With the Penguins’ 2021-22 season coming to a quick ending in the first round of the playoffs, the Tribune-Review will offer Penguins A to Z, a player-by-player look at all 54 individuals signed to an NHL contract — including those whose deals do not begin until the 2022-23 season — with the organization, from mid-level prospect Niclas Almari to top-six winger Jason Zucker.

Raivis Ansons

Position: Right winger

Shoots: Left

Age: 20

Height: 6-foot-1

Weight: 191 pounds

2021-22 QMJHL statistics: 56 games, 60 points (18 goals, 42 assists)

Contract: Entering the first year of a three-year entry-level contract with a salary cap hit of $844,167. Pending unrestricted free agent in the 2025 offseason.

Acquired: Fifth-round draft pick (No. 149 overall), Oct. 7, 2020

Last season: After attending the Penguins’ training camp in September but being unable to fully participate due to an undisclosed injury, Ansons, a native of Latvia, opened the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s 2021-22 campaign with the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, a team he had been a member of for the previous two seasons.

Ansons opened the season by posting a strong 24 points (six goals, 18 assists) in his first 19 games of the season. But with Drakkar struggling in the standings, he was traded to the Saint John Sea Dogs on Jan. 6.

With the Sea Dogs, Ansons recorded 36 points (12 goals, 24 assists) in 37 games and helped that team clinch second place of the QMJHL’s Maritimes Division.

Overall, Ansons finished third in the QMJHL in short-handed points with seven (three goals, four assists) during the regular season.

In the postseason, Ansons put up five points (two goals, three assists) in five postseason games as the Sea Dogs fell in the first round to the Rimouski Oceanic.

Before being traded, Ansons suited up for Latvia in the International Ice Hockey Federation’s U20 World Championship Division I Group A tournament in mid-December. Ansons led Latvia to a second-place finish in that event and was second in the tournament in scoring with nine points (five goals, four assists) in five games.

On May 2, the Penguins announced they had signed Ansons to his entry-level contract.

Ansons’ season is not over. The Sea Dogs will host and participate in the Memorial Cup tournament, which crowns the top junior team in Canada, from June 20-29.

The future: Ansons will begin his professional career in 2022-23 and is likely bound to do that with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League (AHL).

It seems kind of lazy to compare him to fellow Latvian Teddy Blueger just based on their common heritage, but there is a path to the NHL that Blueger blazed which Ansons can follow.

That’s to say he can use his large frame and skating ability to establish himself as a defensive presence in the NHL and find work as a bottom-six forward capable of playing either wing. Blessed with some size and strength, he is fierce on the walls with regard to puck battles.

While he has put up solid numbers in the junior ranks, he’s not skilled enough to become a top-six winger as a professional. Defense will be his path to the NHL.

Like with any European, there will be something of an adjustment to life in the United States, but given that he’s played three years in the QMJHL, he is already used to the North American game.

And he’s not a stranger to the professional ranks. During the fall of 2020, when Canadian laws limited foreign nationals from entering the country, Ansons suited up for Zemgale of the Latvian High Hockey League which is admittedly a low level of the professional game.

There will be something of an adjustment, as there is for any mid-level prospect, for Ansons in 2022-23. But he possesses the base components to be a reliable bottom-six defensive winger in the NHL.

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