He is definitely NHL ready and fully earned a job that was open due to 2 injuries. Now is he ready to be a difference maker? Diff question. He did not look like a big time difference maker early in the reg season, but wasn’t bad or a negative either.
Pens have a lot of guys that can do the same thing (adequately fill a bottom 6 role).
He is the only waiver ineligible skater the Pens have. Made sense to send him down when healthy if he didn’t light it up, which he didn’t. Rust returned and that was that.
Kid looks good for 20 years old, how he develops his strength and his skill will determine where he ends up slotting into a lineup. His skating looks very passable in a good way, esp relative to how I thought it would look.
With how they were using him (3rd line LW and no special teams time), I think it’s better for him to be a big shot in the AHL anyway. He was a 3rd liner at ES, but with special teams had the lowest TOI avg of any forward.