, it's all like the biggest deal.

11:35I just thought he was going to be on the roster if that's all. I was a little surprised not to see him, but kind of as we talked about on the Monday show, I think we know where he ends up this year. And they're more interested in him getting time and development with the Everblades than it is him going to the prospect challenge. As we talked about yesterday, they have such a solid foundation in net organizationally that I don't think you need to send Gabriel DeG to the prospect challenge and watch him dominate to know, hey, we've got a solid goal tender on our hand. Let's see what he does when he plays in the ECHL rather than in a weekend tournament against a bunch of other prospects. Once again, this is a four day tournament, 12 through the 15th. I'm going to be a little mad because my birthday is on Monday and they're not playing. So I don't get to watch hockey on my birthday. Thanks a lot, Detroit Red Wings, but small potatoes.

12:36We will obviously follow that over the weekend. Be sure to join us on Monday. We'll have a recap of the first two and then we will get you set for the third. We'll react to all of it and any other news that might happen out of it or between now and then, but that'll do it for this first segment. When we come back, it's time to take a look at the penguins defense. We'll do that when we come back right after this. But first, we've got to get to one of our sponsors and that is Odo. Running a business shouldn't feel like you're trying to connect a bunch of systems that were never designed to work together. On that for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to one another. That is where Odo comes in. Odo is an all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together in one powerful platform from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Everything works in one place.

13:37Odo is a platform to manage, grow and scale your business. The best organizations know that success isn't just about talent. It's about having everyone working toward the same goal. That is true in sports, just like it is in business. The penguins, they knew they needed some help on defense. That is what they set out to do this off season. We'll see if it pays off, but you can tell it was not a reactionary move. It was all part of the plan. Great organizations win because operations matter and that is why you should be using Odo. Odo is one platform to manage, grow and scale your business. You can try for free today at odo.com slash locked on. That's odo.com slash locked on. Back here on the Tuesday edition of the locked on penguins podcast, Patrick Damp and Hunter Hodes here with you.

14:37As we were saying, Kyle Dubas made it no secret that this off season defense would be a big focus. You wanted to improve things like shot suppression. Said the team gave up far too many chances. So a big focus this summer was on the defense. So Hunter, let's begin with the newcomers on the blue line. The penguins will have three new faces on the blue line when we get to training camp. Made in Korzac, Declan Carlisle and Trevor Van Reamsdijk. Obviously, we should start with the two young guys, Korzac and Carlisle. Hunter, you and I have kind of looked at both of these players as your Parker, while they're spoon replacement attempts because they come in with the same kind of profile. They were in organizations, Vegas and Tampa Bay respectively, where they didn't have a ton of opportunity to move up the lineup, but you look at their underlying numbers.

15:42You look at the way they played the game. They were two players who looked like they were ready for a bigger role. And there is a chance that they will get those bigger roles here. I agree. And right now I do have Korzac starting this season. Potentially with Sam Gerard. I mean, he's going to be on the third pair to start. We're going to keep Chris Lattang on the second pair, even though his minutes might be cut by another minute or two. But I have Korzac starting the season on the third pair when we did our projected lineup a little bit earlier last week. And his underlying numbers at Vegas were very good. He's very strong in his own zone. He's good in front of his net. And you could tell those were the areas that Kyle Dubus was targeting when he made some of these defensive moves. Now, is everything done yet? No, there's still a lot more work to be done on the back end. Air Carlson only has one year left on his contract. Chris Lattang has a couple of years left. Other players as well are not fully signed here long term. And there's other younger players that are coming to like Harrison Brunick, for example, who have an opportunity to make this team.

16:48Oh, in picturing as well. But, you know, Korzac does make them better on the right sign. I think he will make them better defensively. Declan Carlisle, someone who again played a little over half the season. If he can really hit and be like their next left side version of Parker Walterspoon, that improves their team defense even more in their own zone. I have him starting with Chris Lattang. One of my buddies was telling me he could see him starting with air Carlson. And if you want to flip him and TVR and put TVR down with Lattang, I could see that as well. But personally, I have TVR up there with Carlson right now in Carlisle with Lattang. I just think it makes a bit more sense to make the pairings like that. TVR, you know, more of a veteran can help Carlson out defensively. You can obviously make that same argument for Lattang is more of a veteran defensive presence. But I still think TVR just with the way he plays in his own zone just lets Carlson do his thing offensively. And I just like that in that pair.

17:49And then Carlisle with Lattang, Carlisle more defensively. But you know, Lattang can kind of, what unquote, mentor him a little bit since he's still relatively young in the NHL. So again, those are the pairings that I have. And then we obviously have Owen Pickering who is going to try to make this team Harrison Brunick, Ilya Salova. Salova, Yovye, excuse me, who I have as the number seven. I keep seeing these lineup projections that Ryan Graves is potentially going to be in the top six to start the season. No, I don't see that at all unless he somehow blows everyone away. I can't think of a dead camp in the players above him just having awful camp. I just do not see a way he starts the season as the third pair defense will the left side crazier things have happened, but. No, thanks. No, I think with Graves it would have to be an almost perfect storm for him to make the team, where a couple players above him completely vomit down their their sweaters at camp. And he suddenly comes in a changed man.

