Vitals
Player: Connor Dewar
Born: June 26, 1999 (Age 26 season)
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight:187 pounds
Hometown: Gilbert Plains, Manitoba, Canada
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2018 third round (92nd overall) by the Minnesota Wild
2025-26 Statistics: 78 games played, 14 goals, 16 assists = 30 points; 6 games played, 2 goals, 0 assists in playoffs.
Contract Status: Dewar was set to become a free agent this summer but resigned with the Penguins on a two-year deal worth $2.25 million AAV on May 7th.
History: 2024-25.
Monthly Splits
via Yahoo!
Connor Dewar set new offensive career highs across the board in 2025-26, but most of his production was front loaded to the first half of the season before drying up down the stretch. Of his 14 goals, 13 were scored in the first 52 games of the season, good for a 20-goal pace over the course of 82 games, but in the final 26 games he played, he only potted one goal and saw his scoring rate drop to just a 3-goal pace over the course of a full schedule.
January was by far and away Dewar’s best month of the season with seven goals and four assists in 15 games played while only committing a single minor penalty during that same stretch. Dewar also posted an unsustainable 30.4 shooting percentage in January which contributed greatly to his output during that stretch of play.
After January, the shooting percentage cratered along with his offensive production, only scoring a solitary goal following the Olympic break. His lone goal in March was a big one for the Penguins in a comeback victory over the Boston Bruins on March 8th that saw them erase a 3-0 deficit before winning in overtime.
Dewar’s four assists in March all came in Penguins victories during the toughest stretch of the season, recording two in a 7-2 victory over the Colorado Avalanche and one apiece in back-to-back wins over the New York Islanders and Detroit Red Wings that solidified the Penguins playoff position.
Story of the Season
A major reason for the Penguins struggles in the seasons leading up to 2025-26 was the lack of any forward depth past the top two lines. Both offensively and defensively, the Penguins could simply not keep up with opponents when the bottom six was on the ice and it was something that needed to be rectified if the Penguins were going to compete again.
Connor Dewar was a major piece in the Penguins revamped bottom six this season, acting one-third of the vaunted fourth line that acted as a buzzsaw when on the ice. Primarily alongside Blake Lizotte and Noel Acciari, Dewar put together a career best offensive season while still playing a vital defensive role for the team.
Together, the fourth line of Dewar-Lizotte-Acciari posted a 53.5 CF% and a 53.5 xGF% while primarily beginning their shifts in the defensive zone. They were driving play and causing all sorts of issues for the opponents when on the ice. Even without Lizotte, who missed significant stretches to injury this season, Dewar was still playing the best hockey of his career regardless of who else was on his line.
While Dewar’s work at even strength was notable, he played a crucial special teams role as well, leading the Penguins penalty kill in total minutes, averaging 2:41 minutes of TOI/G this season on the kill for the league’s sixth best unit overall.
Brought over at the trade deadline in 2025, Dewar did enough in his small sample size with the Penguins last season to earn a one-year contract for 2025-26. It’s safe to say he did more than enough to prove his worth as a bottom six forward and has quickly rewarded for his efforts following this season with a new two-year contract and a nice pay raise that will keep him in Pittsburgh through the next two seasons where he will be expected to continue in his bottom six role for the Penguins.
Regular season 5v5 advanced stats
Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of 18 forwards on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.
Corsi For%: 50.9% (7th)
Goals For%: 57.5% (5th)
xGF%: 51.3% (11th)
Scoring Chance %: 54.0% (5th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 51.8% (10th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 11.4% (10th)
On-ice save%: .916% (3rd)
Goals/60: 0.63 (14th)
Assist/60: 0.92 (13th)
Points/60: 1.55 (12th)
While difficult to compare solely to his short stint with the Penguins last season, when you factor in his play with the Toronto Maple Leafs before being acquired, then a fuller picture begins to shape for Dewar and it’s easy to see the improvement he made this season.
A combined CF% of 46.0% in 2024-25 took a major leap to 50.9% this season, good for fifth on the team at 5-on-5. His GF% was another area that skyrocketed, jumping to 57.5%, up from 38.5%. This for a player who started over 80% of his 5-on-5 shifts in the defensive zone. In both of these areas, he ranked better than the likes of top line players such as Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust.
