How young can the Penguins get — and how soon can they get there?

The Penguins are an old team, but the reasons for that may be surprising

The Penguins are an old team, but somewhat uniquely, some of their oldest players are their best (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson). Sure, you could say that those players aren’t at the level they were five or ten years ago, but Crosby is still among the league’s top players, Malkin’s 65 point season is more than befitting of a second line center and Pittsburgh has two right-handed defenders who can score 50+ points and play 25 minutes a night with positive territorial, possession and goal results.

But these players are all still old. As seen throughout history both near and far, it’s much more common to be a high-end NHL team when a club’s best players are in their 20’s, not at 35+ (as all the Penguin players are, save Karlsson who as the “youngster” of the core turns 34-years old next month). While no one is going to confuse the era of the 2022-2027ish late years of Crosby as a no-doubt playoff team and elite Stanley Cup contender, Pittsburgh still seeks to get back to putting their best skate forward and building a team around Crosby that at least has the chance to go somewhere.

In a league that gets younger and faster every year, each and every team wants to get younger and faster with them. Pittsburgh is no different.

That makes for an interesting point to track this offseason. In many ways, the youth movement has begun for the Pens. Jeff Carter (39) announced his retirement. Carter was one of the oldest players in the league, so no matter replaces his spot in the lineup next season, it will be a (much) younger player. Chad Ruhwedel (33) was traded and Jack St. Ivany (24) took his spot in the lineup with an intriguing and encouraging debut in the NHL.

Based on contracts, here’s what the 2024-25 Penguins could be morphing into. The wild thing about the NHL is that teams can and will experience a ton of turnover in a short amount of time. Of the 26 players who finished the season on the Pittsburgh roster or IR, 16 were signed/acquired by Kyle Dubas in the last year. (This does include RFA Drew O’Connor and UFA Tristan Jarry).

Age at the start of next season

Five Core players: Crosby (37), Malkin (38), Letang (37), Karlsson (34), Bryan Rust (32)

—These guys are old! But still the backbone of the team.

Also under contract: Lars Eller (35), Reilly Smith (33), Noel Acciari (32), Rickard Rakell (31), Matt Nieto (31), Michael Bunting (29), Marcus Pettersson (28), Tristan Jarry (28), Ryan Graves (28), Drew O’Connor (26)

—This will be the area to watch for the Pens in a youth quest and where GM Kyle Dubas can work some magic to get younger. Can a player like Smith be shed? Do they look to bury a player like Nieto in the AHL in favor of a younger option? What could even be done abut Jarry or Graves? This list includes some established and good performers (Bunting, Pettersson and Rakell) but also carries a lot of questions to be answered about how to shape the team.

Youth: Valtteri Puustinen (25), Jesse Puljujarvi (25), Emil Bemstrom (25), P.O. Joseph (25), Jack St. Ivany (25), John Ludvig (24)

—None of these players are particularly young by NHL standards, but are still looking to establish themselves as full-time NHL roster players. Most of them besides Puljujarvi and Ludvig all need new contracts too (and even those players can be moved to the AHL if the team opts to risk them on waivers). It’s a good bet a handful of these players (like Puustinen and St. Ivany) will have the opportunity to make the team younger.

Prospects on the horizon: Jonathan Gruden (24), Sam Poulin (23), Vasily Ponomarev (22), Joel Blomqvist (22), Brayden Yager (19)

—Aside from possibly Yager, all of these players should be gradually working their way up to the NHL ranks in the coming year if all goes right, for at least cameos. Dubas has said the door is open for players like Yager to work hard and come in show they belong. It will likely depend on future trades and free agent signings for just how much opportunity is there for players like Gruden or Poulin to surpass others higher up on the pecking order.

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The Penguins have been an old team due to having a couple of 35+ players, but they’re truly old relative to the NHL because they have little NHL quality talent in the 20-27 range (outside of a few players like O’Connor, Puustinen and Joseph, who themselves are “older” as far as young players go).

This HockeyViz puts the above into a, well, visualization.

A lot of the league has talent in the 21-26 range. Last year Pittsburgh had O’Connor, Joseph, Puustinen and a few randoms. The Penguins can get away with being “old” when it’s a couple of 25-minute a night, point-producing RHD’s or productive centers dragging up the average, but they’re actually old in the sense they have no second level of talent behind them.

The Dallas Stars present a great example of how an old team can augment veterans with youth.

Dallas has plenty of important players that are 31+, some of whom are their best players (Joe Pavelski, Matt Duchene, Tyler Seguin). You can count 11 significant contributors at that age or above, where the Penguins only had 10. So why is Pittsburgh considered too old and the Stars are among the top teams in the league?

The answer is that Dallas has a bevy of under 25 talent that’s slotted in and starting to take over like Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston, Miro Heiskanen and Thomas Harley to fill in the gaps. In Pittsburgh, that’s been a much older 27-32 year old second level of player (Pettersson, Graves, Bunting, Smith, etc).

That’s the kind of change that won’t happen overnight, try as they may the Pens can’t conjure up a young Norris-caliber defender like Heiskanen or a 90+ point scorer like Robertson. Getting to that level will take time and some luck to scout, draft and develop young players to a degree Pittsburgh usually hasn’t done over the past decade, having traded a majority of their top picks either as prospects or before they even made the selection.

So how young can the Penguins get in the near future? The answer depends on how bold that Dubas wants to be when it comes to dealing with what is still on hand. If he is able to clear out older players like Nieto, Acciari and Smith via trade or minor league demotion in select cases, the door opens for players like Poulin, Ponomarev and Puustinen to move into bigger roles on the team. If Pittsburgh ops to add a handful of late 20’s/early 30s aged free agents, the roster spots go the other direction and dry up on younger players.

The real test might be the next wave in the 1-2 years to come with future crop of prospects in Yager, Blomqvist, Owen Pickering, Tristan Broz and ones added in the Jake Guentzel trade like Ponomarev and Ville Koivunen. If that group can make it up the ranks in the future, that will be the avenue to turn the team over as the Crosby/Malkin days fade away.