$32 million man<\/a> Ville Koivunen are all strong candidates. Hendrix Lapierre was brought in from Washington and has 158 games of NHL experience. To say the Penguins are crowded at forward would be an understatement.<\/p>\nI\u2019ll throw one more name out there for your consumption:\u00a0Filip H\u00e5llander.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old forward played well in a bottom-six role briefly last season before a blood clot in his leg shut him down for multiple months.<\/p>\n
The Penguins are very pleased with H\u00e5llander\u2019s summer. The franchise likes him as a player and as a person. By all accounts, he\u2019s healthy and determined to make a push for a roster spot.<\/p>\n
Trade looming?<\/p>\n
Looking at all those forwards \u2014 I didn\u2019t even mention Bill Zonnon and Will Horcoff \u2014 shows how potentially deep the Penguins are at that position. As such, they have many significant decisions to make.<\/p>\n
Is a trade coming before the season? Penguins president\/general manager Kyle Dubas says he\u2019s consistently looking to pursue moves that will make the Penguins better in the present and the future, so rest assured, a move could always happen. There are not many untouchables on this roster. However, from what I\u2019ve been told by team sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, Dubas would trade a big name (such as Rust or Rakell) only if the return included immediate help. In other words, trading them for draft picks isn\u2019t likely, and certainly not before the season.<\/p>\n
Still, a trade or two would help answer some roster questions at forward. I don\u2019t recall the position ever being this crowded. The difference between forwards Nos. 10-20 in this organization is strikingly close.<\/p>\n
Eyes on Zonnon<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Zonnon is one of the Penguins\u2019 best prospects. They absolutely love him and were very impressed with his performance in Wilkes-Barre once he joined the Penguins\u2019 AHL affiliate for its playoff run last spring.<\/p>\n
Does that mean he can make the NHL team out of training camp? While anything is possible, I\u2019d be surprised. My sense is that the Penguins want him to get more time at the AHL level, play heavy minutes and continue to grow there. He missed much of last season with an injury, and the Penguins want him to play regularly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only a matter of time before he\u2019s in Pittsburgh. I think the forward could debut sometime during the upcoming season, or by 2027-28 at the latest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Everything between Mario Lemieux and the Hoffmann family is good. As other news outlets have recently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,4785,85],"class_list":["post-877374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}