Twenty years ago this month, barely-18-year-old Sidney Crosby was priming to play in his first professional hockey season. The NHL was finally coming back from the oblivion of a lockout which killed the 2004-05 season. The Pittsburgh Penguins were two years removed from one of their worst seasons ever but the promise of a new generation led by Crosby, fellow first overall pick Marc-Andre Fleury, and second overall pick Evgeni Malkin (who would still be stuck in Russia until the following season). The team might not have realized it at the time, but it was to be Mario Lemieux’s final season in the NHL.
Twenty seasons, three Stanley Cups, numerous individual accolades, a few general managers and coaching staff changes, and one arena later, the Pittsburgh Penguins enter the 2025-26 season on the verge of a new generation of Penguins hockey. Fleury is retired, but played one more preseason game for Pittsburgh before hanging the skates up for good. Malkin is in the last year of his contract and seems on the fence about whether he will want to stick around for the next year or so. Crosby is in the penultimate year of his contract, and there is increasing buzz about whether he will stick with the Penguins through the following years as general manager Kyle Dubas tries to navigate this team through a rebuild. This will be the continuing saga of the Pittsburgh Penguins until Crosby is no longer with the team.
Until then, there are eighty-two games to play this season and, as things stand right now, the Penguins are not expected to be a good team this year. Most of their best players are on the wrong side of 30 35. The rest of their best players have struggled with health problems or are too inconsistent to rely upon. Their burgeoning youth movement is still a few years from really getting going. Even if there was a goaltender who wanted to distinguish himself, the defense is peppered with players who have been average at best in their careers. Even if Pittsburgh considered itself in the playoff race, that would only be likely if everyone stayed healthy, everyone performed up to or above expectations, and just generally all the luck in the world would have to swing their way, and then they would face the uphill battle of competing against teams that are far superior. The reality is that a playoff berth would be an absolute moonshot, and the best we can hope for is that the Penguins are competitive and not embarrassing.
Pittsburgh welcomes a new head coach in former New York Rangers assistant Dan Muse, in his first head coaching gig in the NHL, and overall a new coaching staff (except for goaltending coach Andy Chiodo, the lone holdover from the departure of Mike Sullivan). My longstanding opinion has been that Pittsburgh was well overdue for a head coaching change, so the fact that they not only decided to move on from Sullivan but also bring in a relatively unknown quantity in Muse could lead to a big change in the team’s culture, if nothing else. The one big failing by Sullivan was to give the veterans a lot of grace while having the prospects on a much shorter leash. In Sullivan’s defense, the prospects he was dealing with were often not NHL caliber, but there was very little accountability from Sullivan for the veterans when they were playing poorly. Coming from the Rangers which had been rebuilding during his time there, Muse is seen as having worked extensively with their prospects, so there is hope that he will give Pittsburgh’s younger players more of an opportunity.
Therein lies the biggest X-factor for the Penguins this year: how much of an impact will the team’s younger players have? As of this writing the team’s active NHL roster only has two players under 25 years old: Philip Tomasino, currently penciled into a fourth-line role, and newly acquired goaltender Arturs Silovs. But there are plenty of other guys in the wings who could make a statement, if only just in the first few weeks of the season. Maybe Ben Kindel, this past summer’s #11 overall pick, will get the nine game trial before heading back to juniors? Same with Harrison Brunicke, who has continued to impress the team since last summer. Avery Hayes and Tristan Broz have also impressed at times over the past couple of years. And, of course there is Rutger McGroarty who will start the season injured but will certainly be given the chance in the top six at some point. These guys represent the tip of the spear of Pittsburgh’s future, if not its present, but if they make a case for themselves to be in the lineup every night, it can only be to the Penguins’ benefit.
Otherwise, much of the roster is familiar (and aging) faces, but there are some new acquisitions to address. Kyle Dubas signed winger Anthony Mantha to a one-year deal, and he’s been a pretty consistent if middling producer in his career. Justin Brazeau, late of the Minnesota Wild, is an imposing forward at 6’5″ and 220 pounds, and he’ll bring his physical presence to a fourth line which has been lacking for one for some time. On defense there’s a duo in Parker Wotherspoon and Connor Clifton which will have to compete with Brunicke and Owen Pickering for the third pairing role, but there’s also Matt Dumba, for whom his reputation will hopefully remain behind him as he gets a new start in the top four in Pittsburgh. Finally there’s the aforementioned Arturs Silovs who impressed the Penguins enough with his performance with the Abbotsford Canucks in the AHL playoffs for them to go out and acquire him in the offseason.
For me, Silovs is the most interesting summer acquisition as the goaltending depth chart has not gotten less jammed up. Tristan Jarry has refused to establish himself as a valid starter in the NHL, and there are two prospects coming along in Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov, one of whom will eventually supplant Jarry (if not later this season). But, up until his playoff performance in the AHL this past summer, Silovs was also seeming to be a lost cause. Will this be the opportunity he needs to prove to everyone that he is a serious candidate for an NHL job? In any event, Pittsburgh’s defense is going to be so dubious that the team is going to be relying a lot on its goaltenders to keep them in games. Jarry has proven to be so inconsistent that he has actually been sent to the AHL. Silovs has not been very good in his few appearances in the NHL. Blomqvist, who is starting the year injured, also has not been great in his brief tenure in the NHL. Either someone is going to step up and stand on their heads, or the Penguins are going to be giving up a lot of goals this season.
This season is going to be quite the balancing act for the Pittsburgh Penguins. They are undoubtedly headed for a rebuild, and to that end they need high-end draft picks, which teams only get by being particularly bad. Even if they’re bad enough, they still have to get the ping-pong balls to bounce their way for the best chance at a prospective generational talent such as Gavin McKenna. With the rumors that Sidney Crosby may not hang around for a rebuild, the Penguins might need McKenna to sweeten the prospects for Crosby and be for him as Mario Lemieux was for Sid. That being said, there is no guarantee that Pittsburgh would land the first overall pick in June even if they were the worst team in the NHL this season.
At the same time, because of guys like Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, and Erik Karlsson, there are too many good players on the roster for this team to reliably bottom out altogether, and the further they are from the bottom of the standings, the more likely the rebuild will be protracted and thus less appealing for Crosby. There being a new coaching staff including a new head coach could also lead to a boost as the team has new expectations to work with. If any (several) of the new acquisitions or prospects exceed expectations, the Penguins could even be in the hunt for a playoff spot. A doomed prospect that, and one which makes the rebuild still longer. It’s going to be tricky to thread this needle of trying to be competitive but also keep themselves in the hunt for another top prospect.
LGP