New Additions & Drama: Penguins Will be Many Things, but NOT Boring

Oddsmakers expect the Pittsburgh Penguins to miss the playoffs come next April. When the better teams are gearing up for the most intense grind in sports, beards are growing, and fans begin to feel those goosebumps that only arise during spring hockey, the betting public expects the Penguins season to end. After two straight playoff misses and the absolute malaise that enveloped the team for about 67 games, followed by an offseason of selling salary cap space for draft picks, the view is relatively uncontested even among the truest believers.

The Rutger McGroarty trade acquisition may have punctured the dour projections just a bit, and you heard it here first: the Penguins do have a chance to compete for a playoff spot, provided Sidney Crosby stays healthy and nothing goes terribly wrong. However, the biggest reason the Penguins will have a chance will be the kinetic energy from the constant internal competition that will remake the team .

In fact, the great thing about this coming Penguins team is that it will be many things, but boring will not be one of them.

Beginning with the training camp Royal Rumble, in which at least 19 forwards will fight for 13 spots, followed by a regular season with the breakneck pace of a rollercoaster that has lost its brakes, there should be plenty of fast-paced drama.

Harkening back to recent training camps, we focused on singular players trying to make the roster because that was the sum of the battle. Will Juuso Riikola make the team (yeah, remember him?) Geez, why can’t Nathan Legare play like this more often? Wow, this Ryan Shea has a real chance!

The training camp battles in recent years have been tertiary at best and largely irrelevant to the bigger picture. Not so this year, as the final roster could go in several different directions, including a mass of veterans on waivers.

The season should also be much (MUCH) more interesting.

A sneaky-good thing that Penguins president of hockey operations/GM Kyle Dubas has done is inject some tenacity and grit into the team roster construction. Noel Acciari was bland while playing center last season, but the man known to teammates at “Cookie” is a firebrand winger. So, too, are Blake Lizotte and prospect Vasily Ponomarev.

Those players will be in the defensive-oriented bottom-six roles, and scrappy Michael Bunting will presumably keep his spot beside Evgeni Malkin in a scoring role, just as Bryan Rust will do with Sidney Crosby.

That placid, going-through-the-motions, soft-as-marshmallows, heartless team that no-showed for a dozen or more losses last season appears already replaced by a team with several players who want that next puck as a matter of need.

We’re projecting McGroarty to make the NHL roster from the outset, which will give the Penguins a fighting chance to have a legitimate four-line role.

The defense should be itself. Perhaps new assistant coach David Quinn will coax the very best from Erik Karlsson via system design. Matt Grzelcyk should be just fine in his role, as will Jack St. Ivany on the third pairing. And if anyone falters, Sebastian Aho is a serviceable NHL defenseman.

Perhaps Karlsson will make a big difference in the team this coming season. Such an awakening would only add to the intrigue of this team.

Even if things go south, the drama will be intense. If the team is out of playoff contention, the firesale could begin, and the obvious wonder will be if the selloff includes one of the core three or the secondary core, including Rust and Karlsson.

If that happens, the headlines and speculation will be overwhelming.

Our negative outlook from early August, which formed after short-term, low-cost free-agent signings of Grzelcyk and Anthony Beauvillier and salary-dump acquisitions of Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass, has turned. Even the slightest talent acquisition of McGroarty was enough to reformat the lines and projections.

The team has a legitimate chance to be on top of the gaggle of teams fighting for a wild-card spot. The middle of the Eastern Conference will be packed like Friday afternoon traffic trying to squeeze through the Squirrel Hill tunnel behind grandma in a Buick Lesabre, braking for the tunnel monster. So, games in October will matter, but this time, the Penguins seemingly have players who understand desperation as a matter of principle on every shift.

The playoff battle will be just another bit of intrigue and drama for the Penguins 2024-25 season.

Now, about that Sidney Crosby contract?