18:50Because if you've been listening to the show long enough, you know what I have said about Ryan Graved. First and foremost, I have to continue to give him props for being a professional. It would have been really easy for him to become a toxic teammate, to throw a fit about getting demoted. He's handled it all with professionalism and he's been by all accounts a good mentor for a lot of the players in Wilkes Bear. So credit to him for that. But then the other thing that I have consistently said about Graves is that he needs to pick a lane of what kind of defenseman he wants to be. Does he want to be a skating, puck moving defenseman or does he want to use his size and actually be physical and he has yet to really pick a lane, especially with the penguins. So unless all of that changes going into training camp, you're not going to see Ryan Graves in the NHL this year, I don't believe. The other thing I wanted to say was you look at these three editions of Corsac, Carlisle

19:53and TBR. It's pretty clear that the mission was well stated, understood, and we can't say completed because we've got to see how they all perform. But you look at the players that the penguins have in the system already, especially at the NHL level in Latang, Carlson and Gerard. Those three guys, when given the opportunity, can kickstart breakouts, they will take risks, they will push offensively. The guys that you brought in, they're going to be able to stay at home. They're going to be able to play good defensively and give those guys room to run because we'll talk a little bit more about the returning guys here in the next segment. But the thing that I have consistently said is part of the reason that Latang and Gerard did not work together is because they're very similar. You need Latang and Gerard to have a partner on the blue line that complements them rather

20:58than mirrors them. You can see that a lot last year with that pairing. They both would try to take attempts to kickstart offense, kickstart breakouts, and the penguins would be left up the creek. And the broken knot could defensely either. So when you combine that, it's just too chaotic. That's why you saw them running around their own zone with their heads caught off because they didn't really know what they were doing with one another. They just couldn't read off one another well. And I think that really led to their struggles. That's why both they're more offense-based, and that's why they need someone a bit more steady on their pair. And individually, when both of them have a partner that can stabilize them, they're pretty effective. Even Latang, for all the grief we gave him for last year, when we saw him playing with a partner that actually stabilized them, he started to kind of improve. And when Kool-Ack was here, that really helped him. But then they understandably and smartly for asset management, Flip Kool-Ack.

22:01But at the end of the day, they did not find a replacement. So we will see what happens with those three. But let's take a quick break and talk about those guys. Because there is a lot to talk about with Chris Latang, Eric Carlson, Sam Gerard, Harrison Brunik, and Owen Pickering. So we have got plenty more to talk about with the defense. We will keep this discussion rolling when we come back right after this. Close it out. The Tuesday edition of the Locked-On Penguins podcast, Patrick Damp, and Hunter Hodeys riding here with you. Camp is creeping up on us. The season is not much further out. So we continue the Penguins' positional previews. And today, we continue our focus on the defense. Here let's begin with the guy who was unquestionably the Penguins MVP last season.

23:04And that was Eric Carlson. 75 games, 15 goals, 51 assists, 66 points, top to bottom, great season from him. But here's the thing. He's another year older. He's played quite a lot of hockey in his career. However, he is a pending UFA. So if he does have another big year, this could turn into a good summer for him next year. So I'm really curious to see how Eric Carlson, excuse me, follows up what was a magical season last year. Yeah, I'm expecting another big year from Eric Carlson. At 66 points last year, I know I predicted him to score 70 last season. I was four off. Whatever. I was right in the ballpark. I said last week, I'll say it again here, I'm predicting him to score 70 again this year. I think he has what it takes, damn use.

24:04Really does a great job of playing to his strengths. He has really also gotten some bad habits that were in his game under Mike Sullivan, for example, getting those 30, 70 pinches out of here. And just being a bit more responsible defensively, we all know that that is not his overall game. We all know how great offensively he is, but he was more competent defensively under D. Mews than he was under Mike Sullivan. And Mews also got him back to some roots a little bit with penalty killing. He had penalty killed a lot earlier in his career. For every reason, Mike Sullivan did not want to use him as often on his penalty killing. D. Mews said, okay, well, if you're not going to do that, I'm going to do it. And Carlson was really good on the PK. You always saw some of those pointed comments towards Sullivan that Carlson was just not happy not seeing eye to eye, especially this past season. So, you know, I'm expecting a lot more of this this year. In March, he was not just the penguins best player.

