We are back once again to try to rank the Pittsburgh Penguins top players under the age of 25.
What are the qualifiers?
When we created the list last year most people felt it should be a way to get to know prospects that we don't get to see very often. However, this year it has been suggested that some would like to include players even if they are experienced. So like last time, it is up to you to decide how you want to rank the prospects, if you want your list to be just prospects, then make it just prospects, but if you want to include more experienced players, go ahead and do that. It is your opinion, there are no right or wrong answers, so you go ahead and create the list how you see fit. The only hard limit is players that are under 25 years old this season.
We are sticking with a strict Under 25 rather than 25 and Under, since it was indeed unanimously agreed upon last year that we do it that way, the one area where we could all actually agree. And while experience cutoffs are of personal preference, use them if you like or ignore it if you would prefer, I will list the players by experience cutoff if you care to do it that way. The highest such cutoff is the one used by Hockey's Future, which says that once a player takes part in 65 NHL games they are no longer considered a prospect. The next step down is the NHL Rookie qualifications, which state that a Rookie is a player who has played in fewer than 25 NHL games. And last and most recently discovered is that the Penguins themselves use a 10 NHL game cutoff to separate players they consider to be prospects.
How should they be ranked?
Again this is a personal preference, we can't seem to get everybody to agree on the best way to do so. Some people prefer to rank players by where they stand right now, how likely are they are to contribute to the NHL this season. Others would rather rank the players by pure potential, where they stand if they are able to achieve their maximum potential. So when you create your list feel free to use which ever criteria you prefer. We will compile all of the lists into a consensus total to create our final list.
Who are our players?
Players that are both Under 25 and Rookies
Goaltenders - Tristan Jarry, Matthew Murray, and Sean Maguire
Defensemen - Dane Birks, Ryan Segalla, Jeff Taylor, Derrick Pouliot, Harrison Ruopp, Scott Harrington, Reid McNeill, Brian Dumoulin, and Philip Samuelsson
Forwards - Kasperi Kapanen, Anthony Angello, Jaden Lindo, Sam Lafferty, Blaine Byron, Jake Guentzel, Theodor Blueger, Troy Josephs, Oskar Sundqvist, Matia Marcantuoni, Jean-Sebastien Dea, Anton Zlobin, Dominik Uher, Josh Archibald, Bryan Rust, Scott Wilson, Tom Kuhnhackl, and Adam Payerl
Players that are Under 25 but have 65+ NHL games played
Defensemen - Olli Maatta and Simon Despres
Forwards - Beau Bennett