Every summer we take a look at the top young players within the Pittsburgh Penguins organization in our Top 25 Under 25 feature. The list is meant to be less predictive of the future and more of a snapshot in time for how players stack up in terms of their value today when attempting to create the trick of sorting recently drafted teenagers against older prospects with limited ceilings but potential short-term NHL contributions.
While the Pens’ system these days is still in the early stages of getting restocked, significant progress has been made in recent years to deepen and boost the system with talent. Past moves under different strategies often burned up high draft picks in exchange for immediate NHL help when the team was contending or attempting to do so as late as trading away their 2024 first round pick. That has gone the other direction in recent years with Kyle Dubas acquiring and stockpiling an impressive amount of picks for the future as the team shifts into a more developmental part of their cycle to reset the base of the organization with youth.
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However, there is some culling of the herd as players end up moving out of the team’s purview. Today’s focus takes a peak at some of those reasons for the players who made last year’s list that will no longer be on this year’s T25U25 due to turning 25 and aging out, getting traded or opting outright to not sign with Pittsburgh.
#24 Cruz Lucius
Lucius is technically still a member of the Pens’ reserve list until August 15th, at which point he will become a free agent. He has made it clear to Pittsburgh that he won’t sign with them and will move on and start his pro career with another team, so we’re going to go ahead an pre-emptively move him into the departed category at this point. That’s a minor blow for the Pens, the 22-year old Lucius saved his best college season for last with a 46-point effort in 36 games last year with Arizona State. They wanted him to turn pro with them, he’s opted to do something else.
The former fourth round pick of Carolina came to Pittsburgh in the Jake Guentzel trade in 2024. Lucius participated in prior summer development camps with the Pens, but was absent in 2026 as he looks to free agency. Lucius has upside as a skilled forward but still could be considered a long shot to reach his ceiling and make a consistent NHL impact. He would have been a nice prospect to keep within the system but his loss doesn’t seem like a dealbreaker or anything the team could have reasonably controlled, Lucius wasn’t ready to turn pro prior to this year and he ended up being a very young college player (playing his senior season at age-21).
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#20: Sam Poulin
The long saga of Sam Poulin with the Penguins ended with a whimper. The former 2019 first round pick ended up being a throw-in for a larger trade to keep contracts switching from Pittsburgh to Edmonton more balanced in the December trade that sent Stuart Skinner and Brett Kulak to the Penguins. Poulin actually played two games with the Pens in 2025-26 (27:38 total ice time, no points, 1 shot on goal, 2 hits and 2 blocked shots) and was still good for Wilkes while he was there (producing 20 points in 22 games) but the writing had been on the wall for the player that peaked at No. 3 in the T25U25 back in 2021 and was considered and hoped to be one of the Pens’ top forward prospects for a good chunk of time.
A lot developed poorly in the post-mortem with Poulin, and some of that was out of his control. Being drafted in 2019 didn’t help his cause for a crucial draft+1 season eaten up by the COVID times. Injuries derailed most of his 2022-23 and some of of 2023-24 for good measure. In the end, Poulin was never more advanced than he was early in the process when he was bigger and stronger than his competition. He’s grown into a very good AHL level player but that tantalizing last jump into being an NHL difference maker was always slightly out of reach. So close, yet so far. Poulin didn’t play any NHL games for Edmonton, he became a free agent and signed a two-way contract with Montreal for 2026-27.
#15: Emil Pieniniemi
Pieniniemi was the second draft pick Kyle Dubas ever made for the Penguins in the third round of 2023. His stint with the organization ended with a summer 2026 trade. The damage was done earlier this season – the Pens with a flush AHL blueline wanted the then-20 year old Pieniniemi to develop in the ECHL to start the season in October. Pieniniemi and his agent did not agree with this path, figuring it would be better for his development to go back to Finland. Leave for Finland is exactly what Pieniniemi did, without approval of Pittsburgh, who made it clear with a suspension they would not loan him outside of the organization this season to allow him to play in Finland. The long stalemate finally ended when Pieniniemi agreed to come back in mid-December and go to the ECHL after all. He played 41 total games in the ECHL and 11 in the AHL before the Pens decided they were better off moving him out of the organization.
