Hockey is about to start crawling back into view, and for the Pittsburgh Penguins, that means rookie practices and the roster for this weekend’s prospects tournament in Detroit should be announced soon. That’s the next real checkpoint on the calendar, and it comes with a little extra buzz as the season inches closer.
While that wait plays out, the Penguins also have a useful planning angle for fans: the road trips. In a look at this year’s schedule, Pittsburgh Hockey Now sorted through the options and singled out the best trips to make, even if the NHL’s scheduling quirks forced some of the most appealing cities into longer stretches than anyone probably wanted. The California swing, especially Los Angeles, was the one to avoid for this weary traveler, but there are still a couple of trips worth piecing together into a bigger fan getaway, along with some food and hotel suggestions for each stop.
Elsewhere around the NHL rumor mill, the Detroit Red Wings’ GM search took a hit when Jeff Greenberg removed himself from consideration. Greenberg had been viewed as a strong candidate from the start, and even after the search firm got involved, he remained near the top of the list. But Sunday night brought the news that he is staying with the Tigers, leaving Detroit’s front office hunt short a prime target.
There’s also chatter out of Los Angeles about the Kings and Elias Pettersson. The buzz is that the Kings were the team most interested in Pettersson this summer, though the price remains steep at $11.6 million for six more years. If Vancouver softens its asking price, the rumor is that Los Angeles could still be in the mix, and a few other teams would jump in as well.
On the national front, Sportsnet offered a preseason column built around one thing each team should keep in mind as camp approaches, while TSN checked in on Pittsburgh native Vincent Trocheck. Trocheck got his long-awaited trade call this summer and landed in Utah, where he’s settling in and taking in life in Salt Lake City.
And in New Jersey, a familiar Penguins subplot is set to spill into Devils camp. A pair of extremely polite former Penguins are on a collision course for the third-line center job, giving training camp at least one competition worth watching.
In Other News...
Devils Already Face A Big Question With Their New Winger
The Devils paid a real price to add Luke Evangelista, sending Nashville a first- and second-round pick to bring in a winger who arrives with immediate expectations and a looming contract question. He is entering the final year of his deal, but for now he says his attention is on playing rather than worrying about an extension, which is exactly how a new arrival wants to sound while trying to settle in and make an impact.
For Pittsburgh, the larger backdrop is familiar because it circles back to Sidney Crosby and what comes next. There has been ongoing speculation about whether he could eventually land elsewhere, but the latest sense is that he may simply stay where he has been all along. In a league where one move can reshape the conversation quickly, the Penguins are still being measured against the possibility that their captain remains the central figure in it. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Scoring Race Feels Wide Open For One Big Reason
The Penguins finished third in the NHL in goals scored last season, which says plenty about how dangerous their attack can be when its healthy and clicking. Anthony Mantha led the club with 33 goals, while Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust were right behind him with 29 apiece despite both missing significant time because of injuries. Add in Egor Chinakhovs midseason arrival and his 18 goals in 41 games, and the picture starts to look less like a team with one clear finisher and more like a group with several players capable of leading the way.
Chinakhovs pace after joining the lineup is what makes the scoring race feel especially open heading into the new season. If he can keep producing at anywhere near that level, he becomes a real threat to challenge the usual names at the top of the board, and that only deepens a forward group that already showed last season it can pile up goals in a hurry. For the Penguins, the interesting part may not be who finishes first so much as how many legitimate candidates they have in the race. [Read more 🡒]
Former Sabres Forward Closes The Book On A Journeyman Career
Jean-Sbastien Dea has called it a career, closing out a long pro hockey run that stretched across the AHL, brief NHL stops and a stint overseas. For fans in Pittsburgh, his name still carries a familiar ring from the journeyman path he carved through the organization and beyond, a path that eventually took him from North American minor-league rinks to Europe.
Dea finished with the DEL's Eisbren Berlin after spending most of his pro life grinding in the AHL, where he piled up 153 goals and 341 points in 517 games. He also logged 5 goals and 7 points in 37 NHL games, a reminder of how close he stayed to the top level even as his career became defined by persistence, movement and the steady reality of life as a veteran depth forward. [Read more 🡒]