It has been a long time since the Pittsburgh Penguins have had a couple of legitimate, young NHL prospects that are worth getting excited about. The start of the 2025-26 season has brought two of them
to Pittsburgh in 19-year-old defenseman Harrison Brunicke and 18-year-old forward Ben Kindel (the No. 11 overall pick in this year’s NHL Draft). Not only did both players make the opening night lineup, but they have each played five of the first six games of the season and been among the Penguins best players.
They have not been just good for teenagers; they have just been good. Period.
Now the Penguins are getting close to having to make a decision on both of them. They have four games for each of them to decide if they want to keep them in Pittsburgh for a full season and use an entire year of their entry-level contracts, or if they want to save that year and send them back to their junior teams.
The play of both players has made it a way more difficult decision than anybody could have anticipated before the season, especially as it relates to Kindel who was not even projected to make the team entering training camp and the preseason.
There are arguments for and against both decisions.
So let’s take a look at them.
The arguments for sending both players back to Juniors
The argument for sending them back to juniors at this point basically revolves around proper player development and what that might look like.
They are both still teenagers. There is no need to rush the process with them, especially when their early play has simply been a five-game sample size. A lot can change very, very quickly in professional sports, and early season small sample sizes can sometimes be extremely noisy.
Will they still be playing this well after 15 games? After 25 games? After 35 games? After 45 games?
What happens if you keep them here and they hit a rookie wall, start to actually look out of place, and now you have wasted a year of their entry-level contracts before they were ready for it on what is likely to be a bottom-level team? Not exactly ideal.
The Penguins do not necessarily need either of them to be here and be good this season. They need them next season, or the year after, and certainly the year after that.
In Brunicke’s case, he’s a defenseman, and he’s still only 19 years old. Asking a 19-year-old defenseman to play a full season in the NHL is a massive step in development from junior hockey. In the salary cap era only 29 different defenseman have played more than 60 games in a season at the age of 18 or 19. That’s maybe one or two players per year that get that.
With only a handful of exceptions almost all of them went on to be at least steady NHL players. Several of them have gone on to be stars and high-level players. Brunicke might very well end up being one of the high-level players.
In Kindel’s case, the biggest argument I have heard for sending him back is that he simply needs to get bigger and bulk up. Which is fair. He is still only 18 years old and does still have room to bulk up.
A non-No. 1 overall pick going straight from the draft to the NHL is rare. It’s not unheard of it. But it’s rare. There were only two players in the 2024 class that played more than 20 games in the NHL a year ago, and one of them was No. 1 overall pick Macklin Celebrini. The other was No. 2 overall pick Artyom Levshunov.
There are only five players from the 2025 class in the NHL right now, and only two of them (Kindel and No. 15 overall pick Braeden Cootes) were picked outside of the top-five.
It would not be a knock on either player to go back to juniors for the rest of this season. It would be expected given recent prospect and player development around the league.
The arguments for keeping both players in the NHL
While there are certainly valid arguments for sending both players back to their junior teams, there are just as many, if not more, valid arguments for keeping them in Pittsburgh all season.
The most obvious is that, even with the small sample size argument, they have simply looked good enough to be NHL players. Right now. Brunicke has had some hiccups at times, but he’s also been statistically speaking and analytically one of their most effective defensemen. Kindel has some of the best underlying numbers of any player on the team, and has mostly done so while driving his own line. He has not been a passenger next to Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. He is driving the bus for his line.
Even though it has only resulted in one goal for him, the offensive instincts and talent have been on display. His defensive game is far more advanced than you would expect for an 18-year-old.
They pass the analytics test and the eye test backs it up.
If both of them are good enough to be in the NHL and play well, what can they possibly gain by going back to dominate 16-and 17-year olds for a full season?
They are not simply holding their own here. They have belonged. They look like they belong. Right now.
If the argument — especially in Kindel’s case — is for physical development and getting bigger, I would even argue there is added benefit to being in the NHL for that. I mean this as no shade or hate to the Calgary Hitmen or the Western Hockey League, but having access to NHL equipment, NHL training, NHL trainers, NHL nutrition and everything that professional hockey has to offer is probably going to do more for him in that regard than being back in the Western Hockey League.
If you are worried about the rookie wall, you can absolutely keep both players on a pitch count so to speak and occasionally keep them out of the lineup.
I am also not overly concerned about the year of the entry-level contract. The goal is to develop them into good hockey players, and if they can get a year of NHL experience, go through some growing pains and become better NHL players faster, that is only going to benefit both them and the team when the team is ready to seriously compete again in the coming seasons. The Penguins also have almost no long-term contract investments — at least not significant ones — and with the salary cap significantly increasing, they have more than enough salary cap flexibility to handle a contract extension or two a yearly if they needed to do that.
The Penguins have four more games for each of them to decide what to do. Maybe those four games help make the decisions easy for them. As things sit right now, however, there is very good reason to strongly consider letting them play the season here. If nothing else, it would make the season even more interesting to watch.
