Patrik Allvin doesn't know who the Penguins will get with their first choice in the NHL draft later this month.
That's understandable, since 56 other prospects are scheduled to be selected before the Penguins get a chance to pick.
And while projecting how teenaged hockey players will progress after they are drafted is, to be charitable, challenging under the best of circumstances, it is even more difficult this year because so many developmental leagues played limited schedules in 2020-21, or shut down entirely.
What's more, some that staged games barred scouts from attending them, because of pandemic-related concerns.
That obviously complicates the difficulty of evaluating and ranking draft candidates, although Allvin, who is the Penguins' assistant general manager, said it's possible that his team actually could benefit from the limited look scouts got at most prospects during the past season.
"I would hope that maybe we have somebody rated a little bit higher who could slip through to us in the later half of the second round," he said recently. "I still hope that we're going to be lucky (enough) to get a good prospect there."
Of course, it's also possible that the Penguins will overrate a player because their scouts didn't get to watch him as often as they would have in a typical season.
Assuming they don't trade the pick, the player the Penguins select in the second round -- their first-rounder went to Minnesota in the Jason Zucker trade -- will be the third in franchise history that they've taken in the No. 57 slot.
The others were defensemen Sven Butenschon (1994) and Jeremy van Hoof (1999). Butenschon spent parts of eight seasons in the NHL, while van Hoof did not sign with the Penguins and re-entered the draft in 2001, when Tampa Bay took him in the seventh round.
He never made it to the NHL, and managed only nine career appearances in the American Hockey League.
Coincidentally or otherwise, the Penguins' track record with players chosen 57th is the same as that of the league during the past two decades.
Of the 20 players selected in that slot, 10 have made it onto an NHL roster. (That success rate, which matches the one the Penguins had with Butenschon and van Hoof, could rise in the future, because none of the past three players claimed then have gotten to the league yet, but that might just reflect that they need more time to develop.)
The most successful member of that group is center Matt Stajan, who went to Toronto in 2002. He played in 1,003 games with the Maple Leafs and Calgary over 15-plus seasons.
Buffalo took Cranberry native Mike Weber in 2006 and he dressed for 351 games over eight seasons, mostly with the Sabres. Other No. 57 choices of note include Jay McClement (St. Louis, 2001), Oscar Lindberg (Phoenix, 2010), William Carrier (St. Louis, 2013) and Jonas Siegenthaler (Washington, 2015).
Two relatively recent choices -- Carl Grundstrom (Toronto, 2016) and Ian Mitchell (Chicago, 2017) -- look as if they could find steady work in the league in coming seasons. Less memorable, but still with at least one NHL entry on their resumes, are Tyler Wotherspoon (Calgary, 2011) and Matt Kassian (Minnesota, 2005).
Getting to that level is something Alexandre Mallet (Vancouver, 2012), Johnathan McLeod (Tampa Bay, 2014), Eric Mestery (Washington, 2008) and Geoff Paukovich (Edmonton, 2004), among others chosen 57th overall, never managed.
So which group will be guy the Penguins choose 57th overall fit into?
That won't be known until long after Allvin and the rest of the Penguins' decision-makers settle on precisely which prospect they will be selecting then.