After the way Penguins goaltending prospect Alex D'Orio finished last season, he seemed poised to seriously compete for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton's starting job entering this season.
D'Orio, 22, opened last season on Pittsburgh's taxi squad, eventually being assigned to the ECHL with the Wheeling Nailers in February in order to get some playing time. After a month in Wheeling, D'Orio was recalled to Wilkes-Barre, where he took over the starting role. He appeared in 11 games with Wilkes-Barre to finish the season, leading the team's goaltenders in goals-against average (2.18), save percentage (.915).
"Confidence comes from preparation, and you earn your confidence," Penguins goaltending coach Andy Chiodo told me of D'Orio's performance during that time. "He's feeling that confidence, and he's feeling that in an organic way. It's real, it's not fabricated. He's taking steps as a goaltender and as a person, and that confidence is allowing him to take some steps on the ice as well. For sure he's confident, and when you're confident, you're playing big. He's a big guy (6-2, 210), and I think he's taking some steps."
D'Orio's start to this season didn't quite go as planned. He wasn't completely healthy in the AHL training camp. With both Filip Lindberg and Louis Domingue on Wilkes-Barre's roster to start the season, D'Orio was sent back to Wheeling to get some playing time. Things didn't get any easier for him there, either.
"Unfortunately, he had a spur of things," Nailers coach Derek Army told me of D'Orio. "He had an ear infection in Wilkes camp, he got sick, he got the flu before his first start here, he had some bumps and bruises along the way. So now all of a sudden, he's looking at his game, like, 'I'm behind the eight ball.'"
After getting healthy and playing seven games in Wheeling, D'Orio was recalled to Wilkes-Barre on Nov. 30, and tested positive for COVID-19 shortly thereafter.
"I think I just stayed in the present, going day-by-day and just trying to get better even through injuries or illness," D'Orio told me Saturday of his start to the season. "That was my main focus."
If D'Orio got discouraged or frustrated at all with the way things were going for him health-wise to start the season, head coach J.D. Forrest didn't notice it.
"He's a tough kid," Forrest said. "He's got a great attitude. He's a really good pro, he's definitely committed to his craft. I didn't see the frustration outwardly, but I just know that it's hard. He's the kind of guy that's just going to work through it."
D'Orio had a tough first game back after exiting COVID protocol on Dec. 18, and was pulled after the first period. Since then, he's seemingly improved and grown more comfortable again with each game he's played, and is looking much more like the D'Orio that finished last season.
Wilkes-Barre has been hovering around the bottom of the AHL's standings for much of the year. D'Orio was winless his first six starts with the team this season, though he put together some strong performances, including a set of back-to-back games earlier this month in Hershey. D'Orio had a 33-save performance in a 3-0 shutout loss the first night, then turned around and made 22 saves in a 3-2 loss less than 24 hours later.
Forrest came out of that weekend thinking that D'Orio had taken some big steps forward.
"We have a lot of confidence in him, stemming from how he finished the year for us last season," Forrest said after those games. "He's still a goalie that we believe in and want in between the pipes in games for us."
Even though D'Orio didn't get the wins in those starts, he kept a positive attitude.
"I took the positive with every game that I played," D'Orio said. "I worked on stuff that I had to work on with (goalie development coach Kain Tisi), so I think everything together, it's just positive."
D'Orio started a set of back-to-backs again this weekend, and he finally got his first two wins of the season, with the team providing some more run support in front of him.
Wilkes-Barre hosted the Toronto Marlies on Friday, and D'Orio made 21 saves in the 5-1 win. He came up big for moments like this 5-on-3 penalty kill:
With another game less than 24 hours later on Saturday, Forrest again turned to D'Orio, and D'Orio made 22 saves in a 3-2 overtime win.
"It felt great," D'Orio said after the win Saturday. "I felt confident in net, and having the confidence by J.D. to put me in both of these games felt pretty great."
Forrest told me after the game that he thought D'Orio was "fantastic," having made "key saves time and time again" in both games.
"I feel like he's back to when we finished off last season, he was just so solid," Forrest said. "It appears like he's back to that form. He's had this kind of intermittent season this year with planned starts, injuries, COVID, up and down, and just no real consistency. And I think we've got that for him now. He embraced the challenge the last two nights and he was fantastic."
