DK’s Daily Shot of Penguins: Koivunen’s coming?

DK’s Daily Shot of Penguins: Koivunen’s coming?

[Music] It’s one thing to be told that you’ve got all this potential. It’s another thing to be told that you’re playing well, but it’s a totally different level for an ice hockey forward to just plain old light the lamp. Good morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovic of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this. It’ll be Penguins versus Predators at 2:08 p.m. Eastern time over in Stockholm, Sweden. And there will be a second game to that global series Sunday morning at the ungodly hour of 900 a.m. Eastern. But hey, there’s an 11-day span with just two games. So, All Concerned can catch up on all the necessary sleep when they come back with a 4-day break between that Sunday game in Stockholm and their home game next Friday against the Wild. At some point in that span, in addition to the four points against a bad team that are available overseas, one might hope to see one of the team’s most important young players poke his head through what’s become something of a ceiling for him. Vle Koan doesn’t have a goal yet. He’s got two assists in his 10 games to date. He’s also registered 13 shots. And if you want to get a little bit advanced on this, in the limited time that he’s been on the rank, and it’s not extensive, he’s got 124 total minutes of ice time, he’s actually led all of the teams forwards in core C4 percentage. And that’s a simple breakdown of how many shot attempts your team has versus the other team while you’re on the ice. It’s a possession indicator more than anything else. And he’s a possession guy. He’s a control the puck guy. He’s a move the puck intelligently guy, although he wasn’t doing any of that in the first couple games before being sent back briefly to Wilsbury. So he’s here now. He’s starting to do a lot of the right things, but between this and his cameo near the end of last season, he’s still sitting on that goose egg in the G column. Our Taylor Hos is over in Sweden covering this global series for DK Pittsburgh Sports. Quinn and told her he’s starting to feel it a little bit. Yeah, it’s a little bit frustrating. Of course, couple times, last couple games I’m going. So yeah, it’s getting frustrating, but also I know I already had a chances, so I know it’s going to go in some point. So yeah, it’s not just have to play good and just play myself. It’s going to come. Yeah. I would say that those words doveetail very very nicely with his reactions on the rink of late. He’s getting good chances. In a couple of cases, he’s created those chances for himself and chosen to shoot first and just gotten robbed and then he’ll put his gloves over his head or roll his eyes or something visible like that. But I’m here to tell you that I I kind of like it. I like that he’s frustrated not scoring because the first thing that tells me is that he wants to score. Now, while that sounds like a no-brainer, Koan’s traits all tend toward being a playmaking winger. Those are rare in the NHL. Your playmakers tend to be at center. If they’re over on the wings, they’re expected to be the first ones in his own, first ones to go to the net, and of course, the first ones to shoot and score. And when this kid came up last season, my goodness, all he did was pass. It was as if he didn’t even have an interest in scoring. Think Valtter Pinanin to site another Finn. It looked almost like a sequel. Well, this tells me that it probably won’t be that. Quovenant does have a dangerous shot, quick release, accurate placement. Just needs to shoot. Just needs to keep shooting. But there’s another reason you want to see him score. This to me specifically, Kovenan isn’t a player that I want to see bouncing up and down this season. I’m not interested in seeing if he can drive across I80 blindfolded. He’s 22 years old. He’s advanced in his vision and playmaking. And when I see video of him in Wilsbury, it’s not that he’s outplayed the AHL level, but it’s that he’s hit a ceiling there. And you can tell he doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot left to prove there. So, the only way he’s going to push himself up to the next level, his own individual level, is by staying in Pittsburgh. And the best path to staying in Pittsburgh for a forward who is seen as an offense first guy is, you know, biscuit in the basket and all that. Now, my sense, and that’s all it is, and that’s all it should be worth, is that he’s going to hit this thing sooner rather than later. He’s got some family and friends flying across the pond over there from Finland. There’s no way he wouldn’t be thinking about how it was just destined for his first NHL goal to come in front of all of them. But even if it’s after the team gets home or shortly after the team gets home, I also have a sense regarding this young man that you’ll see him just appear more confident in everything that he does. Nobody, nobody, nobody likes skating around with that zero. That even includes defensemen. They just don’t. When we come back, J1Q. For those of you who are doing real work in construction, in a warehouse, if you’re a mechanic, you want reliable, comfortable gear to help you perform well on the job. Brunt Workware’s got you. They’ve got waterproof boots, safety toe, soft toe, pull on, lace up, whatever you need. You can wear them to work, and if they’re not right for you, send them back. I don’t know of any other brand doing that. Brunt was tired of the work wear brands out there cutting corners. You work too hard to be stuck in uncomfortable boots that don’t hold up. So, they built something better. Boots that are insanely comfortable and built for any job site. For a limited time, our listeners get $10 off. Just head to bruntwork.com. Use the code dkports and you’re good to go. After you order, they’ll ask you where you heard about Brunt. Do us a favor here at DK Pittsburgh Sports and tell them it was from this show. