"The Penguins system has numerous weaknesses, namely an overall lack of talent at forward and defense."
Sums it up pretty well.
While I agree, I'm also not overly worried about it. If we sign Perron next summer, we'll have 5 of our top 6 forward slots locked up for the next 2 years (and the 4 of those 6 locked up for 4/5+ years), with Perron and Hornqvist likely having the shortest contracts.
Which means we need to find 1 prospect or cheap player to round out the top 6. Given that we have a couple of prospects who look like they might be able to fill that role, I'm not really all that concerned about our lack of forward prospects at this time. I'm not worried about the bottom 6 at all as I think we have a bunch of prospects who could easily fill out those roles over the next 2-3 years.
As for our blueline, this is a little concerning... however we have Letang locked up and have Maatta under team control for another 4(+?) seasons. We also have two solid young prospects in Pouliot and Dumoulin who should easily be able to play quality minutes over the next two seasons (if not immediately - if only due to necessity). So while this potentially could be an issue if either of those two fail to live up to expectations, as long as one of them progresses into a top 4 guy, we're going to be okay on the blueline for the next 4+ years.
So yeah, do we have a weak prospect pool? Absolutely. But our NHL roster is good enough that while a weak prospect pool isn't desirable, it's also likely not really an issue for this team as it's currently constructed. We have time to rectify this before it becomes an issue. 2 years ago (and even last year) it was an issue. It's not really this year due to the players we've acquired.