Pre-camp 2026 Penguins’ roster prediction

Players on the Penguins are trickling into town and starting to workout in Pittsburgh to prepare for NHL training camp that will begin in mid-ish September. Opening night for the regular season sees the curtain come up on September 30th.

There's a lot to figure out from now until then, today let's take a stab at what that lineup could be. Injuries figure to derail a lot of this – the Pens announced on opening day of training camp that Rutger McGroarty was out with a summer injury (good news: McGroarty is skating so that shouldn't be the case this year). During training camp there was more with Bryan Rust and Kevin Hayes opening the year on IR and not the 23-player roster due to injuries. Any issue that hasn't happened yet can't be projected ahead of time, of course, so we'll roll with what is known as of now and see how it holds up.

For the forwards, I've no idea what to do with Justin Brazeau. Do they find a spot for him with with Kindel? It's hard to see how. Maybe Brazeau sneaks on as a scratch but after signing Koivunen to that contract it's tough to see Koivunen going on the waiver wire. Maybe that means a trade to clear the numbers, but we've all thought that for many months now. More than likely if there's even one injury to one of these 14 forwards, there's a space for Brazeau and that could be how things sort out. As last year taught us, that could easily be in the cards.