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The Pens, and Kyle Dubas especially, are very open to the idea that the ECHL can be a positive benefit for a player’s career and development process. They seemingly communicated their vision and plan to lay it out for the player to see. Most players are not aligned to think the same way, where the ECHL is seen more as a dead-end or place to spin wheels, not find an NHL trajectory. It’ll be interesting in the future to see if opinions might gradually shift more into Dubas’ thinking (which is not new, and he does have a good record of using the ECHL as a pipeline towards opportunity for much bigger). But that won’t be Pieniniemi, who wasn’t on board and poisoned the well with his actions. For Pittsburgh to trade the 21-year old for a 26-year old forward who returned to Sweden after playing one year in the AHL shows what the value of Pieniniemi was at this point and willingness to prevent a similar headache in the future.
#11: Arturs Silovs
Silovs, who turned 25 years old in March, has aged out of this feature and is no longer eligible for T25U25 status. His graduation coincides at a good time to not be considered a prospect after signing a one-year contract for $2.8 million dollars that has him firmly in position to be a major contributor for Pittsburgh in 2026-27. A running tenet of the whole T25U25 feature is the rarity of a player inking a seven-figure contract and becoming established as an NHLer at age 25 (it’s very difficult to do!), Most stories are going to end with a dimmer conclusion, the numbers game is stacked against the majority of cases. Silovs will go in as a success story, he did most of the developing in Vancouver’s organization but ended up being a nice add for the Penguins to swoop in and get something out of.
#9: Phil Tomasino
Pittsburgh acquired Tomasino, a former 2019 first round pick, from Nashville in 2024. His first season with the Pens showed moments of promise, producing 23 points in 50 games and at times playing in a scoring line role. Unfortunately, 2025-26 showed how difficult that keeping a firm hold on a NHL spot can be for many players. Tomasino broke camp playing on the fourth line, got a few chances on the third line. His past performance didn’t provide much of a toehold on maintaining his spot and he was a healthy scratch before long. By mid-November, Tomasino was waived – despite an injury to Rickard Rakell there was still no space for Tomasino, who ended up being a novelty AHL asset on an NHL dollars of a $1.75 million contract.
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The Pens resolved that situation by trading Tomasino to Philadelphia for a player they knew would not report to the AHL and become a free agent, which is exactly what happened. In essence, the Pens dumped Tomasino’s contract to free up a spot there, saved some money in the process and closed out that chapter of taking a chance on a mid-level player and seeing what he had to offer. Tomasino did not end up playing any more NHL games last season and has subsequently signed a two-way contract as a free agent with Ottawa’s organization for 2026-27.
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Overall, the Pittsburgh system has gained more U25 talent than it has lost in the last 12 months. The Pens have brought in Hendrix Lapierre, Jake Livanavage plus a host of 2026 draft picks including Liam and Markus Ruck, Tomas Galvas and Pierce Mbuyi for fresh young talent since the last Pensburgh T25U25. Those six will all make this summer’s list and offer brighter futures than what was lost from the organization from mostly older ‘prospects’ like Poulin and Tomasino that weren’t on NHL trajectories.
Due to the age limits, our feature this year won’t even capture 25-year olds Egor Chinakhov, Elmer Soderblom, Kaeden Korczak and Nick Robertson (the latter turning 25 in September)- all of which have also been acquired in the last year. They may have barely missed the cut-off for this list but will provide young legs and fresh talent to the team and is another feather in the Pens’ cap as they continue to load up on young-ish talent.
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The work for developing young players can be a slow process at the NHL level, the Pens’ system appears to be healthy and improving compared to how it has been from the past. The pipeline to bring in young talent can take a while to get through before the finished product comes out at the other end, but right now Pittsburgh is doing a lot of the groundwork in hopes that as many of the players as we will start to profile can end up contributing to the organization in the years to come.
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