Over a year after being acquired, Melvin Fernstrom makes his Top 25 Under 25 debut coming off a season that saw him start in his native Sweden before being brought to North America to hopefully rescue his development from struggles in the Swedish league.
Catch up on the previous entries for this year:
Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25: Graduates and Departed players in 2025 Top 25 Under 25: The best of the rest #25: Chase Pietila, D #24: Ryan Miller, F #23: Finn Harding, D #22: Peyton Kettles, D #21: Zam Plante,
F #21: Brady Peddle, D
#20: Melvin Fernstrom, RW
2025 Ranking: NR
Age: 20 (February 28, 2006)
Acquired Via: Part of the return from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for Marcus Pettersson on January 31, 2025. He signed a three-year entry level contract with the Penguins in June 2025.
Height/Weight: 6-foot-2, 190 pounds
After acquiring his rights from the Vancouver Canucks as part of a package for Marcus Pettersson in January 2025, the Pittsburgh Penguins signed Melvin Fernstrom to an entry level deal a few months later then loaned him back to Orebro of the Swedish Hockey League where he was expected to play out the 2025-26 season and continue his development.
In his first full professional season with Orebro in 2024-25 as an 18/19 year old, Fernstrom put together a solid rookie campaign, posting eight goals and nine assists in 48 games played. The idea was to send him back to Sweden where he could continue his development and ideally build on his success before making the jump to North America.
That plan did unfold exactly how the Penguins and Fernstrom hoped and it ended with him in Wilkes-Barre in hopes of salvaging some of his development.
With Orebro in 2025-26, Fernstrom struggled offensively, posting just three goals and an assist in 36 games before the Penguins jumped in, ending his loan early and brining him to North America and assigning him to the AHL where he spent the rest of the season.
Once in North America and with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, some of Fernstrom’s game started looking more like the season prior than what we had seen during his stint at Orebro to begin the 2025-26 campaign.
In 14 games with the Baby Penguins, Fernstrom didn’t exactly light up the box score, but he was producing at a far better rate than he was in the SHL, recording eight points in those handful of games while playing primarily on the top line before settling into a third line role as his time in the AHL rolled along.
Unfortunately for both Fernstrom and the Penguins, a season of trials was dealt one final blow on March 22nd when Fernstrom suffered what was believed to be an arm injury that knocked him out for the rest of the season, including the entirety of the Baby Penguins run to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Missing out on valuable experience will certainly sting for Fernstrom, especially since he was starting to finds his game again after transitioning to playing in North America. If there is a silver lining to take away from it all, it’s that Fernstrom did seem to handle the move well and was producing in what is typically a more difficult style of hockey than he saw when playing in Sweden.
Per Trib Live:
That said, the campaign wasn’t a complete loss for him as he transitioned to hockey on this continent fairly well when he was healthy. But injuries halted that progress.
It’s important to keep in mind that Fernstrom is still young as he only turned 20 on Feb. 28. He has shown the ability to generate offense while playing against grown men in the SHL and AHL and remains a long-term work in progress.
Fernstrom got a badly needed restart midway through 2025-26. He’ll need another in 2026-27.
While this is hardly the type of season anyone wanted for Fernstrom, all is not lost and he still has time to get his development back on track. Fernstrom won’t turn 21 years of age until midway through the 2026-27 season where he will be hoping to build on the success he saw when he came over to North America.
As always, injuries are unpredictable and there are other issues that can throw a wrench into even the best laid plans, but Fernstrom will benefit greatly from being healthy and entering the new season with at least some of his confidence back after the Penguins made the call to bring him to the AHL rather than let him continue to struggle over in Sweden.
He is certainly a player to keep an eye on in the minors this upcoming season to see how his development continues with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He came to the Penguins as part of a trade that saw a key blue line piece shipped out, so getting the most out of Fernstrom down the line is another major win for Kyle Dubas if it breaks the Penguins way.
