The Detroit Red Wings are finally putting a formal process in place for their GM hunt, and it comes after a stretch of public head-scratching. The club has hired a search firm to help identify its next general manager, a move that arrives after the search had been drifting for weeks.
Elsewhere around the league, the Quinn Hughes situation keeps getting more complicated. Bill Guerin remains in contact with Hughes, and while the sides are talking, the contract being discussed is described as a gargantuan one, with the two sides still not there yet. New Jersey is hovering in the background, too, and the longer the talks continue, the more the Devils’ role in this all seems to grow.
Columbus also got a dose of clarity after a summer full of rumor. Beat writer Aaron Portzline appeared on a podcast and offered more on the wild Blue Jackets offseason, including the possibility that the Zach Werenski camp was telling different stories to different people about trades and contracts than it was to the team.
In Pittsburgh, the focus turned to the draft history. The Penguins have not exactly turned drafting into a strength over the last decade, at least until Wes Clark arrived, so the exercise was to redraft the team’s top picks since 2019.
There was also a look at the Steelers’ camp in Latrobe, where Alan Saunders has been basically living. The note from camp: a wide receiver appears to be emerging.
And in the midst of all that, there was a little fun with the Penguins’ past and present, plus a bit of personal news from the road: an unexpected trip north, a storm, a detour through Oil City, and a night spent sleeping in a caboose in Titusville. The day ends with breakfast at the diner that charges $6 for eggs, bacon, and coffee, and an interview later this afternoon with one of the Penguins’ top prospects.
In Other News...
Penguins Secondary Scoring Suddenly Looks Like A Real 2026-27 Debate
The Penguins middle-of-the-lineup picture for 2026-27 already has a few intriguing layers, and it starts with the kind of players who can quietly swing a season. Egor Chinakhovs strong second half after arriving from Columbus gave Pittsburgh a real glimpse of what he might become, while Rickard Rakell keeps showing the sort of consistency and versatility that make him easy to project. Tommy Novak also fits into that next tier as a middle-six forward who can help stabilize the scoring behind the top names.
What makes this group worth watching is how much of it still feels up in the air. The team can pencil in over/under projections for goals and ice time, but the larger question is whether Chinakhov keeps building, Rakell maintains his usual finishing touch, and Novak carves out a bigger role, or whether regression flattens the whole exercise. For a Penguins roster trying to find reliable support scoring, that debate may end up mattering as much as any single headline number. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Still Have A Risky Cap Play Worth Watching
With roughly $13.67 million still available under the ceiling, the Penguins have enough room to keep digging if Kyle Dubas wants to get creative. That kind of flexibility invites the sort of cap dump trade talk that usually follows a team still trying to patch holes in its roster, and the names in circulation reflect both the opportunity and the uncertainty. Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Alex Laferriere have come up as possible fits, each carrying different contract and performance questions that would need to be sorted out before Pittsburgh could turn any interest into something useful.
For the Penguins, the appeal is obvious: use the space to add talent, or at least absorb a contract that comes with a sweeter return. But the risk is just as clear, because not every expensive player is a clean fit and not every trade helps in the short term. Dubas would have to weigh how much flexibility he wants to spend, how much value he expects back, and whether the move is worth tying the Penguins to another complicated contract situation. [Read more 🡒]