The Penguins have found a HIDDEN GEM...

It's Peyton Kettles, the Pittsburgh Penguins biggest hidden gem. Feels like the Penguins have found their next great defenseman in Peyton Kettles. We're gonna be talking about what he can bring to the Penguins team. There's an article that came out about him a couple days ago, bringing you into that as we get closer and closer to the NHL season. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Penguins Digest. My name is Nikos Nkondigou. I hope you guys are having a great day, a great time and everybody are getting the chance to watch this. Hope everyone had a great summer, a great offseason. Let me know how your summer was in the comments down below, but yeah, we're back. The Pittsburgh Penguins play games. Not too long from now. Training camp is starting very imminently and yeah, a lot of news coming out. Obviously, the offseason was a little bit slow in Pittsburgh. Aside from some rumors that never really came to fruition, but yeah. Other than that, nothing really going on. Before we talk about Peyton Kettles, who you may or may not know about, make sure you guys do of course subscribe to the channel. We are currently at 67.5% of viewers who are not subscribed to Penguins Digest. So, if you are in that large portion of viewers who are not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. Helps me out. Helps everyone here at Digest Media out and it helps me bring you guys more content every or every day or as much as I can whenever news is happening, but let's get into the video. So, first things first. This is an article from Penn's Inside Scoop on the NHL website. Healthy Kettles looking forward to the season. He dealt with an injury. We'll talk about that a little bit, but let's bring up this first quote. Let it load up here, but yeah, it seems like Peyton Kettles is gonna be very important to the Pittsburgh Penguins soon here. I mean, obviously, I don't think he's gonna make the NHL team this year. This is what he said. When I started to work out, so basically the article is talking about how he's healthy now. He came back from a pretty significant injury. He said, when I started to work out and my shoulders started to feel a lot better, I feel like I had a really good chance of starting to skate about two months out. I felt really good. There's no pain in my shoulder anymore and starting contact. Also, no pain with that, which is great, and he's just super excited to get back. So, there's a pretty significant injury he dealt with throughout the season. They said he was gonna be out a long time. Let me see if I can find the quote here about it. Yeah, this is from after the Colona Rockets acquired Kettles from Swift Current. The decision was made for Kettles to have surgery on his right shoulder, which was performed by Penguins head team physician, Dr. Dharmesh Vyas at UPMC Shadyside Hospital. So, that was super interesting because he was actually supposed to be out for six to seven months, which didn't actually end up happening. I think he came back a little bit quicker than that. Thankfully, he was back for the Memorial Cup. Talking about his game, he said, I have a good stick and I like to move pucks, break the team out of the D-Zone. I don't jump up in the rush occasionally. That's not my full game though. My full game is playing in the D-Zone. That's where I thrive. So, it does seem like Kettles is not going to be, you know, a super huge offensive dynamo, but I think we do are going to learn to respect his defensive game with the team. I think it's gonna be super important for the Penguins because if you do look at their depth chart here, obviously, Kettles is... Let me pull this up actually before we get into that. Kettles is a right shot defenseman born in 2007. He's 6'6", so he's huge and he, you know, he's almost 200 pounds. Second round pick in 2025. Obviously, with the Swerve Current Broncos, you can tell his point production isn't that crazy. He only played two games or five games in total last season where he had, I think, three points in five games, but prior to that with Swerve Current in 2024-25, he had 14 points and 13 points, but obviously, he hangs his hat more on the defensive side of the defensive side of the game, which I thought was super cool. This is from Elite Prospects. Kind of his scouting report. Kettles routinely shuts down the opposition's best. He denies the middle with his reach, then pulls his stick in and lands a perfectly timed poke. Even if he backs off too soon, most opponents struggle to navigate his range. Obviously, 6'6", he probably has a long stick, long range. In defensive zone coverage, he guides opponents away from his net, beats them down, and pins them to the wall. So, a pretty physical defenseman. I think he is someone who's gonna be pretty important for the Pittsburgh Penguins when he does make the NHL team eventually. I think he's gonna slot in as a shutdown pair guy. Maybe not a first pair player or maybe someone that can play with the first pair guy. Who knows who the first line lefty is gonna be by the time he is on the team. I think he's still gonna be either in the AHL or the WHL this coming season. I'd have to look, I should have looked that up, but I didn't. But yeah, I think Pencal is gonna be super important for the Penguins and just coming up from the WHL is gonna be big for him. Obviously, he is signed to an entry-level contract. Just below a million dollars, hasn't even started yet. But yeah, the 6'6", right shot, I think he's gonna be, he's gonna be a master for the Penguins. I cannot believe how big the guy is and he's kind of like, what would you say, not a prototypical Kyle Dubas pick. We always talk about Kyle Dubas going after the guys who might be a little more undersized, less scouted, more skilled. But Kettles seems to be the opposite of all that stuff. I mean, he's 6'6", 200 pounds, really, really you know, kind of stay-at-home kind of defenseman who maybe can make the first breakout pass, but really hangs his hat on the defensive zone. Whereas, you know, we know Kyle Dubas to look at guys who are more transitional in the defensive end, can get the puck off the ice, more skilled, maybe a little bit smaller in size, but Kettles seems to be the opposite of everything Dubas kind of usually does go for and I think it will be super interesting to see where he kind of does slot in eventually. Obviously, I don't, I don't foresee him being on the team this year and there's gonna be a lot of a lot of movement by the time he actually does touch the Penguins, you know, roster. Obviously, right now, you're looking at Carlsen, Letang, Korczak. I think Carlsen and Letang could both be gone by the time someone like Kettles makes the team. I think all these guys could be gone by the time Kettles makes the team, unless he makes it this year, of course, but I don't really foresee that happening. I think he needs more time to marinate in the minors. So that will be interesting and also kind of looking at the Penguins defensive depth chart, if you look at this, there's a lot of guys ahead of him. Obviously, he's gonna be back in the WHL, but the Penguins have a, you know, a few good players. Obviously, handiness is a factor, but you know, Ryan, Ryan Graves. I don't know how much he plays this year. That contract is still pretty terrible, but Harrison Brunick is one we're all looking at to play really well. I think Finn Harding is gonna be a big one as well and then Owen Pickering. Who really knows what's going on with him? I think, you know, this is kind of the year for him to carve out an NHL spot. If he doesn't do it, I think he's kind of, you know, leaving that prospect range. So that would be interesting to look at as well and this is from the Penguins. Probably, maybe look into those guys just a little bit more. So that would be interesting to see if, you know, someone like Peyton Kettles does show out in this, but you know, there's a lot of good players there. I mean, the Penguins are pretty stacked in terms of prospects. Zonin Ruck, the other Ruck, Brunick. I think Brunick is gonna be super important for the Penguins coming into this year. So it'll be interesting to see if Peyton Kettles can carve out a spot this year. I would put it on the lower end of it actually happening, but we'll get to see him in the preseason, which isn't that far away. If we took a look at the schedule here, the Penguins play the Sabres on Monday, September 21st. Today is September 9th. So really not that far away. I think, what would that be? 12 days? Something like that. 12 days away. So less than two weeks until the Penguins are playing and then three weeks until we get some regular season hockey. So it's gonna be super exciting to see where we go from here. But let me know what you guys think about Peyton Kettles being a super important hidden gem for the Penguins among all their prospects. We're gonna be covering a lot of stuff as rookie camp starts, training camp starts, preseason begins, and then the season starts and we're really kicked into high gear. Let me know what you guys think in the comment section below. Let me know what you guys are watching from and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out for now. Subscribe if you enjoyed!