One-on-one: Newly-acquired Ponomarev a two-way, playmaking center

Penguins forward prospect Vasily Ponomarev was 15 years old when he attended an NHL game in person for the first time.

It was 2017, and the Moscow native was in Philadelphia for the World Selects Invitational, an annual youth hockey tournament. He made the trip over to Washington, where the Capitals were hosting the Penguins for Game 1 of the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, in anticipation of seeing the player he grew up idolizing at home in Russia.

It wasn't Alex Ovechkin, or Evgeni Malkin, or any of his other fellow countrymen.

"It was Sidney," Ponomarev told me in a phone interview on Monday. "Sidney Crosby."

Ponomarev might not be too far off from getting to be teammates with Crosby.

Ponomarev, who turns 22 years old this week, was one of the pieces acquired from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade last week, along with forward Michael Bunting, forward prospects Ville Koivunen and Cruz Lucius, and conditional 2024 first-round and fifth-round draft picks.

Ponomarev is the most NHL-ready of the three prospects the Penguins acquired, with Kyle Dubas calling him "right on the cusp the whole year" in his deadline-day press conference. Ponomarev spent most of the season with the AHL's Chicago Wolves, where he scored eight goals and 21 assists in 39 games. He killed penalties and played on the power play, and four of his eight goals came on the man advantage:

He earned his first call up to the NHL in January, playing two games for a Hurricanes team that was dealing with a number of injuries at forward. His debut came on the road against the Capitals -- in that same building in which he saw his first NHL game seven years before -- and he recorded a goal and an assist in a 6-2 victory. His goal came off a two on one, dropping to one knee at the right circle before ripping a shot past Darcy Kuemper:

Ponomarev told me that his biggest takeaway from those two NHL games is that one has to "play more creative than you play in the AHL."

"There's more craziness in the game," he said. "(Creativity) is going to help you."

Ponomarev said that he wasn't expecting the Hurricanes to trade him at all. He had just fallen asleep before 10 p.m. on Thursday night, going to bed early on the night before a game day when his roommate Maxime Comtois woke him up a little over an hour later. Comtois had been scrolling Instagram and saw the news, and told a sleepy Ponomarev that he was "probably traded."

Ponomarev checked his phone and saw he had a number of missed calls, including Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell and Dubas. Dubas called Ponomarev again, informed him of the trade, and welcomed him to the organization.

Ponomarev made the 10-hour trip to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and got in on Saturday night, and joined Wilkes-Barre for practice on Monday morning. He sat down with the coaching staff and went over the system, and said that it was "pretty close" to what he was used to in Chicago in the AHL.

"It was really good," he said. "The coaches showed me everything they had to show me. It was good, I understood everything."

A couple familiar faces helped ease that transition, too -- Ponomarev is joining two of his former Chicago teammates in forward Peter Abbandonato and defenseman Owen Headrick, as well as a former Chicago division rival in former Milwaukee forward Austin Rueschhoff, and a former QMJHL rival in Sam Poulin. He didn't know defenseman Dmitri Samorukov prior to the trade, but having a fellow Russian around made made things easier. Ponomarev also knows another Russian Penguins prospect in forward Kirill Tankov, who is still playing in Russia, but Ponomarev said is "an awesome guy, a really skilled player. He's going to help the Penguins build their team in the future."

WBS PENGUINS

Vasily Ponomarev in his first practice with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Monday.

Ponomarev, who is listed at 5 foot 10 and 180 pounds, is a left-handed shot and primarily plays center, though he's had limited experience at wing as well. He described his game as that of a two-way, playmaking center. Those attributes are why he idolized Crosby growing up. He and Crosby are also similar sizes, and he found it more helpful to look up to someone like that as opposed to someone big like Malkin or Ovechkin.

"I like the way he plays," Ponomarev said of Crosby. "He's a two-way player, he can play in both zones. In the offensive zone he's so creative, he's working hard to get the puck back. ... Geno is a different size of player, and when you are a different size here you see the game from a different angle. But Sidney is my size, and it's easier to see how he's playing and seeing the game."

Ponomarev told me that he wants to get better at his creativity offensively, his execution, and just improve his overall play in both ends of the ice. 

Dubas said last week that the plan is to start Ponomarev in Wilkes-Barre to get him acclimated to the system. Then if all goes well, he anticipates Ponomarev will "get a good run with us" in this last stretch for a season, then seriously challenge for a spot next year.

The Penguins obviously need to get younger, and that's not easy to do with very few real NHL-ready prospects in the pipeline. Ponomarev, after the trade, automatically becomes one of the more NHL-ready forwards in the system and could be a valuable piece in a younger forward group next season.