PENGUINS

Team Barrasso was clinging to a 4-3 lead with 1.8 seconds remaining in the championship game for the Michel Briere Cup, the trophy awarded annually to the winner of the Penguins' development camp tournament.

Their opponent, Team Rutherford, had their top players out for the draw in Team Barrasso's end -- Zam Plante, arguably the top player of the entire tournament, flanked by last week's third-round pick Pierce Mbuyi, and defenseman Brady Peddle, each of whom who had contributed goals in this tournament.

Plante won the faceoff easily back to Peddle, who got the puck over to Mbuyi for the last-hope shot at the net. Team Barrasso's free agent goaltender invite Joseph Skidmore made the highlight-reel save in the final second to secure the Michel Briere Cup, presented by Kyle Dubas' nine-year-old son Leo:

"I didn't know we were going to go that far," Team Barrasso's captain Peyton Kettles said of the win. "It was super exciting."

The championship game was a redemption win, too. By the time Team Barrasso and Team Rutherford met in the final game of round-robin play, it was already irrelevant in the standings -- they had secured their spots in the championship. Team Rutherford dominated the early win 5-1, but Team Barrasso got the win when it matered.

"It feels awesome," said Markus Ruck, who scored for Team Barrasso in the championship game. "That's what our team wanted to do today. We lost the game to (Team Rutherford) in the game before and came back in the Final and got it done."

Here are some takeaways from the tournament and the week as a whole:

• I couldn't even tell you how many points Plante definitely ended up with. He had the late game-winner in his team's first game, the opening goal of the championship game, no fewer than four primary assists, and probably a couple of secondary helpers in there too. Points aside, he was the best player out there when he was on the ice.

"He stood out probably more than anyone today," director of player development Tom Kostopoulos said of Plante. "Just his creativity, his hockey sense. And then he can finish, he can make plays."

Kostopoulos thought that one could see Plante dominating throughout the week, even off the ice. He won the team's fun cornhole tournament. They took the prospects bowling, and Plante was so locked in that he couldn't sit down. They held a trivia game, and Plante was "all over the answers."

"Seems like anything we play, he's involved in, and guys gravitate to him, and he just seems to like competing and winning," Kostopoulos said. "From my experience, when you have kids and players like that, it's not coincidence that they end up on winning teams and they end up doing well."

Naturally, Plante's Team Rutherford losing in the final game kept Plante from enjoying the personal success too much -- "We couldn't quite get it done at the end," he said when I asked him about how own production here.

• Team Murphy lost its only two games, but Ryan Miller was one of his team's more noticeable players. He had a primary assist on Tomas Galvas' goal to open the whole tournament, but it was Miller's play on the forecheck that was more impressive.

"I thought his skating looked really powerful," Kostopoulos said. "His puck skills look good. He's a competitor. He might stand out in our organization among guys that want the puck, that play with hunger and desperation to win puck battles. He will rip your head off to win a puck battle, and it's contagious."

• Markus and Liam Ruck had fine showings today, though I don't know if either especially stood out. Both had goals -- Liam's off a tic-tac-toe passing play in his team's second game, and Markus' a lazer of a shot in the championship game -- but neither were exceptionally noticeable when they weren't scoring.

The good news there, though, is that they didn't stand out for negative reasons, either. For all that's been made about their skating, that didn't stand out as a weakness. 

"It was nice for Markus to step up and score the big goal for the winning team," Kostopoulos said. "You can see how they read the game, you can see Markus can put pucks to areas that his teammates can get to, his play-making ability. The skating, I think there's a lot of potential there as he gets stronger and more powerful. I think he's not slow, but he can build more power. Liam, it's neat to see how he can get to open space, and wants the puck in the shooting areas. Some guys want the puck all the time, and it seems to me like he wants it in the areas where he can score from."

• Mbuyi was the best player from this draft class in the tournament, though part of that was almost surely a product of the connection he had with Plante.

"We're still getting to know Pierce," Kostopoulos said. "But the creativity and the finishing ability and playmaking ability, was very noticeable. I'm not a huge three-on-three fan, but it's nice to put them in these situations, and just watch what they can do on the ice, you see the hockey sense. He's got to get stronger and quicker, but you can see the intelligence out there."

• If there was a standout among the undrafted players, it was Jack Horbach, who scored three goals, including two in the championship. Horbach, 24, is signed to an AHL contract already with Wilkes-Barre next season, and the production here might have also just been partly a product of Plante setting him up. Horbach's three goals today matched his total in 39 games at the University of Wisconsin last season.

• Gabriel D'Aigle, the lone drafted goaltender here, was fine. He let in nine goals over two 20-minute games, but the games were all high-event affairs because of the three-on-three play. His team lost both of their games, and he definitely let in one costly soft goal, but he wasn't bad.

• Three defensemen here stood out as being physically imposing -- the drafted Peyton Kettles and Brady Peddle, and undrafted AHL-contracted signing Maleek McGowan. It was just nice to see Kettles play at all after he missed most of last season with a shoulder injury. Of the defensemen, his skating stood out as being a weakness.

Peddle's brightest moment came with a breakaway backhand goal in Team Rutherford's blowout of Team Barrasso in the penultimate game. Not something he's known for, exactly.

Kettles did lay out McGowan with a big hit in one of the games, and McGowan was slow to get up but stayed in the game. McGowan's teammate Peddle went up to Kettles at the whistle and gave him a shove. Chippy hockey in July.

• Quote of the week comes from Amanda Kessel on McGowan: "He's mean. He wants to hurt guys. We like that about him."

• Parker Von Richter was banged up in yesterday's practice and didn't play today. Didn't seem serious. No reason to push guys through anything in a July exhibition.

• That's a wrap for this week, but we'll see some of these guys again in two months for the prospect tournament in Detroit. The college players won't be there since they'll be back at school, but the Rucks should be among those there.