25:06You can make an argument that in that month, he was the best defenseman on the planet with the way that he was carrying the penguins in a lot of these games. So I am stoked for him to carry the load defensively this year. We talked about with Chris Lattang if he can just show a little bit of the fountain of youth. That would be great, but I still would potentially cut his minutes by another minute or two, as I said earlier on in the show. Sam Draard, he obviously has a lot to prove after the way he played down the stretch, Elias Soloviev. He is someone who is going to be hiding the number seven offenseman, but he's still going to get quite a few handful of games. And then we talked about the newcomers, the players that are going to try to make the team is Owen Pickering. Is this his time to potentially make it? Is Harrison Brunek going to make the team even though the right side is really crowded? You have other young defenseman that are going to be pushing here potentially at some point. Jake Lovanovich, we talked about Finn Harding potentially at some point in these two a little bit further away. You know, honestly, these three a little bit further away, you know, Charlie Treffaway,

26:10Tommy Galvest, Peyton Kettles, you know, we can keep going down the list, Parker Von Richter. He's even further away, but they still, they've stocked the cover to hear defensively where there's going to be options down the road, at least not right now, Pat, but down the road. They've done a good job organizationally of getting defenseman in the system that should they develop will be viable NHL options, though none of them save for maybe Brunek have the potential at least right now in my estimation to be the top defenseman. They're not, they're still just like they are at forward searching for that guy. And I will say to your point, I think with the log jam this year going into camp, don't be disappointed to see Harrison Brunek start the year in Wilkes Bear. I do think they probably want him to take on those big minutes in the NHL. They want him to be the top guy for the baby penguins and see what he can do in that

27:12role where he is basically getting used in every situation quarterbacking the power play, being part of the PK, taking on the top pair minutes just to see how he handles it because we talked about it when he got sent back or when he was basically eating press box popcorn for quite a while there. You could see what some of the issues were with Harrison Brunek. His net front wasn't that great. He wasn't really that good on the walls. Went back to junior, worked on it, got a lot better at it, was pretty solid at it in his run with the baby penguins at the end of the year. So for him, I think the unfortunately for us as fans, we're not going to get our toys right away here, but I do think the next best thing for his development is to take on those big minutes for the baby penguins. The last thing I wanted to add because we have talked extensively on this show about Chris Latang, his struggles, what we need to see from him going into this year.

28:16There's no need to continue to pile on it. I am really interested to see though what Sam Gerard does with a full off season, with a training camp now being healthy because there were reports he was hurt. Working with hopefully a defensive partner that compliments him because this guy has been pretty solid throughout the majority of his career. I think the Sam Gerard that we saw in Pittsburgh last year isn't the Sam Gerard we will get. Should they have a steady defensive partner for him and he has a full camp to really acclimate himself to being a penguin. That would be nice. I talked about how learning the system took a bit longer for him. He was a little bit banged up as well. He had a couple of obstacles in his way. You said it was a short sample size. Definitely wasn't good and I'm not going to give up on him or anything like that, but I do want to see, okay, you've had the full off season, you've had your full workout routine,

29:19camp starts next week. How are you showing up? Do you have a good camp? Do you look well in at least one of those preseason games because I don't think he's going to play in all of them. When the regular season starts, can you get back to, we saw flashes of him being at least a little consistent in some of those games. Can you do that on more of a game to game basis now and really help out the team more offensively as they push for more goals in each game? Those are the things I'm going to be looking for with Sam Gerard. We all know that he's not a defense first defense and that's why I have him with some on the Cating Corps Zacus, really going to defend his own zone and who I think can stabilize him. But if he can help especially the rush based attack, that also goes a long way. So not giving up on him, but I got to see a lot more from him to start this season. That's for sure. For sure. I just want to make that clear that I'm not out on him by any means. I do think there is a valuable defenseman there either in practice and you have him on

30:21your roster and he helps you win games or he has a solid stretch for the first month, two or three of the year and you've got yourself a piece that you can move because he's pretty affordable. It's not like you're going to ask a team to take on an anchor of a contract. So it's the kind of player where if he rounds into form this year, it really is a win-win for the penguins overall. But Hunter, unless you've got anything else to add on the defense, that is going to do it. We're back to Daly's. We are here Monday through Friday. So that means we will be back with a brand new episode on Wednesday. We continue the penguins positional previews, but it's going to be a two-parter and we will have part one starting tomorrow. We're going through the army of forwards that the Pittsburgh penguins have in the organization at this moment. We will talk about all of them, the expectations and expectations. And everything else around them. So again, make sure you're subscribed. Make sure you're following us so you can be here for that.

31:22But for now, for Hunter, Hodes, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you as always for tuning in. And we will be back on Wednesday. On Kowshi, you're trading against peers in a live market. Meeting there's no house and as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. For a limited time, you can buy in and out of your position. For a limited time, download the Kowshi app and use code locked on to get $10 when you trade 10. KALSHI Kowshi. Trade on anything. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kowshi.com slash regulatory. Thank you for making locked on your first listen every day. For your second listen, go find locked on fantasy hockey. Steal rodent and flip living stone provide daily fantasy tips to give you the edge over your leaguemates all while making you a smarter hockey fan.

32:22Find locked on fantasy hockey on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Part of the locked on podcast network. Your team every day.