NHL teams can give out up to 50 contracts per season. After the dust from an active day one of free agency settles in, let’s check on how the Penguins are looking this year towards that metric.
Departed from 2025-26
The following players left the organization officially yesterday via free agency, their new organizations noted if they found one already.
Noel Acciari (PHI), Sebastian Aho (Sweden), Connor Clifton (BOS), Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Kevin Hayes, Boko Imama (FLA), Joona Koppanen (Sweden), Anthony Mantha, Ryan Shea
(EDM) and Stuart Skinner (WIN).
Add Alexander Alexeyev to the list of players coming off the 50 organizational contracts. Pittsburgh will retain his NHL rights though the defender has signed with the KHL to play for the next two seasons and won’t be a part of the organization in the near-future (if ever again).
Parker Wotherspoon, Emil Pieniniemi and Jack St. Ivany join the outgoing rush of NHL contracts that were on the books in 2025-26 that won’t be moving forward due to offseason trades in their cases.
All in all there were six forwards, six defensemen and one goalie who were among the NHL contracts last year that have left in 2026-27. That raw count encompasses a wide range of impacts, from the NHL team leader in goals (Mantha) and important figures in the lineup (Shea, Skinner, Acciari) to depth part-time players (Clifton, Hayes) down to players that helped at the AHL level made little to no NHL impact last season (Aho, Alexeyev, Harvey-Pinard, Imama, Koppanen).
Added for 2026-27
Pittsburgh has added the following new contracts to the books for 2026-27. This includes an old face in Atley Calvert who graduated from an AHL contract to signing a two-year NHL deal with the Penguins.
Andrei Kuzmenko, Trevor van Riemsdyk and Declan Carlile were signed as free agents yesterday. So too, technically was Calvert getting his first NHL contract. (Goalie Taylor Gauthier was signed late in 2025-26 to an NHL deal, so for this purpose neither he – nor Jake Livanavage – are considered as ‘new’ in 2026-27).
For incoming traded players: Kaeden Korczak, Oliver Okuliar and David Gustafsson join the organization. Hendrix Lapierre and Nick Robertson as restricted free agents to be signed before the season ought to be considered in this category as well.
2026-27 will be the first year entry level contracts official begin for Harrison Brunicke, Gabriel D’Aigle, Bill Zonnon and Melvin Fernstrom (the latter whose contract still slid due to his age and lack of NHL games last season). So that represents another area of change to add those players to the mix. We’re not accounting for Peyton Kettles, who is signed to his ELC, but will have his contract slide and not start until 2027-28 if he doesn’t play 10+ NHL games this season (sounds like a safe assumption). There’s a chance the Penguins sign additional drafted players, though they would toll and start after 2026-27 and not be a consideration for taking one of the 50 contracts for this upcoming year.
Add that up and we see seven forwards, four defensemen and one goalie added to the organization’s 50 contracts so far as of the morning of July 2nd.
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To split things out from the NHL perspective, the Penguins lost three roster forwards from the end of the season (Acciari, Mantha, K. Hayes) and have added three NHL-caliber forwards to the organization in their places already (Kuzmenko, Robertson, Lapierre).
Pittsburgh waved goodbye to three NHL defensemen (Wotherspoon, Shea, Clifton) and replaced them in numbers with three incoming options (van Riemsdyk, Korczak, Carlile).
The goaltending position shows the results of a youth movement, losing an NHLer (Skinner) and adding a younger minor leaguer to help backfill the organization in a period of transition as an AHL goalie from 2025-26 moves up the ladder to the NHL for 2026-27.
Overall for the organization, compared to last year it might appear running a little heavy on forwards compared to the split of defensemen — a result of exchanging two depth defensemen (St. Ivany and Pieniniemi) for depth forwards (Gustafsson and Okuliar). While that seems like an imbalance, that’s likely insignificant for the future in the org’s balance/depth that exists.
Add in the likes of Ryan Graves, Caleb Jones and Ilya Solovyov and Pittsburgh has more swing NHL/AHL options than they can fit on the NHL roster. The core of the AHL is already stocked with developing prospects like Brunicke, Livanavage, Owen Pickering, Finn Harding and Chase Pietila next season. (And we haven’t even gotten to WBS captain Phil Kemp, Daniel Laatsch and the players on AHL contracts that will serve as further depth for Wilkes). That accounting of bodies shows the recent movement has been a course correction to balance out a blueline that was overstocked on the organizational level more than a current need for further organizational depth.
As it stands today, Pittsburgh sits at 39 contracts per PuckPedia, though it’s worth noting the true number could be considered 42 at the moment. We come to that figure by subtracting Kettles, who will likely slide and not count this year, while adding in RFA’s Lapierre, Robertson, Egor Chinakhov and Arturs Silovs, that will eventually be taking a spot in the 50. For future flexibility a team usually likes to carry in the 46-49 range when possible, so based on that the Penguins still have the ability to add a few more players via trades or free agency. Grabbing another AHLer or two could well be in the cards to stack WBS up again.
One can always bicker about the particular if the specific moves made in the past few days and weeks will end up being helpful, improvements or how they will fit together in the bigger picture, but this outlook gives a general scope of the players coming and going. The Pens haven’t overloaded on bodies during this very active time, more or less they look balanced fairly similar to how they stacked up last year, just in different ways. That’s always subject to change if a massive transaction gets made to greatly shake the picture up and the season is still a long ways away.
