—Even if he isn’t in the NHL just yet, Chase Pietila had his “welcome to the NHL moment” this past spring.

On March 12, three days after he signed his three-year entry-level contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Pietila was brought into the UMPC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry to get a workout in with player development staffer Josh Wrobel.

But beforehand, Pietila, a few days removed from completing his collegiate career at Michigan Tech, was given some prime real estate in the team’s dressing room. To his right was Sidney Crosby. On the opposite flank, Kris Letang.

Crosby chatted up the 21-year-old Pietila as if they had been teammates for all of Crosby’s 20 seasons with the franchise. The only interruption in their discussion came when Letang offered a handshake and a welcome to the organization.

Pietila’s smile could have powered a nuclear submarine.

“One minute, I’m in college,” said Pietilla, who turned professional following his sophomore campaign. “The next minute, I’m getting dressed between Letang and Crosby. It’s unbelievable. It felt like a dream almost. It was pretty awesome. It’s something that I’ll remember forever.”

Two days after that encounter, Pietila was formally introduced to professional hockey when he signed an amateur tryout contract with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for the remainder of the season. He wound up splitting time between the AHL Penguins and the ECHL’s Wheeling Nailers over the next seven weeks.

“In college, it was a little bit easier to push guys around,” Pietila said July 4 during the Penguins’ prospect development camp. “Now, it’s more positioning, stick detail as well as being physical.”

Defense is going to be Pietila’s route to the NHL. It’s what got him from the junior level to the NCAA ranks. In fact, he was selected as defensive defenseman of the season by his school’s conference, the Central Collegiate Hockey Association.

Focusing on defense was a decision the right-shooting Pietila (6-foot-2, 187 pounds) made when he was skating at the junior level for the Youngstown Phantoms of the United States Hockey League.

With his gaze turned to the defensive side of the game, Pietila helped the Phantoms win the USHL’s Clark Cup championship in 2023.

“My first year of juniors, I kind of struggled a bit,” Pietila said. “After that, I settled back and figured out how I wanted to play. I figured meaner, tougher and playing that type of way will help me get to the next level. It helped me in college. Hopefully, it will help me as a pro.”

How does Pietila, a fourth-round draft pick (No. 111 overall) in 2024, view himself as a defensive entity?

“I try to be as physical, hard to play against, annoying to play against,” Pietila said. “Just trying to be all over people. Stick on puck. Everything. Positioning, stick, being hard to play against, a combination of all of those.”

Those attributes were apparent to management in Pietila’s handful of professional contests.

“He got a lot of experience at the end of the year,” said Penguins assistant general manager Jason Spezza, who oversees Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. “The benefit to them (players joining the team late in the season), is they feel the level. He should have a bit of a leg up in terms of understanding what things are about. It’s not all going to be new for him. It’s a great experience when they can come and play games and be a part of things.

“He went down to Wheeling, played a lot of minutes and was really assertive in his game. … He’s a guy that we have a lot of belief in.”

Pietila certainly welcomes that faith as he makes the jump to the pro ranks on a full-time basis.

“Obviously, it’s a little bit faster than college,” Pietila said. “There’s a lot of skilled guys. It’s professional. I thought I (handled it) well.”