It’s always fun to go back and have a laugh at how difficult predicting the future is, so why not put a six-game losing streak on the back burner to see how many twists and turns there really were in the calendar year of 2025.
Here’s an audit of what did and didn’t happen according to the clouded crystal ball.
Mike Sullivan is still the coach of the Pens on 1/1/2026
Is this a bold prediction? Maybe not. Unpopular? Possibly so. But there won’t be a change behind the bench in the near future in Pittsburgh.
Sullivan has the confidence of his bosses and the utmost respect from his star players.
Well, starting out a cool 0/1. Sullivan eventually lost that confidence of Kyle Dubas and was fired after the season. It was time for a change, certainly past time based on the short shelf lives of NHL coaches. It makes sense to move into the next phase of the team with a younger and more developmental oriented coach like Dan Muse to bring fresh ideas and insert some new energy to the team but it was fair to need to see it to believe it. So far that’s been mostly a breath of fresh air for 2025-26.
Sidney Crosby will NOT win gold this year (but he will next year)
Crosby has won the last four major international tournaments in which he’s played (2016 World Cup of Hockey, 2015 World Championships, 2010 and 2014 Olympics) but he won’t be adding the 2025 4 Nations Faceoff to his endless mantle of achievements. That will be due to Sullivan and the Americans taking the title of the NHL’s international tournament next month.
That said, the unfamiliar feeling won’t last long — Crosby will capture his third Olympic gold in Milan for the 2026 Olympic games. How’s that for a bonus prediction?
Close but no cigar, the Canadians prevailed over the Americans in a 3-2 OT 4 Nations championship game to add to Crosby’s illustrious mantle of achievements. Wouldn’t bet against them in Italy in a few months either, but the gap between them and the Americans has become razor thin to make it a virtual toss up. The US won the round robin game 3-1 against Canada to prove they are loaded right there with Team Canada’s best.
Crosby breaks the Wayne Gretzky record of most point per game seasons
Easy one, by April Crosby will have more points than games to break the record that Wayne Gretzky set.
Crosby easily cleared this, scoring 91 points in 80 games last season to take that somewhat obscure NHL record as his own. He’s working on extending it with the 35 points in 32 games this season, which won’t be shocking to see that keep going.
The Penguins will trade Marcus Pettersson and not make the playoffs in 2025
The Pens have had a few nice weeks to end 2024, but their hot shooting will regress and they don’t have the defense or goaltending to overcome their general team construction that lacks too much talent in too many areas over the long run. They’ll finish a handful of points out of a playoff spot — not an embarrassment, but at the same time not a serious, real contender to make the playoffs by the end of the season.
As such, the team will trade Marcus Pettersson at the deadline, and maybe one or two others (but not much more). There won’t be a firesale, partially because the Pens will want to keep some talent around to finish the season and partially because contenders are not going to be that interested in what Pittsburgh has to sell. The return for Pettersson won’t thrill but won’t be terrible.
Some added context is needed here; when this article was posted on January 2nd, the Pens were in 9th place in the East, just one point below the playoff line (though they had played two more games at the time than most competitors). Pittsburgh ended up finishing more than a handful of points below the playoff line (11) but did end up trading Pettersson a few weeks after this, any illusion of a strong second half run was just that. There was no true firesale, the team did move Anthony Beauvillier, Cody Glass and Michael Bunting but brought an equal amount of NHL talent by gaining Conor Timmins, Connor Dewar and Tommy Novak. Important players without expiring contracts in Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson all stayed put.
The return for Pettersson was pretty strong, netting a first round pick that would become the 12th overall pick in the 2025 draft. Pittsburgh flipped that on draft day to move down and eventually draft Will Horcoff and Bill Zonnon. Pittsburgh also picked up some spare pieces to even out the money (Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais) and received prospect Melvin Fernstrom, while also including impending free agent Drew O’Connor in the deal.
The jury is still out on the three major young pieces that Pittsburgh got from this move. Horcoff is looking very promising and could be the key from this transaction to pay off down the line.
One of Ryan Graves or Tristan Jarry will be moved this summer
Kyle Dubas will look to undo a self-inflicted mistake and clear out a bad player/bad contract this summer. He won’t be able to work miracles and get rid of both, but he will flip one under-performing and over-paid veteran for a similarly bad contract in the off-season. It will be met with some relief in the long-term.
The moves didn’t happen in the summer but the intent was in the right place. Both Graves and Jarry hit the waiver wire in the course of 2025, reaching natural conclusions from the disappointing and declining play. Jarry rebounded to play well enough to get traded by the end of the year, once Edmonton saw him put more evidence out that he had presumably fixed some of his issues.
