Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
It’s been a difficult 2024-25 season in Bridgeport, but Brian Pinho has been a bright spot.
The seventh-year pro has set a career high with 21 goals and has matched his personal best with 37 points, and had the honor of representing the Islanders at the 2025 AHL All-Star Classic.
Pinho has shown in the past that he can produce offensively at this level, reaching the 20-goal mark in 2019-20 with the Hershey Bears. That effort came with a Hershey team that was among the AHL’s upper echelon and a potential Calder Cup contender had the pandemic not cut the campaign short.
He made his NHL debut with Washington in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoff bubble, and spent much of the following season on the Capitals’ taxi squad. Between the pandemic’s disruption and shoulder surgery in 2021-22, Pinho was limited to just 37 games with the Bears across the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.
Pinho’s nine-year association with the Washington Capitals also ended soon thereafter. Washington had selected him in the sixth round of the 2013 NHL Draft. He played a year of junior hockey in the USHL and four seasons at Providence College before joining Hershey in 2018. He signed a new deal with the New Jersey Devils when free agency opened in July 2022.
Pinho spent the 2022-23 season in Utica, working his way back into a regular rhythm with the Comets after having missed so much of the past two seasons, and he signed with the Islanders organization in 2023. Bridgeport finished last in the Atlantic Division, but in some ways the season still turned out a success for Pinho, who recorded nine goals and 25 assists and dressed for all 72 games, a solid body of work after those early-career setbacks.
The organization retained Pinho last summer, signing him to an AHL contract for 2024-25.
Pinho’s 21 goals are more than he scored the previous two seasons combined. Teaming with Chris Terry and Liam Foudy up front for Bridgeport, he has regained the scoring touch that he had shown during some of those earlier years. Part of his renaissance has been a concerted effort to simplify his all-around game. Shoot more (he generated 10 shots in two games last weekend at Lehigh Valley). Play with speed. Move the feet. He also has been able to pounce on the mistakes of opposing power-play units, with three shorthanded goals this season.
“I find that when I’m going to move my feet that I tend to create more chances for myself,” Pinho detailed.
Bridgeport head coach Rick Kowalsky has used Pinho and Terry together for much of the season, and the two click. Terry is one of the top playmakers ever to skate in the AHL, ranking 13th all-time in points (791). The trio of Pinho, Terry (16 goals) and Foudy (17) have combined to score more than 37 percent of Bridgeport’s goals this season.
“I think he’s so composed all the time,” Pinho said of Terry, “and he’s so comfortable and he makes everyone else feel comfortable. And he’s just an amazing leader, amazing guy in the room. He’s a special player.”
Still, in difficult times come growth opportunities – for Pinho, the rest of the leadership core, and the team’s younger players. The highly respected Pinho, a well-liked, low-key personality, wears a letter as an alternate captain, something that he also did at Providence College.
Make this a difficult team to play against each night. Lead by example by playing an earnest game.
“As one of the leaders, we just want to keep plugging away,” Pinho said.
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
