Now that the summer Top 25 Under 25 series has wrapped up today, and with it (almost) the month of August, let’s turn attention to next season.
Players on the Penguins are trickling into town and starting to workout in Pittsburgh to prepare for NHL training camp that will begin in mid-ish September. Opening night for the regular season sees the curtain come up on September 30th.
There’s a lot to figure out from now until then, today let’s take a stab at what that lineup could be. Injuries figure to derail
a lot of this – the Pens announced on opening day of training camp that Rutger McGroarty was out with a summer injury (good news: McGroarty is skating so that shouldn’t be the case this year). During training camp there was more with Bryan Rust and Kevin Hayes opening the year on IR and not the 23-player roster due to injuries. Any issue that hasn’t happened yet can’t be projected ahead of time, of course, so we’ll roll with what is known as of now and see how it holds up.
Forwards
Egor Chinakhov – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust
Nick Robertson – Ben Kindel – Rickard Rakell
Andrey Kuzmenko – Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Elmer Soderblom
Extras: Hendrix Lapierre, Ville Koivunen
Defense
Erik Karlsson / Trevor van Riemsdyk
Sam Girard / Kris Letang
Declan Carlile / Kaeden Korczak
Extra: Ilya Solovyov
Goaltending
Opening night starter: Arturs Silovs
Backup: Sergei Murashov
A lot of meat on the bone, let’s get into it.
For the forwards, I’ve no idea what to do with Justin Brazeau. Do they find a spot for him with with Kindel? It’s hard to see how. Maybe Brazeau sneaks on as a scratch but after signing Koivunen to that contract it’s tough to see Koivunen going on the waiver wire. Maybe that means a trade to clear the numbers, but we’ve all thought that for many months now. More than likely if there’s even one injury to one of these 14 forwards, there’s a space for Brazeau and that could be how things sort out. As last year taught us, that could easily be in the cards.
As far as the rest, you can call the second line the third line and the third line the second line, it’s all about the same with the ice time splits under Dan Muse. The main thing is trying to get Malkin with players he should do well with and putting Kindel in a spot where he can continue to shine. The good news is there are lots of choices on the splits to make that happen independent of this exact outlook. Otherwise, we’ll stick Chinakhov with Crosby and project Soderblom to win perhaps the only open job and see how long before things get mixed up, which will likely be pretty quickly.
On defense, Erik Karlsson slyly joked last season that it took 17 years before an NHL coach asked if he could kill penalties. Has anyone inquired about how he feels about playing on the left side of the ice? That would solve a lot of lineup split concerns for having too many right handers if he can. If not, maybe van Riemsdyk can. This outlook could be wildly inaccurate with plenty of other directions more than possible, but hey, it’s an idea. Overall the #1-6 roles are probably about known, but the placement of who gets paired with who is going to be very curious to see unfold during the preseason. The spoiler/wild card would be if Owen Pickering or Harrison Brunicke make a preseason run at a roster spot and kick a player like Carlile or Korczak into the scratch spot and send Solovyov to waivers. Could happen but the path of least resistance is to keep 7D that way the overload of forwards can keep a player and keep the younger players in the AHL for the start of the season. One name not seen yet: Ryan Graves. Just putting this out there to show that’s not an oversight on our part, but in reality will he get a look?
Last year, it was a surprise when Silovs played opening night and not Tristan Jarry. Do the Pens have another surprise in store this year? Considering the first opponent is the Flyers and Silovs played so well against them in the playoffs, I’d have to think him a heavy favorite to be the regular season Game 1 starter this year. We all know it won’t take long for the backup to get in, perhaps as soon as the second game (Silovs after all pitched a shutout and then watched Jarry take the next game).
In terms of the salary cap, the Penguins have plenty of room. They could keep 26 or 27 players comfortably and still be under – if not for the 23-player limit. That will make it difficult for bubble players like Rutger McGroarty, Avery Hayes, Filip Hallander and the aforementioned young defensemen of Brunicke and Pickering to make a run for what looks to be an extremely limited amount of spaces. Then again, it only takes one announcement or practice gone awry to land some players on the injured reserve, which would shake up the entire outlook and provide some unexpectedly open spots to work with. Until that happens, it’s tough to project, besides the knowledge that a team rarely is 100% healthy even at the start of the season – so who knows, there may be surprises in store during the coming weeks before opening night.
Feel free to give your projected opening night lineup in the comments and very soon we’ll start to see how it comes together with the impending start of training camp.
