- Pittsburgh is carrying 16 to 18 NHL forwards for roughly 13 roster spots
- Ville Koivunen just signed for eight years and still isn’t guaranteed a job
- Read below for the forwards most likely to get moved out of the crunch
Kyle Dubas has too many forwards and not enough defensemen.
The Penguins are heading into camp with somewhere between 16 and 18 legitimate NHL forwards and about 13 spots to hand out. Josh Cybulski of Pro Hockey Rumors counted nine near-locks: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust, Tommy Novak, Egor Chinakhov, Andrei Kuzmenko, Blake Lizotte and Nicholas Robertson.
Connor Dewar and Elmer Söderblom look like the fourth-line answers. That leaves two openings for Rutger McGroarty, Ville Koivunen, Hendrix Lapierre, Justin Brazeau, Filip Hallander, Avery Hayes and Tristan Broz.
Koivunen is the strangest name on that list. He signed an eight-year extension on Thursday that ties Malkin and Letang for the second-longest contract in franchise history, behind only Crosby’s 12-year deal. Mario Lemieux and Marc-Andre Fleury never got more than seven.
He got there on the strength of 14 points in 47 career NHL games:
Dubas explained the term as a read on where the market was going, not a reward for what Koivunen has done so far. Check out the Penguins walking through his thinking:
McGroarty is the one to watch. Pittsburgh’s most-hyped forward prospect isn’t cracking that top nine, and another full AHL season does almost nothing for him at 22.
Lapierre is stuck in the same spot. The Penguins sent two picks to Washington for him and now can’t find him meaningful minutes.
Cybulski pegged Brazeau and Hallander as the likeliest to get moved, less about their play than about age, contract status and simple math. Waiving useful NHL forwards and praying nobody claims them is not a plan, and Pittsburgh already has a reputation problem in trade talks.
The blue line is the other half of this. Pittsburgh’s left side is thin, and Dubas is either handing Owen Pickering and Harrison Brunicke real minutes or he has another move in him. Turning a spare forward into a defenseman fixes both ends at once.
Camp opens next month with seven forwards chasing two jobs, and Crosby, Malkin and Letang are all running out of runway. Dubas has about six weeks to decide who he is actually building for.
