Development camp benefits from increased investment
Penguins director of player development Tom Kostopoulos said that he "feels like the L.A. Dodgers."
The Penguins on Monday wrapped up their development camp, a five-day endeavor that brought 52 prospects and undrafted invites to the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex -- a significantly bigger event that only a handful of years ago, where the camp itself was shorter with far fewer prospects in attendance.
Fenway Sports Group's increased investment in hiring staff, and Kyle Dubas' dedication to building out that staff has totally changed the level of attention the Penguins are able to give toward finding and developing prospects.
"The more players is just the way the organization is trying to grow," Kostopoulos explained. "To bring in more prospects, it's more opportunity. The more staff, also, the more resources we have available to those players to be able to accommodate them has grown."
It's not just a larger quantity of staff -- it's quality people, too.
"My staff is amazing," Kostopoulos continued." My development staff is fantastic. I've got a lineup of overly-qualified people that I can use to send out to visit our prospects that we can use in Wheeling, Wilkes-Barre and Pittsburgh. Ownership and management has built out a ton of resources available to players that can only help them, and if the players are willing to use that and to help them develop, that's where we're seeing growth with some of the players."
Ownership has given Dubas essentially a blank check to continue to add to that staff as he sees fit. And with the large number of picks the Penguins have amassed for this past draft and subsequent drafts, they'll have to keep building out their staff. Asked on draft day about the "danger" of making too many picks and ending up with too many players in the system, Dubas said that the investment in staff will increase to match the increase in prosepcts.
"Coming in, the areas we really needed to invest were player development and research and development," Dubas said. "And (Fenway) has backed up everything they told me two years ago that they would invest. ... If we feel that we get to a point where the players aren't getting enough from our player development department, we will address that and continue to add quality people to it."
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THE ASYLUM
Taylor Haase
7:48 pm - 07.07.2025Cranberry, Pa.Development camp benefits from increased investment
Penguins director of player development Tom Kostopoulos said that he "feels like the L.A. Dodgers."
The Penguins on Monday wrapped up their development camp, a five-day endeavor that brought 52 prospects and undrafted invites to the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex -- a significantly bigger event that only a handful of years ago, where the camp itself was shorter with far fewer prospects in attendance.
Fenway Sports Group's increased investment in hiring staff, and Kyle Dubas' dedication to building out that staff has totally changed the level of attention the Penguins are able to give toward finding and developing prospects.
"The more players is just the way the organization is trying to grow," Kostopoulos explained. "To bring in more prospects, it's more opportunity. The more staff, also, the more resources we have available to those players to be able to accommodate them has grown."
It's not just a larger quantity of staff -- it's quality people, too.
"My staff is amazing," Kostopoulos continued." My development staff is fantastic. I've got a lineup of overly-qualified people that I can use to send out to visit our prospects that we can use in Wheeling, Wilkes-Barre and Pittsburgh. Ownership and management has built out a ton of resources available to players that can only help them, and if the players are willing to use that and to help them develop, that's where we're seeing growth with some of the players."
Ownership has given Dubas essentially a blank check to continue to add to that staff as he sees fit. And with the large number of picks the Penguins have amassed for this past draft and subsequent drafts, they'll have to keep building out their staff. Asked on draft day about the "danger" of making too many picks and ending up with too many players in the system, Dubas said that the investment in staff will increase to match the increase in prosepcts.
"Coming in, the areas we really needed to invest were player development and research and development," Dubas said. "And (Fenway) has backed up everything they told me two years ago that they would invest. ... If we feel that we get to a point where the players aren't getting enough from our player development department, we will address that and continue to add quality people to it."
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