D'Orio agreed on Saturday when I asked him if he feels that he's back up to that level he was at the end of last season.
"Yeah, exactly," he said. "I feel way more confident being in this league. I know what I'm capable of, and I just have to keep showing up."
With Domingue in Pittsburgh (and injured), Lindberg injured, and AHL-contracted goaltender Tommy Nappier in COVID protocol, it's D'Orio's net in Wilkes-Barre for the time being if he does keep showing up the way he has been.
D'Orio is in the final year of his entry-level contract. Moving forward, he'd like to keep competing to keep this hold on the starting position in Wilkes-Barre, and earn a new contract for next season. But for the time being, his focus is just on continuing to improve each day.
"For right now, I just stay in the present and try to be the best goalie as I can," he said.
WBS PENGUINS
Alex D'Orio in Saturday's game in Wilkes-Barre
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Both of Toronto's goals came in the first period. After a scoreless second period, Valtteri Puustinen opened the scoring for Wilkes-Barre at the 3:03 mark of the third period off of a feed from Felix Robert and Filip Hallander:
• Alex Nylander tied the game with 47 seconds remaining in regulation, with Puustinen and Juuso Riikola getting the assists:
• Wilkes-Barre got a power play 68 seconds into overtime, and Nylander scored the game-winner shortly after, with assists to Riikola and Puustinen:
Nylander now has six goals and four assists in nine games since being acquired from the Blackhawks.
"He's dangerous, he doesn't need a whole lot of chances to make them count," Forrest said. "He's shown that here with us, it's another weapon. ... It's been some clutch goal scoring for us by Nyls, and we just want to keep it going with him."
I asked Forrest what specific areas of Nylander's game he needs to improve upon in order to get back up to the NHL.
"There's some small things," Forrest said. "He certainly has skill, he has the speed, he has the brain. It's just the way that the Penguins play, it's a consistent pace, which he's shown. When he came in, and it's a new system, we just want to see that consistency with it. A couple of games is great. But when you can string it out over a few weeks, and then just have it be part of your DNA, then I think that's what's going to make it pop for him."
• This was Puustinen's second three-point game of the season. He leads Wilkes-Barre in both goals (13) and points (26) through 33 games.
Back in the NHL preseason, when I asked Mike Sullivan about Puustinen following the game in Buffalo, Sullivan spoke highly of Puustinen's offensive game but thought he had room to improve defensively.
"I think Puusty is a good player," Sullivan said at the time. "He sees it pretty well. He's got good offensive instincts, he has good poise with the puck. ... I thought he made some offensive plays tonight. He can improve on the defensive aspect of the puck in certain areas, and we're trying to help him there. But what we see as far as his attributes, what he has, it's hard to teach those things. We're really encouraged by the progress that he's made."
From watching Puustinen this season, his defensive game hasn't seemed like a weakness at all. He's not a liability in any way. I asked Forrest Saturday how he thought Puustinen's handled that side of the game, and he had nothing but praise. He didn't ever think that a lack of defensive awareness was ever part of Puustinen's game.
"It's funny with Puusty, I think," Forrest said. "I don't know if he had a rap of that being a deficiency in this game, but he's committed to it. He's a smart player. He's not the biggest guy, but he knows how to win battles, and make some good plays on the wall coming out of our D zone. He reads the game extremely well, and that helps us with positioning in the D zone. I'm not afraid to put him out there in any situation. He's a tough little player. As far as his D zone, he definitely understands what we're trying to do in there. He's able to play that system. Then he's also picked up the pace of his game. He looks fast, a lot faster than he did two months ago. That's a credit to him for working hard to get to that point, and then also to adjusting to the game."
WBS Penguins
Valtteri Puustinen in Saturday's game in Wilkes-Barre
• It definitely feels like the team has turned a corner with its play, especially with these two wins -- two very different wins -- this weekend against a good Toronto team.
"Very encouraging," Forrest said of his team's play this weekend. "I'll go back a few games, maybe five, six, even back to the Utica (shootout loss) game where, I could feel and we could start to see a bit of a turnaround on how we were competing in games and the purpose we were playing with. To win the way we did last night, and then to stay with it. For the majority of this game, I thought we really carried it, and their goalie played outstanding there. At times you get frustrated and kind of change your approach, but our guys didn't, and it paid off at the end."
