The Penguins’ prospect pool looks a lot different these days, and Owen Pickering is a good example of why.
A year ago, the big left-shot defenseman could have been easy to file into the “still figuring it out” bucket. Now, after a stronger second half with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and a solid run through the Calder Cup Playoffs, he’s starting to look like someone Pittsburgh still has real plans for.
Pickering, 22, is listed at 6-foot-5 and 206 pounds, and the raw tools have always been obvious. The question has been how quickly everything else catches up.
Through 29 career NHL games, he has one goal and three points, with only four of those appearances coming last season. His early stretch in the league during 2024-25 showed flashes, but the follow-up period brought some uneven play and, at times, a sense that his development had stalled.
That changed as the 2025-26 AHL season wore on. In the second half, he began smoothing out the rough edges that had been holding him back, especially in his own zone.
His processing speed looked better, his skating took a step, and the game started to slow down for him. The difference wasn’t just in the highlight moments.
It was in how often the bad ones stopped showing up.
That’s the part the Penguins’ development staff wanted to see, and Pickering delivered it. He finished the AHL season with seven goals and 28 points in 68 games, then added a goal and four points in 11 playoff games for WBS.
He handled second-unit power-play duty, logged significant penalty-kill minutes, and when he was healthy in the postseason, he was effective at both ends of the ice. An injury limited him and forced him to miss four playoff games, but in the games he did play, he looked steady in all three zones.
The organization has noticed the progress.
"We're really happy with how far he came [last season]," WBS assistant general manager Amanda Kessel said during development camp. "Instead of having one good game, one bad game, he's somebody that strung a lot together. There were still moments and times, but those were fewer and far between, and that's really what we're looking for.
"Everything in the gym, too, he came back last summer even better, and [we] thought that he had a good start. And, so, we expect the same thing for him [this season]."
Dubas echoed that view, pointing to the natural adjustment curve for a player with Pickering’s frame.
"You might say, going back to his time [with the Swift Current Broncos of the WHL], the coordination, balance... all those things that are common when you have a 6-foot-5, 180, then 190, 200-pound guy, it takes some time for that to come together.
But we've been very happy with the way that Owen [came on] in the second half of the year. I don't think you look at it and say it was anything truly dynamic, but it was steady, solid, reliable hockey, and that's what we're looking for him to develop into."
That kind of steady growth matters on Pittsburgh’s left side, where the depth chart remains open and somewhat messy. Sam Girard, Declan Carlile, Trevor van Riemsdyk, Caleb Jones and Jake Livanavage are among the names in the mix, but there isn’t a clear high-end answer there yet.
So Pickering’s next season could tell the Penguins plenty. It will help clarify how close he is to NHL duty, and whether he can carve out a future role. The upside still looks like a reliable bottom-four defenseman, and after the progress he made last year, that no longer feels like a stretch.
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