Logan Cooley, a forward for the 2004 Pittsburgh Penguins Elite team, has committed to the University of Notre Dame to continue his hockey career at the NCAA Division I level. The West Mifflin native is off to a great start this year with 14 goals and 13 assists in 25 games while managing to stay a +10.

Logan has been constantly improving and even attended the STX 68 this past spring. The Pittsburgh Penguins have been active in promoting youth hockey in the region and that commitment to the future of the sport has birthed such programs as Sidney Crosby’s Little Penguins Learn to Play program. Logan Cooley was one of the first ‘Little Penguins’ as he signed up for the inaugural season in 2008-09.

Crosby’s program has seen much growth over the last decade. So too has Logan Cooley. Playing on a Pittsburgh Penguins Elite team is an honor in itself and being able to commit to a Division I program is a testament to the work that Logan has put in since he first laced up the skates in 2008.

This week, the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders played a home-and-home series with one game at PPG Paints Arena and one 375 miles away at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. For a casual observer, the game featured an abundance of top-end NHL talent but to the trained eye, the two-game series more closely resembled a Notre Dame Hockey alumni scrimmage as Penguins forwards Riley Sheahan and Bryan Rust are both former Fighting Irish and Islanders captain Anders Lee also played his college hockey in South Bend. Of the other Notre Dame alumni in the NHL, only Kyle Palmieri never played for Pittsburgh. Ian Cole, the former Penguin defenseman who won a pair of Stanley Cups with the team, played at Notre Dame from 2007 to 2010.

The connections between Notre Dame and the Penguins roster in recent years is undeniable. The fact that Logan Cooley began his hockey career with the Little Penguins program, progressed to play for the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite organization and recently received the chance to play in South Bend is nothing short of the luck of the Irish.