A team of only Pittsburgh Penguins’ draft picks

Saw this on PPP, how good of a team can you create using just draft pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins? It’s a fairly fun August exercise so let’s get to it, with some help from hockeydb.

Lines:

Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust

Dominik Simon - Evgeni Malkin - Kasperi Kapanen

Teddy Blueger - Jordan Staal - Josh Archibald

Tom Kuhnhackl - Oskar Sundqvist - Daniel Sprong

Reserves: Scott Wilson, Beau Bennett

***

Jake Muzzin / Kris Letang

Olli Maatta / Alex Goligoski

Scott Harrington / Robert Bortuzzo

Reserves: Derrick Pouliot

**

Matt Murray

Marc-Andre Fleury

—

Well you can see why Jordan Staal wanted out of Pittsburgh, not too much winger talent has been drafted by the team over the years. You can mitigate that easily with trades (hi Phil Kessel and Patric Hornqvist and even Conor Sheary) or free agent signings, so it’s not the end of the world. But it does speak to an organizational weakness that besides Guentzel, Pittsburgh really hasn’t developed a lot on the wings.

Good thing the team hasn’t had two generational forwards they need to find linemates for or anything.

On defense, well, Ray Shero’s big strategy of drafting a ton of playmaking defensemen didn’t really pay off in NHL assets. Former first rounders like Simon Despres, Joe Morrow, Derrick Pouliot have all flamed out or are on the fringes of the NHL, many bouncing around and falling out of multiple organizations.

Oh well, at least we can reclaim Muzzin (a Pens draft pick who didn’t want to sign with them). And I’m sure many will be happy with the returned goalie situation of getting Fleury back!

What do we think of this team - make the playoffs? Win a round or two? Go all the way?