After Ville Koivunen’s massive eight-year contract, an already crowded Pittsburgh Penguin forward depth chart is now bursting at the seems. However, Kyle Dubas didn’t paint Koivunen as a lock to make the NHL roster coming out of training camp.
“He will still have to earn everything,” Dubas said. “As we have shown over the last few years, a long-term contract does not mean you are given anything in Pittsburgh. He will need to earn his roster spot and opportunity in training camp. He will need to finish
the summer strong, show gains in power and speed on the ice in training camp and exhibition games.”
Koivunen would require waivers to be sent down, and that long-term deal just might be a poison pill for other organizations (then again, if they see the contract from a different perspective, it might not be that prohibitive).
Either way, the Pens signed Koivunen long because there is a belief he will have something to offer to the NHL team in the future. Whether that future is now, to Dubas’ point, is dependent on how Koivunen performs at training camp.
The problem is that there isn’t a lot of space for him due to a huge roster crunch right now.
Top-nine forwards, locks (9)
Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Evgeni Malkin, Egor Chinakhov, Ben Kindel, Tommy Novak, Andrei Kuzmenko, Nick Robertson
These nine players, it sounds safe enough to say, will all be in the lineup in a featured spot if they are healthy when the season starts on September 30th. What line some of them may be on to configure everything just right is up for grabs as far as who plays where, but this is the base of the forward group for next season.
Fourth line forwards, locks (2)
Blake Lizotte, Connor Dewar
Lizotte and Dewar were two-thirds of a great fourth line last season, both have limited wiggle room to move up the lineup and placed perfectly in the heavy lifting for d-zone starts and PK duty that the role requires.
The blender (6 for one lineup spot, up to two more roster spots)
Justin Brazeau, Elmer Soderblom, Hendrix Lapierre, Ville Koivunen, Rutger McGroarty, Avery Hayes
All six of these players have strong cases for belonging on an NHL roster in 2026-27, though space is running short. At this point, it seems easiest and most likely to boot McGroarty and Hayes to WBS for the start of the season and count on them getting opportunities as mid-season injury replacements when and as needed. That still would require some tough choices on how to figure the rest.
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Ultimately, one trade announcement could go a long way towards fixing the numbers. One wouldn’t think that recently re-signed players like Lizotte, Dewar or Novak will be going anywhere soon, but then again no one saw an eight-year contract to a fringe player either.
Brazeau looks to be the most obvious candidate to drop – he was a healthy scratch for much of the playoffs and the additions of players like Kuzmenko, Robertson and Lapierre could push Brazeau out of a spot in the lineup next year too. No such trade has happened just yet, though the off-season isn’t the only time to make trades. The Pens have traded players like Lars Eller and Mark Friedman away in previous October/November’s.
Another area to keep an eye on is Rakell and Rust in their mid-30’s. The team has been hesitant to move these important players but if there ever was a time where they are prepared to withstand the trade of one of them it would be now. Are the Pens beefing up numbers to brace for that? It remains unknown but could also be pre-planned.
Yet another possibility is there could be an off-season surgery that hasn’t yet been announced or even happened yet. Crosby had a wrist surgery in September 2021 that came out of the blue to the public after his efforts to rehab and deal with the issue proved to not be enough. Something similar happened with McGroarty and an unmentioned summer surgery that kept him out at the beginning of the year and was only announced on the first day of camp.
There’s obviously no outward indication that Crosby or anyone else is dealing with a lingering issue , but there’s always a chance that around training camp that a player considered a ‘lock’ could actually be IR bound at the beginning of the season. There’s also no guarantee that all the presumed locks make it to the start of the season. Last preseason alone all of Bryan Rust, Kevin Hayes, Joel Blomqvist and Jack St. Ivany got injured before Game 1 and were on the IR at the beginning of the season because of it, along with McGroarty.
Not all of those were key players but it goes to show that the injury bug is random and always just around the corner to pop up and potentially turn 17 forward candidates into a more manageable figure to find 14 healthy ones.
Whether or not that includes Koivunen and if his new contract will help him find a spot on the team remains to be seen. The Pens have too many numbers up front for the moment, though it can change in a moment’s notice.
