It’ll be another offseason of change in Pittsburgh. Last season, the Penguins dropped eight players from the last game of the 2024-25 season to the following opening night lineup in October. A few more like Phil Tomasino, Danton Heinen and Tristan Jarry were soon to follow not long after the season began. That adds up to over half the lineup in the last game not being a major factor in the following season.
While year-to-year trends don’t always hold up exactly the same, every year’s team is bound to have changes and the Penguins under Kyle Dubas have been a very active team at churning through players — especially at the bottom-half of the lineup. 40 different players skated for the Pens in 2025-26, an NHL high. Some of this high usage was necessity due to the timing of injuries but many more cases were trying players out for a few games and either trading, waiving and/or sending back to the AHL if it wasn’t working out and moving onto the next option to try again.
As a base template, here’s what the Penguins look like as of now based on contracts on the books for next season and reasonable projection of restricted free agents. This base could change the instant a pending unrestricted free agent like Evgeni Malkin or Ryan Shea is signed.
Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan RustTommy Novak – Ben Kindel – Egor Chinakhov*Elmer Soderblom – ? – Justin Brazeau? – Blake Lizotte – Avery Hayes
Parker Wotherspoon / Erik KarlssonSam Girard / Kris Letang? / Jack St. Ivany
Arturs Silovs*?
(* denotes restricted free agent not currently under contract)
There are a lot of questions at this point and some serious holes to address. The center position is lacking, though re-signing Malkin and putting him or Novak in a center role solves a lot of issues and more or less create a top-9 forward group on hand that looked similar to last year, only minus Anthony Mantha and with a full season of Soderblom. That would handle enough bodies, though the wisdom of using a 40-year old Malkin or putting Novak in a full-time center role could be debated to the point where it makes sense for Pittsburgh to add a center this off-season either via free agency or the trade route.
Younger options like Ville Koivunen, Rutger McGroarty and Tristan Broz could be in the mix, we project Hayes is the most likely to do it but he could be seen as not an absolute certainty either. Connor Dewar profiles as the perfect fourth liner with a touch of offensive upside and penalty killing chops, he could also be in the picture moving forward if the team doesn’t opt to move onto younger, cheaper options like McGroarty and Hayes and is willing to give Dewar a contract that fits his needs enough to return. If Dewar is back, that really puts a squeeze on the upward mobility of the current AHL players, considering the success of recent pickups like Chinakhov and Soderblom lessening the opportunity for players like Koivunen, McGroarty and Hayes.
Defensively, the Penguins need a lot of attention this offseason. Perhaps a young player(s) like Owen Pickering, Harrison Brunicke or Jake Livanavage can step up into the NHL. Perhaps Shea and/or Ilya Solovyov will return despite being impending unrestricted free agents. Perhaps the trade additions will have to focus on adding more quality to the backend. There’s a lot of directions to potentially head for with the only sure thing that there could be a lot of moving pieces, perhaps up to and including trading a veteran out of the top-4. Everything is fluid, including the looming question about the three more seasons remaining on Ryan Graves’s contract and what spot, if any, that he will fill next season.
The Penguins also face some decisions in net. Arturs Silovs had an up and down year that ended on a high note. He could be at least a 1B type of option for the team next year that fits into the picture in a similar form as this past season. Youngsters like Sergei Murashov and Joel Blomqvist are getting close and offer promise, but it wouldn’t be a complete shock to see a proven NHL veteran brought into the mix to add depth and provide a cushion. (Silovs started 38 games during the regular season, Jarry/Stuart Skinner combined for 40 and Murashov had 4. If we pencil in Silovs as a rotational starter for even as many as 45 games this season, would you take the over on 36.5 combined NHL starts for Murashov+Blomqvist next season to pickup the rest? I don’t think I would, and not because I’d think Silovs will push for 50 starts..).
The other unknown looming large over any projection is the unpredictable trade market. Aside from Crosby and probably Chinakhov and Kindel (and, hey, might as well throw Lizotte in as well since he was just re-signed to a three-year contract for a reason), it wouldn’t or – at least shouldn’t – be terribly shocking if Kyle Dubas moved just about anyone on the projected roster above. This could be the year to move on from 30+ year old players like Rust, Rakell and Karlsson. It also might not be the time it happens, but it could be. Mid-level players like Novak, Brazeau and Girard come and go frequently when it comes to how the Penguins operate to flip these type of players (many of whom were brought into the organization recently as flipped players themselves). It’s true that some/many/most from this tier could all be back next season since it will take a transaction to send them away, but it’s not assured that all of them will return either. All are impending free agents in 2027 and could be likely to be traded at some point in the next 10 months, just a matter if that will be pressing or not.
That makes a projection a very fluid matter. The Penguins will have plenty of cap space, they could use it in many different ways. If they want to take on more veteran Kevin Hayes/Matt Dumba/Connor Clifton type of contracts that puts a veteran into the lineup at times and boosts the team’s draft stock, that is wide open. If they want to use some of that most-in-league draft pile to acquire NHL talent with upside like they did with Chinakhov and Soderblom, that would surely be welcomed. If they want to dabble in free agency to add a short-term piece, that route too is available.
As usual the answer is always “all of the above” when it comes to the complex matter of roster building through a myriad of short and long term reasons that make sense for the team moving forward. There’s no reason not to expect trades, free agents and plenty of changes over the summer, even for the best guess of what is currently on hand.
