DETROIT - Training camp always sorts the hopeful from the unhappy, and the Pittsburgh Penguins are about to find out which side a few players land on. With only three full-camp practices before preseason games start and the roster quickly narrowing after that, there isn’t much room for long auditions or patient waiting.
This camp is being run on a tight clock. There are three groups - A, B and C - and, as in years past, those groupings are expected to reflect status and likelihood of making the team.
Coach Dan Muse does not have the luxury of easing through the process the way camps sometimes have in the past. There are just 13 days between Day 1 and regular-season Game 1, so the pace is going to be immediate.
That means a few players could force their way into the picture. It also means others are likely to head to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton with bruised feelings and a long wait ahead. No one is expected to react quite the way defenseman Matt Dumba did last season, but disappointment is part of the equation here.
Three names stand out as the most likely to leave camp frustrated.
Rutger McGroarty is the clearest example of a player who feels close, yet still has work to do. He and Ville Koivunen have been linked since they made their Penguins debut in the same game with eight to go in the 2024-25 regular season, though McGroarty had already appeared earlier in the year before playing only a handful of games.
Koivunen signed an eight-year deal last month. McGroarty is still trying to claim his place.
The 22-year-old has been on the Penguins’ radar for two seasons, ever since general manager Kyle Dubas sent 2023 first-rounder Brayden Yager to the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for McGroarty, who had been Winnipeg’s 2022 first-round pick before telling the Jets in the summer of 2024 that he would not sign there. Dubas essentially turned one first-round pick into another, just a year older.
McGroarty’s second half last season was solid, but the puck just didn’t go in often enough. In 24 NHL games, he scored three goals with three assists while averaging almost 12 minutes per game.
His 55.8% Corsi rate supported his case, and his 94.7 PDO underscored the bad luck around him. Even so, he was sent down on March 31 just before the Penguins’ playoff push, with veteran injuries reshuffling the roster and squeezing out spots.
WBS coach Kirk MacDonald noted afterward that it took McGroarty a little time to be OK with it, and McGroarty made a similar point to PHN.
Now he faces another difficult camp. He is waiver-exempt, which makes him an easier assignment to the AHL than many of the other forwards fighting for the limited bottom-six openings.
His skating remains a concern, but his 200-foot game and penalty-killing work already look NHL-ready. The problem is simple: a full roster could leave him on the outside again.
Hendrix Lapierre may not have the same kind of obvious path either, even though he comes in with some real opportunity. The Penguins paid a 2027 third-round pick and a 2028 fifth-round pick to acquire him from Washington, then signed him to a two-year, $2.6 million deal. That kind of investment usually comes with a lineup spot attached.
Lapierre, the Capitals’ 2020 first-round pick, sounded hopeful after the trade that he would get the kind of second chance and extended runway that other players such as Egor Chinakhov, Philip Tomasino and Tommy Novak have enjoyed. The Penguins even had Filip Hallander in a similar position last year, handed an inside track after returning from a couple of seasons in Sweden.
Still, the numbers in camp may not be on Lapierre’s side. With nearly 20 potential NHL forwards in the mix and the center spots already spoken for, there may not be much room for him to carve out a clear role. He should be in the lineup somewhere, but the question is where.
At the top of the disappointment list sits Joel Blomqvist. For a while, he looked like the next man up in goal behind Tristan Jarry.
His AHL results were strong, and former Penguins defenseman Jack St. Ivan called him the heart of the WBS Penguins.
But his NHL chance last season went badly enough that the Penguins pulled back, recalled Jarry and moved on from the experiment.
Since then, Sergei Murashov has moved ahead of him. Murashov started all of the WBS playoff games and now appears to sit higher on the depth chart, despite Dubas saying the camp job is open. Murashov also got five NHL games last season while Blomqvist stayed in the AHL.
Blomqvist is 24 now, six years removed from being drafted and three seasons into his AHL career. That makes this the kind of camp where he should be pushing toward the NHL door. Instead, he may find that door already cracked open for someone else.
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Nick Robertson, Declan Carlile and Ville Koivunen are among the names that fit that mold heading into the new season. Each arrives with a different path and different expectations, but the common thread is the same, the Penguins want development to turn into production, and there is enough recent evidence in each case to make the bet feel worthwhile. The only question now is which one of them can turn last years glimpse into something more lasting. [Read more 🡒]