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Josh. A good question here, says DK. I think many of us assume that Barker McGroy has a spot in his lineup and maybe he does. But when this team is healthy, where do you think he fits when he comes back? First thing to bring up here, Josh, is that he’s not going to just get healthy and pop into the Pittsburgh lineup. Kyle Dubis has made that clear. He’s gonna start out as he should in Wilsbury and perform his way back up. In other words, what you don’t want to do is just have him go through, I don’t know, five, six games in Wilsberry and he’s not playing well, but he’s fully healthy and you say, “All right, come on up, kid.” And I get that. I think that’s the right move. Especially since I mean I don’t want to sit here and guess at somebody’s health issues and whatever. But if he has what I think he has that’s had him out this long, you want to be really really careful. Now where does he slot? Uh how would he fit in with the current lines? To some extent that’s going to be conjecture and I don’t feel any of us has enough information for that just yet. But, you know, he was up for a handful of games near the end of the season before getting hurt. And I’ll tell you, my expectations based on what I’d seen of him last training camp and last preseason were really exceeded with that final handful of games. I had not raised the bar in my head for him. I felt like his game to an extent lacked direction. It lacked identity and most relevant it lacked productivity. But over his final 20, 30, maybe even 40 games in Wilsbury before that season ending summons, he put a lot of stuff together down there. He earned his way up. I don’t think he earned his way onto the roster at the beginning, but that’s a conspiracy theory of mine that I’ll just let be. I definitely feel he earned it at the end. And what’s more, he earned whatever excitement was being attached to him after that. Why? He created offense. He created it from the boards. He created it from be below the goal line and he went to the net and he did so without hesitation, without extra motivation. I had not envisioned that. So much of his game that I’d seen with my own eyes before that had him, and he and I talked about this quite a bit actually, sliding back to the blue line as a high forward in offensive situations and very comfortably so. Like this was just a thing for him. And maybe you can picture it in your head as I’m saying it, but he likes going back out to the point, usually the left point, sometimes even the right, and creating offense for others from out there. That is a nontypical trait for a winger. Doubly so at the NHL level. But there’s another thing that you want to consider when making this decision, and that’s what’s the right fit for his development. Yeah, they want to win hockey games. I feel like I’m getting to the point where I’m tired of saying that. I’ve been saying it for months. Everyone else has just been saying it for about a couple of weeks now. They’re they’re in this to make the playoffs this year. The group that’s on the ice, including the coaching staff, they are in this to make the playoffs, but that has to dovetail by definition of the bigger picture that Dubis has put in with the development at hand. So whatever it is that you get out of McGory, it’s got to serve both masters, so to speak. McGroy has to be someone who can help the team, but the team’s scenario has to be something that can help him. As such, yes, I could see him getting a chance on, let’s say, for example, Gino’s line, depending on the availability of one or both of the redwoods on his wings. If not, you can create one of those makeshift young guy lines as a third line. You’ve seen that’s been how to an extent Vle Coovenin has been utilized. He got rammed onto the first line his first time up. He was supposed to be able to weather that heading into the start of this season. He couldn’t do any such thing. He goes to the miners for a little bit, comes back up, and now you see that he’s kind of got uh kitty line duties. And you know what? That’s fine, too. You get yourself 12, 13 minutes a game on a line that’s not really expected to do hard checking. And in a role where you’re not expected to do penalty killing, although in McGroy’s case, he’s definitely a PK guy, go ahead and make the most of it. Nobody’s stopping you. Nobody stopped Ben Kindle from showing offense on the third line. That didn’t hold him back in any way. So, I’d be all right with that, too. I appreciate the question, Josh. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Penguins. We’ll have another of these tomorrow in advance of Penguins versus Predators in Stockholm, Sweden. Appreciate you being here. [Music] Amen.

Ville Koivunen seems to be getting closer and closer.

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