The 2026 Pensburgh Top 25 Under 25 listing of the best young players in the organization is now complete, here it is.
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 (bonus): Brady Peddle, D#20: Melvin Fernstrom, F#19: Tanner Howe, F #18: Tomas Galvas, D#17: Pierce Mbuyi, F#16: Jake Livanavage, D#15: Owen Pickering, D#14: Tristan Broz, F #13:
Avery Hayes, F#12: Ville Koivunen, F#11: Hendrix Lapierre, F#10: Markus Ruck, F#9: Mikhail Ilyin, F #8: Joel Blomqvist, G#7: Liam Ruck, F#6: Will Horcoff, F#5: Bill Zonnon, F#4: Rutger McGroarty, F #3: Sergei Murashov, G #2: Harrison Brunicke, D #1: Ben Kindel, F
There are always obvious questions for a list like this to wonder why certain players are in a spot, ahead or behind of others. It’s a tough task to sort through players who may be years away from NHL impact (if they ever get there at all) and others with more limited windows and lower ceilings but a higher chance of adding something at the NHL level in the very near future.
This year, the tiers get messy and feature some overlap of competing priorities and abilities. That’s where some of the art comes in to blend players further out with bright promise against others further along.
Generally speaking, this might help:
Tier One, 1-3: High-end, ready or very near-ready NHL players
Kindel is almost in a class by himself in the organization at this point, a step ahead of everyone else since he’s still one of the youngest and already established himself as an NHL lineup contributor. Brunicke and Murashov both are very close to joining Kindel as full-time NHL players that could be top of the lineup players in the near future. These players may or may not all end up being long-term first line star players, but right now they look like very strong bets to be key contributors and the cream of the current crop when it comes to young players in the organization.
Tier Two, 4-10: Bright prospects a little further away
The Ruck twins, who are scheduled to be in college for the 2027-28 season, are the outliers here where the majority of the rest of the group should be getting chances in the near future to show what they’ve got. Some like Rutger McGroarty and Joel Blomqvist would prefer to push up to the top category (though at this point their overall ceilings aren’t as high-end). Others like Bill Zonnon and Mikhail Ilyin are just getting started in the organization. In general, these players like the Rucks and Horcoff won’t be big factors in the very near future but are a little further out. They’re already well-regarded and have a lot going in their favor but most (though not all) just need a little more time to see how the developments go.
Tier Three, 11-15: Clock ticking on mid-level prospects
The players in this area (Hendrix Lapierre, Ville Koivunen, Avery Hayes, Tristan Broz, Owen Pickering) are getting on the clock for making a move in their individual careers. These players have been pros for several years, all will be at least 23 years old by midseason (some even older still). None have secured NHL spots going into the start of the 2026-27 season. The majority might even be the core players for Wilkes-Barre during the bulk of this season. At some point, it stands to figure that most if not all of these players will get their opportunity as a mid-season call-up during the year. From there, they’ll need to make the most of it to extend the audition. This tier has some guys where it would be really beneficial and perhaps a positive surprise to see a great training camp, but each individual on it is in a spot where they need something to stand out and gain some positive momentum. Only by hockey prospect standards can they be considered old, yet they’re starting to get there. Overall they still hold an amount of short-term organizational value since they should be at a minimum really good AHL players for the team this year, now it’s a matter of seeing, who if, any can make the most of their chances and elevate into something bigger.
Tier Four, 16-25: Distant prospects
At the end of the line are the players that are just starting out their pro careers within the last year (Jake Livanavage, Tanner Howe, Melvin Fernstrom, Finn Harding, Chase Pietilla) or even further out and playing outside of the Pens’ organization for at least the coming season (Pierce Mbuyi, Tomas Galvas, Peyton Kettles, Zam Plante, Brady Peddle, Ryan Miller). Unlike the tier above them, they are young or inexperienced enough to where time is more on their side as far as future developments are going, considering most in this year has been drafted within the last two years. This area needs to simmer for at least another year or two and hopefully they will put together some tractions as they work their way into the NHL picture one day from the bottom of the rankings.
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Overall for the Penguins, the future looks bright. This T25U25 list is the best one for the Penguins in many moons, it wasn’t so long ago that admittedly there were some very long longshots found in the top-10 simply due to a lack of material in general (Isaac Belliveau, Filip Lindberg, Jonathan Gruden come to mind from 2021-23).
Further, even better is that Pittsburgh has acquired several young-ish players that are a little older than these prospects. Somewhat recent additions of Arturs Silovs, Egor Chinakhov, Nick Robertson, Declan Carlile, Kaeden Korczak and Elmer Soderblom are players now in the 25-26 age range that will contribute to the NHL this season and possibly beyond in some cases. They didn’t make the aged-based cut-off to be showcased in our summer series but they still represent a big chunk of the NHL roster that will be important for the short and mid-range future.
The other piece of good news is that more young talent should be flowing in the neat future. The Pens have all their future first round picks as of now. They’ll get the Rangers’ second round pick in ‘27 and have two additional second round picks in 2028 (Dallas and Colorado) to have as many as seven future top-50/60ish picks that will be added to the organization over the next 22 months. That’s subject to change based off any further future trades, but even that outlook could be considered to grow if any veterans are dealt away for high draft picks in the coming months and years.
It takes a long time for an NHL team to build up and see the long pipeline take 18-year old draft picks into what hopefully becomes young NHL-caliber talent over a 3-4-5+ year development period. The Pens are firmly investing in their development and the younger side of the organization to help pickup the mantle whenever the end of the Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin era wraps up. In the big picture, the team could use a few more elite talents that project as high-end players, but this summer’s feature put a spotlight that the team is stocking up in a big way in quantity of some pretty decent talent that they will hope to develop in the period that lies ahead.
