PensBurgh’s 2026 edition of the Top 25 Under 25 countdown continues with defensive prospect Finn Harding, who is coming off his first full professional season with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
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
2025 Ranking: No. 21
Age: 21 (March 2, 2005)
Acquired Via: 2024 NHL Draft; 7th Round, No. 223 overall
Height/Weight: 6-foot-2, 192 pounds
Harding recorded 22 points (four goals, 18 assists) in 54 games with the Baby Penguins
last year.
Before turning pro this season, he had three progressively impressive seasons in the Ontario Hockey League with the Mississauga-turned-Brampton Steelheads. Harding’s 50 assists during the 2024-25 campaign were a single-season franchise record among Steelheads defensemen.
Harding was offered and signed his entry-level contract on March 3, 2025.
Earning regular minutes in the AHL as a 20-year-old is always an impressive accomplishment, even more so when you are the antepenultimate pick in a draft class.
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins head coach Kirk MacDonald attended the Penguins’ annual prospect development camp after the 2026 NHL draft, shedding light on several of his players’ performances last season, including Harding’s.
MacDonald made mention of Harding’s impressive plus-minus number, a statistic that may not hold as much weight as it once did, but still indicates a player being in the right place at the right time, which, to MacDonald, counts for something.
“He just kept getting better,” MacDonald said. “His ability to take coaching, whether it’s video or just instruction on the ice and you could see him go and apply what we talked about. More often than not, he executes at a high level. The more information or analytics that are available, the less people look at plus/minus. But when you’re plus-30 every year, I don’t think that’s an accident either.
“That’s a stat that’s not important until it is. If you’re a really good plus, like Finn has been consistently for the last couple of years, and you’re really in the minus bad, that stat starts to mean something when you start to separate yourself from the herd. I don’t think it’s an accident that he continues to do that.
“He makes a lot of really good plays. He just got better. It’s hard to play in the (AHL) as a 20-year-old, as a young guy and he stepped in and was an every-night guy for us.”
His trajectory from seventh-round dart throw to intriguing defensive prospect in a growing prospect pool can be considered a success. Many seventh-round picks often flame out before even sniffing the AHL, and Harding earned regular minutes in his first pro season.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Harding gets an NHL cameo during the 2026-27 season, given the team’s depth with right-handed defensemen, and another full season of AHL is likely the best path for Harding’s continued development as a 21-year-old.
Harrison Brunicke remains the organization’s top defensive prospect. But Harding is beginning to make a case for himself as another player worth watching at the position, even if the ceiling may not be as high.
