WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – It was a crestfallen scene in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins’ locker room following the team’s elimination from the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs.
There were tears. There was dejection. But as they were all season long, the teammates were there for each other.
Much of the pervasive melancholy had subsided by the time the team reconvened at the Toyota SportsPlex for their exit interviews the following morning, though there was still a gloom in the air.
Rookie defenseman Owen Pickering was one of the players requested by media to share his thoughts on the heartbreak he experienced fewer than 24 hours ago. All year long, the Penguins touted how much of a close-knit group they were. Yet when Pickering was asked about the bonds between he and his teammates, he didn’t have to say a thing.
His hat said it all.
Pickering was wearing a custom ballcap with an emperor penguin meticulously stitched on the front, and right on the edge of the bird’s outline were three letters: RUT. An obvious reference to his fellow 21-year-old teammate, Rutger McGroarty, who had an injury prevent him from playing in the postseason.
Every hockey team claim that their locker room houses a loyal group of competitors, but this year’s Penguins embodied those oft-repeated lines without a hint of hyperbole. They were close.
From the start of the regular season, two or three practices into the calendar, their camaraderie was palpable. Loud roars when a player scored a goal in practice, big laughs in line before their turn to jump into a drill arrived, extended conversations over lunch well after their work was done for the afternoon, these all became commonplace early in the year and never subsided.
“There’s not a single guy on the team I can say a bad thing about,” said Avery Hayes. “And having young team too, everyone kind of going through a lot of this stuff for the first time together. We just had a really good team, a close team, and we had a ton of fun this year. That’s why losing this way sucks.”
That camaraderie extended far beyond those who started the season on the team, too. Any new face that stepped into the room felt the same companionship as those who had been around for months. Considering the team used a league-high 48 different skaters and seven different goalies during the 2024-25 season, that was a lot of new family members to welcome into the fellowship. Yet every time, the new addition was embraced.
“Everybody here has been…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at WBS Penguins…