Goaltending performed very well with Dewar on the ice, perhaps a nod to his defensive capabilities along with his linemates ability to take the game to the other team and develop into one of the best fourth lines in hockey this season.
Even with his new career highs offensively, Dewar is going to remain in the bottom half when it comes to scoring rates simply because he does not fill the net as often as others on the team, especially when that team boasts one of the best offenses in the league. Still though, his box score stats were nothing to shake your head at this season and any time a fourth liner can post double digit goals you take it and move along.
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
Dewar carved out an NHL niche in the past five years with his defensive work, but it was his offensive impact that rose dramatically in his first full season in Pittsburgh.
The microstats show a fine three-zone player here. Dewar can exit and enter zones to help the team move the puck in the right direction. He’s physical and he was able to make his shots count last season.
Dewar was tasked with a lot of defensive zone work but was a cog in the machine that was the Penguin fourth line this season to turn that around.
Dewar’s top speed (set against Carolina on 12/30) was something special, but almost a one-off since he only topped 22 mph a handful of times. He’s still a very fleet skater that motors around the ice nicely.
Highlights
Questions to ponder
Can Dewar replicate his 2025-26 offensive output to next season? Prior to this season, Dewar never crossed the 20 point mark in his career, let alone reaching the 30 point plateau. Those 14 goals and 16 assists coming from a fourth line player is the kind of output any team will take from a depth forward, especially one making less than a million dollars against the salary cap.
With his new two-year deal, Dewar will see a pay bump from what he earned in 2025-26, but with the rising cap number it will still have very little effect on the Penguins overall salary cap outlook. If he puts together another season as a 30 point player on the fourth line then he’ll far exceed the value of his deal before ever even discussing the most important aspect of why he’s on the roster to begin with.
Ideal 2026-27
Regardless of what Dewar’s offensive numbers look like, his real value is in what he does when he’s not putting the puck in the net. He was the Penguins top penalty killer this season and they will be expecting him to take on that role once again next season. We know Blake Lizotte will be back, meaning two-thirds of that vaunted fourth line are guaranteed to return, but whoever the third piece is on that line, as long as Dewar plays his game the Penguins will be happy to have him around.
Of course, there will still be some offensive expectations for Dewar simply for depth scoring reasons and he did set a decently high bar for himself with his performance this season. His shooting bender in January played a big role in numbers this season and he will have to hope that repeats at some point in 2026-27 to reach his career marks or he could simply average it out over the course of 84 games and hope he doesn’t have one white hot month followed by going ice cold for the next 30 games.
Bottom line
Connor Dewar had a role to play for the Penguins in 2025-26 and he played it about as perfectly as one could hope coming into the season. He was a key component on the Penguins fourth line which excelled this season and added a layer of depth to the roster the team was sorely missing in the seasons prior. Working primarily with Blake Lizotte and Noel Acciari, Dewar and his linemates proved to be a major pain to play against and consistently created havoc when on the ice.
Along with strong 5-on-5 play, Dewar was a key penalty killer for the Penguins, racking up the most ice time on the team when down a man this season. Apart of being a good penalty killer means staying out of the box as well and Dewar spent little time in the sin bin, committing just seven minor penalties while drawing 18 penalties against, tied for second most on the team. All in all, he led the Penguins with a net +10 penalties drawn to penalties taken.
As the cherry on top of his excellent defensive work this season, Dewar had a career year offensively with new scoring highs across the board. He was the 10th highest scorer among all forwards for the Penguins, hitting double digit goals for the second time in his career, a total that included a shorthanded marker along with two game winning goals.
Final Grade
A-
Connor Dewar made a good first impression with the Penguins after being acquired at the 2024 trade deadline and earned a one-year “prove it” deal with the Penguins for the 2025-26 season. That one-year deal has now turned into a new two-year deal and a nice pay bump after Dewar became one of the Penguins best depth forwards and penalty killers this season. New career scoring marks made him a threat at both ends of the ice even if his scoring touch did go cold after January, but he was one of only three Penguins to score multiple goals in the team’s playoff series against Philadelphia