As for Graves, well who knows. He went down to Wilkes with a positive attitude, did well and was called back up. Since then he has been up and down on the borderline of the lineup. He still has three seasons after this to go, it doesn’t make sense to buy him out and even with a rising cap there’s not much reason to think another team is going to be interested in adding his services any time soon.
Erik Karlsson stays…for now
The Penguins will need players, and Karlsson’s $10.0 million existing cap hit won’t be easy to move. Pittsburgh won’t be that hard-pressed to make a bad deal that requires them to retain salary and/or acquire asset(s) lesser than what a 22 minute a night right handed defender who can score 50+ points in a season can offer as value on the ice, so they won’t make such a trade. Which means they’ll hold tight with Karlsson for a while longer yet. Karlsson won’t finish his contract (which lasts through 2026-27) in Pittsburgh, but he’ll spend of all 2025 in the Steel City.
There’s always a lot of smoke regarding Karlsson and the potential for a trade, most of it coming from outside forces. The Pens have not yet seemed outwardly anxious to try and move him, and his own performance has been badly needed for a blueline that doesn’t have many capable puck movers on it. Given the full no movement, this situation has always pointed to being an off-season move, should it happen at all. Maybe that changes by the 2027 deadline if the team is not looking playoff quality that year as his contract ticks out to go chase a Stanley Cup, but for now it seems sensible that Karlsson isn’t going anywhere.
No exciting trades or free agent signings..
Much like in 2024, the Penguins won’t be looking at the top free agents available. Besides entry level contracts they will not sign anyone for three or more seasons and not attempt to significantly upgrade their roster through free agency. Nor will there be any exciting trades ahead, unless dealing Pettersson for a couple of futures does it for ya.
Which means don’t hold your breath for news of a Bryan Rust or Rickard Rakell trade in 2025, it’s not going to happen this year. The Pens still need somebody to play with Crosby, and those two have been productive and fit the bill to surround Crosby with legit NHL scoring line talent. Both Rust and Rakell are signed through 2027-2028, they’ll play most of the time remaining on those deals in Pittsburgh (even though, like Karlsson above, they won’t finish their contracts with the Pens – but the team will not be in a huge hurry to move them along either).
There’s a few days to go before the Christmas trade freeze but at this point it looks like Rakell and Rust lasted the of whole 2025 with Pittsburgh. Perhaps that changes by the March deadline if the Pens fall out of contention and seek to trade in those aging assets for some younger ones, though the point remains that the team will need some first-line caliber wingers to play with Crosby. That hasn’t changed and barring another club coming in with an offer that the Pens can’t refuse the status quo may continue for longer.
..But the youth revolution will begin
The Pens have been retooling in the last year, but have not really shifted into being a young team just quite yet. That’s mostly because they don’t have enough NHL caliber young pieces to fit the bill, but the slow process is about to show more progress. With Owen Pickering’s development that’s starting to change already, in the next 12 months it will only continue. Rutger McGroarty, Tristan Broz, Ville Koivunen, Joel Blomqvist and Vasily Ponomarev will all work towards being NHL regulars in the coming year. Harrison Brunicke will make his NHL debut. Veterans like Matt Nieto, Noel Acciari and Kevin Hayes will fade away through one mechanism (free agency, trade, IR) or another.
The changes and turnover won’t happen overnight. Veterans like Crosby, Karlsson, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang will inflate the team’s overall average age, but make no mistake that through the the median age of the player, the Penguins will certainly be trending towards youth as 2025 goes along.
Some specifics were wrong, Pickering hasn’t taken any tangible steps and Acciari/Hayes have remained, but overall we’ll chalk this up as a win. No one could have foreseen Ben Kindel’s surprising ascension into an instant NHL player, but the Pens have gotten younger across the board. In 2025 they dropped to 30-something goalies (Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic) picking up two 20-something goalies (Stuart Skinner and Arturs Silovs). Brunicke, Koivunen, Sergei Murashov and Tristan Broz all made NHL debuts along with Kindel. Many older roster players (Nieto, Michael Bunting, Matt Grzelcyk) moved on with younger replacements.
The Pens aren’t truly a young team and never will grade well on the average, but the movement is clearly in place. The team has four U-23 members (Kindel, McGroarty, Koivunen and technically Brunicke) whereas as recently as 2022-23 they basically had none. Others like Murashov and ideally Pickering should be knocking on the door. The wave of young talent drafted in 2025 sets the stage for more like Horcoff to come up through the ranks in ideally the not-too-distant future.
Another slight miss was that some of the under-the-radar signings were not that exciting in July but have worked out wonderfully on the ice. Justin Brazeau and Parker Wotherspoon have played very well on team-friendly deals. Anthony Mantha has 22 points in 32 games. Those moves didn’t move the needle in the moment but have proven to be major adds for the team on the ice, as have to a lesser degree the signings of players like Connor Dewar, Filip Hallander and Caleb Jones for peripheral players.
