It has been a whirlwind year for Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Jack St. Ivany.
Last May, he signed a three-year extension with Pittsburgh worth $775,000 annually at the NHL level. He made the NHL club out of training camp, and – after struggling through the first month of the season – he was optioned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS) on Dec. 3 to find his game again.
And just four days after his re-assignment, he went down with an injury that kept him out of the lineup for almost two months. It took him a while to get back to 100 percent, both physically and mentally.
Now? St. Ivany is fully healthy and ready to capitalize on the opportunity in front of him and the rest of the squad in WBS. In 32 games with WBS this season, he has a goal and 11 points and is a plus-4, and he has spent a lot of time on the top pairing with Sebastian Aho.
“Injury was unfortunate, and it took a little time to get back,” St. Ivany said. “The first, maybe, five or six games after not playing, it was a little bit of finding myself. And then, I feel like I started to string together a lot of games, and I’m having a really good time here.”
St. Ivany spent 19 games at the NHL level to start the season, registering just one point. But it wasn’t the production that failed to mirror what the Penguins’ coaching staff saw in the 6-foot-4, 205-pound blueliner last season.
A lot of the shortcomings in St. Ivany’s game in the earlygoing this season were in the defensive details that he seemed to handle with a high degree of confidence and execution in 2023-24 to pair with his physicality and skating ability.
Unfortunately, his slow start to the season was a bit of a blow to that confidence, and the coaching staff saw an opportunity to allow him to try and find that again at the AHL level. So they made the difficult decision to option him.
“When I got sent down, it was just a little bit about confidence,” St. Ivany said. “I feel like my game kind of dipped a little bit. The conversations with [the coaching staff] were just that it’s hard as a younger player to re-find that in their experience. And they found that going down to the AHL and playing a lot more minutes is when you can start to develop. So, for me, it’s just about keeping it simple, defending hard, using my feet, and then, it’s just building confidence.”
St. Ivany admitted that the initial disappointment of being sent down did affect him a bit, especially given his situation coming out of the summer.
“I mean, this past summer, signing a three-year contract like I did, it was with the idea that I’d have some runway to make it to the NHL,” he said. “So, obviously, it’s disappointing when you get sent down because it’s everyone’s dream to be there, but you can’t feel too sorry for yourself for too long.
“I just got back at it and started working. I love the game, so it doesn’t really matter where I play. I’m going to have fun doing it.”
McGroarty Scores First NHL Goal In Penguins 5-4 Overtime Loss To BluesThe Pittsburgh Penguins’ 5-4 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday – which gave the Blues their whopping 11th straight win – obviously wasn’t the desired result.
And it’s evident that St. Ivany – like everyone else in Wilkes-Barre – is certainly having fun. The team culture in WBS is top-notch, as pretty much every player at the team’s practice in Pittsburgh on Thursday echoed the same sentiments about how tight-knit the team is. St. Ivany was one of them.
“It’s great,” he said. “Some guys I played with last year, so I have familiarity there. But then, the other guys… it just feels like a college team, almost. Everyone’s young, and everyone’s loving coming to the rink, and it just makes playing really easy when you’re playing with your best friends.
“So, I’ve had a great time. I feel like, down the stretch here, we’ve started to gel together a lot. The best teams, they have that kind of chemistry off the ice… and I feel like we definitely have that.”
The chemistry that the crop of players in WBS has built is clear, and it shows in the results. The team has already clinched a berth in the Calder Cup playoffs, and they are currently vying for a first-round bye down the final stretch of the regular season.
But, at the end of the day, there is still a much bigger picture, and the guys on that team are aware of it. St. Ivany is, too.
Many of the players on what is regarded as one of the best teams WBS has had in the past couple of decades are on the brink of NHL readiness. For many of them, the work that they’re putting into developing a winning culture is something they hope to carry over as they transition to the NHL level.
‘We Have A Close Team’: WBS Penguins Practice In Pittsburgh, Talk Chemistry Of GroupThe Penguins took to the ice for practice on Thursday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry, Pa.
St. Ivany mentioned all the photos on the wall in WBS of players like Bryan Rust, former Penguin Jake Guentzel, and Tristan Jarry – who were part of successful AHL teams when they went through the system – and that they’re in the NHL for a reason.
He knows that a championship-hungry mindset is something that they have to maintain as both a collective unit and as individuals – especially as they start to populate the NHL roster in the coming seasons.
So this Calder Cup run is vitally important to them.
“It’s no surprise that when you win at the AHL level, it usually translates to the NHL level,” St. Ivany said. “So, I think for us, it’s just building that winning culture. And, hopefully – when we all make the jump up – it’s able to translate to the next level.”
Bookmark THN – Pittsburgh Penguins on your Google News tab to follow the latest Penguins news, roster moves, player features, and more!
Read the full article here