Last season, the Pittsburgh Penguins finished third overall in the NHL with 293 goals for as a team, trailing second place Carolina Hurricanes by just three and first place Colorado Avalanche by nine. While the Avalanche had Nathan MacKinnon posting a league leading 53 goals along with Martin Necas and Brock Nelson topping the 30 goal mark, the Penguins relied on a much more balanced attack to rack up their total.
Anthony Mantha may have been one-and-done with the Penguins, but his lone season in Pittsburgh
was a memorable one, leading the team with 33 goals, making him the only Penguins player to reach the mark during the 2025-26 season.
Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust both potted 29 goals respectively last season, but together they missed a combined 24 games, meaning they were both on pace for over 30 goals but injuries kept them just short and gave Mantha a clear path to be the team leader.
Now the 2026-27 is on the horizon and the Penguins will be hoping to repeat that scoring prowess that helped them back to the playoffs last go around, but to do so, they will need to find a way to replace those departed goals from Mantha, along with needing other players still on the roster to repeat or exceed what they did last season.
Here now are a few of the names who could sit atop the Penguins goal scoring race when the 2026-27 season comes to a close.
Sidney Crosby
As mentioned above, Crosby fell just shy of the 30 goal mark in 2025-26, netting 29 while missing 14 games. If Crosby even misses just a fraction of those games instead of all 14, he likely eclipses 30 goals and possibly even finishes above Mantha’s mark of 33 to lead the team.
Although Crosby is now 39 years old and entering his 22nd NHL season, he will be one of the clear favorites to lead the Penguins in goals this season. In his NHL career thus far, Crosby has only failed to reach 30 goals seven times, with three of those seasons either being lock out shortened or COVID shortened.
If Crosby stays healthy in 2026-27 and keeps scoring at his normal pace, it’s not hard to envision him being back above 30 goals again and leading the charge for the Penguins offense as he has done basically his entire career to this point.
Bryan Rust
After coming agonizingly close to hitting the 30 goal mark several times, Rust finally broke that barrier in 2024-25, hitting 31 goals for the first 30 goals season of his career. Rust nearly repeated the feat last season, but fell just short at 29 goals, while like Crosby, missing a double digit amount of games that suppressed his overall total.
Now Rust is back for his 13th NHL season looking to get back to that magic 30 goal mark. He’ll be featuring on the top line alongside Crosby as he has been doing for years now, so the scoring opportunities will be there for Rust and it will be up to him to capitalize on those chances.
Health has always been a bit of an issue for Rust, he’s played 75+ games just once in his career, but when he’s on the ice, he’s been as reliable of a goal scorer of just about anyone else on the roster. History says he’ll be hanging around that Penguins goal scorer lead again this season.
Egor Chinakhov
In 41 games with the Penguins in 2025-26, Chinakhov posted 18 goals, good for sixth most on the season. That pace equaled out to roughly 0.44 goals/game, or 36 over an entire 82 game slate. That puts Chinakhov above Mantha for the overall scoring lead if he plays in Pittsburgh and scores at that pace all season.
After the Penguins acquired Chinakhov just before the new year, he burst onto the season and became one of the team’s most prolific goal scorers in the second half of the season. His shot it out of this world and his chemistry with fellow Russia Evgeni Malkin was instantaneous.
The goal scoring dried up for Chinakhov in the playoffs, but the process was still good he was just snake bitten at the absolute worst time. If he produces at the rate we saw with the Penguins again this season, he may be the early favorite to lead the entire team in goals this time around.
Rickard Rakell
Although Rakell’s reputation is of a goal scorer, he’s only topped the 30 goal mark three times in his career, once with the Penguins in 2024-25 when he set a new career high with 35 goals to lead the team. He regressed back to just 24 goals this past season, coming in fourth on the Penguins, but like Crosby and Rust, missed a significant chunk of time which undoubtedly suppressed his total.
There were plenty of trade rumors surrounding Rakell again this summer, but as of now, he’s still on the roster, and as long as he remains a Penguins player, he will be in the running for top goal scorer playing alongside Crosby and Rust on the top line.
It’s hard to believe that Rakell will be embarking on his fifth season with the Penguins in 2026-27 and he’s played some of his best hockey in Pittsburgh. Health will be a concern again, but he’s been a productive player for the Penguins and a full season should produce team leading results like they have in the past.
Ben Kindel
With 17 goals in his rookie season, Kindel posted once of the best goal scoring seasons for an 18 year old in NHL history. What he does for an encore remains to be seen, but he is coming into 2026-27 with a full year of professional experience under his belt, plus a full summer of training to prepare for his second go around.
While it remains to be seen exactly where Kindel settles into the lineup this season, he’ll certinaly be looking to build and improve on his rookie numbers. It may be too big of an ask for him to jump for 17 goals all the way into the 30 goal range, but he’s shown us he does have the ability to get the puck in the net.
Evgeni Malkin
Malkin was the fifth leading goal scorer for the Penguins last season, but he failed to reach the 20 goal mark for the second straight season and has not reached the 30 goal mark since all the way back in 2017-18 when he posted 42 goals. It’s clear as he enters his 21st NHL season that his prime goal scoring days are well behind him, but you cannot just pass over a player like Malkin without a mention.
Andrei Kuzmenko
Could Kuzmenko be the 2026-27 version of Mantha for the Penguins? He scored a whopping 39 goals back in 2022-23, but the goal scoring has mostly dried up since then as he has bounced around to different teams across the past few season. If he does find away to rediscover his scoring touch and turn in a Mantha-esque season, then what a find by Kyle Dubas for a second straight offseason.
