The Pittsburgh Penguins have had many a pleasant surprise over their first 17 games. They’ve gotten a lot of life out of mid-level free agent signings like Justin Brazeau, Anthony Mantha and Parker Wotherspoon. Arturs Silovs has looked the part of an NHL goalie. Tristan Jarry and even Ryan Graves have started upon redemption journeys, no matter how modest or long-lasting they might be. Evgeni Malkin has seemingly turned back the hands of time. Erik Karlsson is playing like he has something to prove. Sidney Crosby is, well, you can’t be too surprised that he’s still the best player on the ice most nights but at 38 it’s still something to see.
The progression of Ben Kindel, however, is arguably their finest and most pleasant surprise of all so far. No one had him even close to the NHL radar in 2025-26 (though, hey, at least we were able to raise the possibility of the unexpected)
Those seven other forwards who fit in the category are Zach Benson, Cole Sillinger, Ryan O’Reilly, Patrice Bergeron, Dustin Brown, Justin Williams and Sykora. Of those, only the first two have had their rookie seasons in the last 15 years.
Not only is Kindel making it, he’s excelling. It’s early, small sample, blah blah but Kindel has stepped right in and looked the part of a player who can drive his own line and now has stepped up to the first line to play on the wing. Kindel’s two-way play was touted coming out of the WHL just as much as his ability to produce points and that has been the case thus far in his first 15 NHL games.
Of the others, here are some stat lines for their rookie years:
These players, of course, were far from finished products even though it is rare to even show enough to stick in the NHL from this age without being a top-10 draft pick. One commonality amongst these players seems to be a defensive conscious, Beregron won six Selke trophies in his career, O’Reilly has won the award once. Brown and Sykora picked up Selke votes in their careers and were known as reliable players off the puck, as was Williams. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Kindel joins them to at least find his name on Selke ballots in the future if he eventually grows into a penalty killing center as his career blossoms. That makes sense on the surface level, if a young player is going to make it right off the bat they have to instantly create some trust away from the puck and demonstrate a good compete and detail level to their game beyond their young age.
As the stats above show, there’s a lot more offensive upside for the players to find. Most of the rookies ended up in the 25-30ish point range as draft+1 NHLers and almost all of them eventually found their game grow into being 60+ players (including Benson, who got to 60 in his second season). That hasn’t always been the case — Sillinger has no more than 33 points over his four NHL seasons and may never reach the levels that just about everyone else did but the track record there is fairly strong and shows a clear path about a promising future is ahead for young Kindel.
Of course, one doesn’t need this article to realize all of that, the eye test is showing in spades the impressiveness in Kindel’s game. It was only a month ago when the Pens’ coaches had a plan to cycle Kindel out as a healthy scratch at times to keep him from getting overloaded. Plans can change, Kindel has played the last eight games in a row and more all the time (scoring five points and averaging 16:30 per game while playing more minutes each game in the last four games than he played in all of his first 11). The scratches have gone away because there hasn’t been a need lately to give him time off.
Kindel has been able to handle what the Pens have asked, whether that’s been centering his own line or now moving up to play wing with Crosby. For someone drafted outside of the top-10 and won’t turn 19 until after the regular season ends that could be the biggest and best surprise of them all this season in Pittsburgh.