Kris Letang is staring down the same wall that has caught most defensemen before him: age 40, and the slow grind that usually comes with it.
Pittsburgh general manager Kyle Dubas put Sidney Crosby and Letang “in a different bucket” than most players heading toward that milestone after the 2025-26 season. That may be true in a broad sense, but the history for defensemen is still unforgiving.
Over the last five seasons, only three blueliners - Brent Burns, Ryan Suter, and Mark Giordano - played in their 39-year-old season. In the last 10 years, there have been only five, with Andrei Markov and Zdeno Chara rounding out the group.
And the pattern is hard to miss: once defensemen get this far, the numbers usually start sliding.
Ryan Suter is the clearest example. The longtime Minnesota Wild defenseman saw his production fall in a steady line from age 37 through age 40, the stretch that ended with retirement.
His decline started at 36, when he managed just 19 points in the shortened 56-game COVID season. After putting up at least 40 points in nine of his previous 10 seasons, he then went to 32, 24, 17, and 15 points.
His ice time followed the same path, dropping from an average of 23:39 at age 37 to below 19 minutes in the next couple of seasons, before ticking back up to 19:28 in one season with the St. Louis Blues.
That works out to a 64% drop in points and a 20% drop in minutes.
Markov’s case was a little different. His point totals with the Montreal Canadiens did not fall off much, but his ice time still dropped 14% before he moved on to the KHL.
Giordano’s late-career run with the Toronto Maple Leafs was a sharper crash, and it hit Kyle Dubas when he was the general manager there. After posting at least 38 points in seven of eight seasons, Giordano fell to 24 points in his 38-year-old season and then to just nine. That’s about a 75% drop, and his ice time slid 22.6% over his final three seasons, from 21:29 to 16:37.
Burns is still going at 41, but even he has felt the squeeze. His point total has dropped 42% over the last three seasons, from 61 in 2022-23 to 35 last season with the Colorado Avalanche. His ice time has also gone from 23:13 to 18:52, an 18.74% decline.
Letang’s own trend line is already heading the wrong way. At 39, and after years of serious injuries and illness, he went from 51 points in 2023-24 while averaging 24:41 per game to 31 points in 21:41 of ice time last season. That’s a 40% drop in production.
The Penguins’ blue line is still crowded with right-handed defensemen, which could allow Letang some extra breathers this season and slow the slide a bit. But if the usual pattern holds, the decline could keep going. A projection based on those trends would put him around 21 points, which would be a 60% drop from 2023-24, and his ice time could dip below 20 minutes if Pittsburgh has enough other talent to absorb the minutes.
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