• The backup goaltender for the time being is Tristan Cote-Cazenave, a 22-year-old who attended the Penguins' development camp way back in 2018. He's just with the team on a professional tryout contract. This is his first professional season, having played in the Canadian University system after his junior career. He's played two games for the ECHL's Reading Royals this season.
• Lindberg's ankle injury is now being considered "longer-term," Forrest said Saturday. Lindberg was practicing with the team prior to the holiday break, but hasn't practiced since. I asked Forrest if that means Lindberg suffered a setback, and that's not the case.
"I'm not so sure if setback is the right term," he said. "Maybe a little bit more information. It's again one of those things where it's going to be evaluated again. I'd love to give you a true update here, but it's one of those deals where we're all kind of waiting on a little bit more information."
• Enforcer Jamie Devane is going to be out for "weeks" after suffering an upper-body injury in a fight on Friday. Forrest didn't provide any specifics on the nature of the injury, but Devane was reaching for his jaw after the fight. He'll be missed in the lineup.
"He's just such a glue guy," Forrest said. "It's a term kind of thrown around, but it really applies to Jamie and his attitude in the locker room and what he brings to the table, not just in a game night, but in practice and just his personality around the locker room. He'll be out for a little bit but we're going to make sure that he's around the team as much as much as possible and getting back on the ice soon enough. I don't think you can say enough about what he does for our team and the type of person that he is."
• Wilkes-Barre went 1-for-2 on the power play and 2-for-2 on the penalty kill.
• This was Wilkes-Barre's "Pink in the Rink" night, raising money for breast cancer agencies. P.O Joseph, Sam Poulin and Robert taped their socks with pink tape for the occasion, and Jordy Bellerive used pink stick tape.
• Congratulations to captain Taylor Fedun on the birth of his second child, a son. His wife Katie Reinprecht is a two-time Olympian in field hockey, so their kids are destined to be athletes.
• Wilkes-Barre has some great content on the team TikTok account this season:
Just great content on the WBS Penguins’ TikTok account this season, if you don’t already follow them there. pic.twitter.com/vA0M0AEqOn
— Taylor Haase (@TaylorHaasePGH) January 23, 2022
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza:
1. Alex Nylander, Penguins
2. Valtteri Puustinen, Penguins
3. Juuso Riikola, Penguins
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES, ILLNESSES
• Goaltender Filip Lindberg is out "longer-term" with an ankle injury sustained during the game on Nov. 12. Lindberg was practicing with the team before the holiday break, but hasn't been in a full practice since then. Forrest said that Lindberg didn't suffer a setback, but rather the team learned more information about his injury.
• Forward Michael Chaput is week-to-week with an lower-body injury. He's resumed skating.
• Forward Jamie Devane is out "weeks" after suffering an upper-body injury in a fight on Saturday. There were no specifics given regarding the nature of the injury, but he was reaching for his jaw after the fight.
• Forward Sam Houde is in COVID protocol.
• Goaltender Tommy Nappier is in COVID protocol.
THE LINEUPS
Forrest's lines and pairings:
Filip Hallander - Felix Robert - Valtteri Puustinen
Alex Nylander - Sam Poulin - Anthony Angllo
Kasper Bjorkqvist - Jordy Bellerive - Nathan Legare
Jan Drozg - Jonathan Gruden - Kyle Olson
P.O Joseph - Mitch Reinke
Matt Bartkowski - Taylor Fedun
Juuso Riikola - Cam Lee
And for Greg Moore's Marlies:
Joseph Blandisi - Brett Seney - Jack Kopacka
Antti Suomela - Mikhail Abramov - Jeremy McKenna
Bobby McMann - Semyon Der-Arguchintsev - Ryan Chyzowski
Rich Clune - Curtis Douglas - Pavel Gogolev
Matthew Hellickson - Joseph Duszak
Filip Kral - Mac Hollowell
Chad Krys - Noel Hoefenmayer
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins host the Cleveland Monsters on Monday, then will play the Bears in Hershey on Tuesday.
THE CONTENT
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