The Pittsburgh Penguins offseason has (so far) looked very similar to their offseason from a year ago. No real major long-term additions, taking on a bad contract or two to accumulate more future draft picks and signing some short-term, reclamation project veterans that might be able to be flipped in March at the NHL Trade Deadline. It is not terribly exciting, but they are the types of moves rebuilding teams are going to make.
Still, there are some new faces coming in and it is worth looking at what
they might be able to accomplish for the Penguins, even if they do not end up playing here very long.
So let’s continue with our Over/Under series for the 2025-26 season and try to set some reasonable expectations for what the new players might be able to do. You can catch up with last week’s article on the young players here.
Anthony Mantha: Over/Under: 14.5 goals
Meet the new Anthony Beauvillier, a veteran forward on a short-term deal that is probably going to get some decent minutes, a chance to pump in some goals, and get traded to a playoff team around the deadline for a second-round pick.
I’ve actually liked Mantha a lot throughout his career, even if it has not always panned out the way it was expected. But he’s been a productive player when healthy, always has strong possession and underlying numbers and is a big body that can play around the net and score some goals. The biggest issue is that he’s rarely been healthy for a full season in his career.
He is just one year removed from a 23-goal season in 2022-23, and was off to a strong start in Calgary this past season before a knee injury sidelined him for the remainder of the season.
How he recovers from that will be a big variable in what he is able to do and produce, but he’s averaged a 24-goal, 50-point pace per 82 games throughout his career.
I do not expect him to play 82 games for the Penguins, either by injury or trade.
Still, is it a stretch to think he can put up some respectable numbers before getting dealt away to a playoff team? No. No it is not.
Justin Brazeau: Over/Under: 8.5 goals
This would be this year’s Blake Lizotte, a solid depth player on a cheap contract that’s not really going to move the needle much but might still be a nice addition to the bottom-six.
Brazeau took the long road to the NHL, going undrafted and working his way up through the ECHL and AHL before finally getting his first shot with the Boston Bruins during the 2022-23 season. He made a strong first impression with five goals and seven total points in 19 games, before scoring 10 goals in 57 games to open the 2024-25 season before being traded to the Minnesota Wild for a sixth-round pick and two players. His strong production did not continue in Minnesota, with him scoring just one goal in 19 games.
I don’t have terribly high expectations here. He has scored some goals at times, but we are still ultimately only talking about a 95-game sample size in the NHL.
I could him scoring 10-15 goals and everybody thinking, “hey, that’s not a bad signing,” and I could see him scoring five goals and everybody saying “this guy’s just wasting all of our time.”
Matt Dumba: Over/Under: 12.5 points
To this point this has been one of the Penguins’ few ventures this offseason into essentially buying a draft pick (the Connor Clifton trade might also come in under that umbrella), getting a future second-round pick from the Dallas Stars to take on Dumba’s remaining contract.
There was a time in Dumba’s career where he was a very good top-four defenseman that could put 30-45 points on the board.
This is no longer that time.
Here is what his point totals have looked like over the past five years:
2020-21: 21 points in 51 games
2021-22: 27 points in 57 games
2022-23: 14 points in 79 games
2023-24: 12 points in 76 games
2024-25: 10 points in 63 games
His offense has obviously started to deteriorate in a big way.
I also do not know what his role is actually going to look like. He is a right-shot defenseman on a team that already has a lot of options on the right side, including Erik Karlsson (for now), Kris Letang, and Clifton. That list also does not even include top-prospect Harrison Brunicke who is also a right-shot defenseman and could be an option at some point this season.
A Karlsson trade would obviously open up a slot, and the left-side is so devoid of talent that somebody is almost certainly going to play on their off-side here at least somewhat.
When you combine Dumba’s already declining point production, as well as a role that is likely to put him at the bottom of the lineup, I just don’t see a lot of opportunities for points for him.
That doesn’t mean the Penguins will not be able to extract some value out of him. He is still going to play with an edge and could be a trade option later in the season if they can put him into some favorable spots and boost his value a little.
Connor Clifton: Over/Under: 15.5 points
The Penguins traded one of their Con(n)ors (Timmins) for another Connor (Clifton) and picked up the No. 39 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft (where they selected defenseman Peyton Kettles) in the process.
It also helped Buffalo shed some salary, which seems to be the only thing Sabres owner Terry Pegula cares about.
As noted above with Dumba, Clifton is yet another right-shot defenseman that is going to be vying for playing time somewhere in the lineup.
Like most of the additions this offseason, I think expectations for what Clifton are going to do here should be limited. Very limited. He’s a capable NHL defenseman, but he’s not going to put up big numbers and he’s not going to play a shutdown role defensively. He’s a third-pairing defenseman and one of 10 pending unrestricted free agents on the roster. He’s another guy that they might be able to pump up a little and extract a pick out of somebody for in a trade.
He has topped at least 15 points in each of the past three seasons with Boston and Buffalo respectively. I don’t think it’s asking a lot to expect something similar to that this season with the Penguins.
Parker Wotherspoon: Over/Under: 5.5 points
This is actually a pretty solid depth signing, because even though Wotherspoon is not going to produce much offensively he has posted some strong defensive metrics in his brief NHL career, and the Penguins are not paying him much at all ($1 million per season over two years). It is a solid value signing. Just do not expect much offensively. He has 16 points in 108 regular season games, and even though the defense is not great for the Penguins they have a lot of people that are going to get playing time. Somebody is going to be the odd man out.
