The Pittsburgh Penguins are about to embark on a rather long, strange road trip that will cover approximately 5,813 miles and three time zones across the United States. While it will not be the longest in franchise history in terms of days or number of games played, it is certainly one of the more geographically unique trips in franchise history.

The trip will begin in Raleigh on Tuesday, March 10, and continue with stops in Las Vegas on March 12, Utah on March 14, Colorado on March 16, and then inexplicably back to Raleigh on March 18. In fact, the Penguins and Carolina Hurricanes will face each other three times in March, the other being at PPG Paints Arena on March 22.

Although the Penguins do not top the list of total travel miles this season, they finish in a close second to Edmonton’s 5,426. Surprisingly, with all those miles traveled, the Oilers take only 14 total trips. By season’s end, the Penguins will have travelled approximately 54,088 miles. Perhaps this is payback for the Penguins traveling the least amount of any team last season at just 31,700 miles. Additionally, the Penguins top the list as far as the total number of road trips, with 22 separate trips. The Avalanche, Bruins, and Capitals come in a close second at 21. The teams that take the least number of road trips are the Kraken, Mammoth, Panthers, and Ducks, with 13. 

The inflated travel number for the Penguins is largely because of the 8,261-mile round trip to Stockholm, Sweden. Consider that division foe, the New York Islanders’ 28,477 travel miles are the lowest in the league. That is a difference of 25,611 travel miles between the Penguins and Islanders! Consider that 18,800 miles would be the equivalent of approximately two round trips from Pittsburgh to Honolulu! Conversely, consider that the round-trip voyage when the Islanders play at the Rangers is a mere 39 miles round trip.

Road trips of five or more games are nothing new for the Penguins. According to Penguins historian Bob Grove, there have been 35 instances in team history of playing five or more consecutive road games. The best record the Penguins ever achieved on a five-game road trip was a perfect 5-0-0 trip February 27-March 8, 2009, where they defeated the Blackhawks, Stars, Lightning, Panthers, and Capitals in succession. It was actually part of a larger seven-game winning streak that turned that season around and eventually propelled them to a Stanley Cup championship.

Surprisingly, one of the team’s least successful five-game road trips also came in a Stanley Cup championship season. The team went 0-4-1 February 22-March 1, 1991 with stops in New Jersey, Washington, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Calgary. The only point they salvaged was a 5-5 tie at the Cap Centre in the second game of the trip. There were two other instances of 0-4-1 records on five-game road trips: December 10-17, 2002 and December 3-12, 2003.

If you were watching the Penguins back then, you know those teams were far from Stanley Cup champions.

The team’s longest road trip as far as number of games played was October 14-28, 1997 when the Penguins played eight-consecutive road games at the New York Rangers, Montreal, Tampa Bay, Florida, San Jose, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Calgary.

Amazingly, the team went 5-2-1 on that early-season trip, which set them up to eventually capture the Northeast Division title. That trip racked up a whopping 8,414 round trip miles.

The team’s second-longest road trip happened just last season. It was a 15-day, seven-game trip (January 17-29, 2025) that included stops in Buffalo, Washington, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Seattle, San Jose, and Utah. They went 3-4 on the trip, only managing six of a possible 14 points on the 6,290-mile trip.

And our Dan Kingerski covered every mile, even when the Denver airport kept his stolen luggage for a few days.

If we dive deeper into how these odd scheduling quirks come about, it actually happens because of several factors, including arena availability, scheduling requests, and even the NHL’s own travel rules.

It is a wonder how someone did the entire NHL schedule without the aid of a computer.

The entire process starts when teams turn in a minimum number of acceptable home dates as well as “blackout dates” when they cannot play. Once they submit those dates, the league looks for gaps in the calendar and periods when a team’s building is not available for long stretches, like what used to be the annual “Circus Trip” for the Blackhawks. While that trip finally ended in 2017, the team had to vacate the United Center for at least two weeks each season while the circus came to town.

Also consider that busier arenas like Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena are regularly booked over 300 days a year.

There are also some rules such as Pacific Time Zone teams going to the East Coast must play a minimum of three games. Likewise, Central and Eastern Time Zone teams must play a minimum of three games when they travel to the Pacific or Mountain Time Zones.   

There’s no doubt that some teams have it tougher than others, but all teams have to play 82 games. Even though the Penguins’ upcoming trip and schedule seem daunting, consider that the two teams that have appeared in the last two Stanley Cup Finals, Edmonton and Florida, regularly face some of the most grueling travel in the entire league. 

In the end, there are going to be 1,312 games played in the NHL this season, and each team will play the requisite 82 games. The Penguins’ long, strange trip that is the 2025-26 season will have been through Sweden, seven cities in Canada, and 23 cities in the United States by season’s end. Despite all of that, the Penguins are hoping to add even more to their frequent-flier miles once the Stanley Cup playoffs begin.

Tags: Penguins History Penguins travel Pittsburgh Penguins Stanley Cup Final Stanley Cup Playoffs

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