WILKES-BARRE \u2014 The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins opened the 2025-26 season in style, winning both of their games on the weekend \u2014 including a victory on openingnight at the Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza on Saturday night \u2014 to push things in the right direction to start the year.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll look to continue their strong play with a pair of road games coming up this weekend.<\/p>\n
Last week<\/p>\n
Penguins 2, Hartford 1: The Penguins opened the season with a win on home ice Saturday night, overcoming a bit of a slow start in the first period before getting to their game in the second and taking control in the third.<\/p>\n
Hartford outshot the Penguins by an 8-2 margin in the opening 10\u00bd minutes before taking a 1-0 lead into the first intermission on a goal by Trey Fix-Wolansky during a delayed penalty call.<\/p>\n
The Penguins responded with better execution in the middle period, tying the game on a goal from Valtteri Puustinen before taking the lead early in the third period on a score by OwenPickering.<\/p>\n
Sergei Murashov (23 saves) kept Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton in a one-goal game, stopping 11 of 12 in the first period and allowing his teammates in front of them to get to their game. He only faced 12 shots in the final 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, game one. Obviously it\u2019s, you know, it\u2019s (like) a holiday because you\u2019re just waiting for this moment the whole summer just training, thinking (about) when are you going to play. So overall, yeah, it\u2019s a really good feeling,\u201d Murashov said. \u201cOpening night. It\u2019s a good crowd, and (it was) a goodjob by (the) guys. A really good effort (by) them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Penguins 4, Lehigh Valley 1: Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton made it back-to-back wins on opening weekend, taking care of rival Lehigh Valley in their opening road contest of the season Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Penguins\u2019 new-look top line of Tristan Broz (two goals, assist) centering Aidan McDonough (goal) and Ville Koivunen (two assists) was dominant both at even strength and on the power play, which converted on two of its first three opportunities to get their offense rolling.<\/p>\n
Avery Hayes (power play goal, assist) also was a difference-maker for the Penguins, who got a strong game from goaltender Filip Larsson (26 saves) as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first period (Saturday) night wasn\u2019t great, but it wasn\u2019t terrible either. And I thought we kind of kept building the five subsequent periods as a group,\u201d Penguins head coach Kirk MacDonald said. \u201cI thought (Sunday) was a really good effort. A couple things again that we can clean up, but for game two of the year, I thought we were pretty crisp.\u201d<\/p>\n
News and notes<\/p>\n
When Aidan McDonough opened the scoring Sunday in Allentown, it marked his first goal in nearly 11 months, He opened last season with 10 goals in his first 15 games before hisseason was ended due to a broken leg that later required surgery to repair.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a long time. It\u2019s been 10 months since I played real games. It feels really good not, I\u2019m not going to lie to you,\u201d McDonough said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to get off to that start, and kind of get one under your belt and have to worry about it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koivunen was assigned to Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton on Saturday evening and joined the team for Sunday\u2019s game after starting the first two games of the year in the NHL with Pittsburgh. He picked up right where he left off last season, recording two assists and creating scoring chances with regularity.<\/p>\n
\u201cVille was great. We knew he would be,\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cI think it\u2019s just a situation where he\u2019s not a guy that\u2019s going to play fourth-line minutes. So it\u2019s better to be here and do what he does, and when the opportunity comes he goes back (up to the NHL) and plays in those top six (situations).\u201d<\/p>\n
With Koivunen\u2019s arrival, the Penguins now have 16 forwards on roster. All 16 forwards appeared in at least one of the two games on opening weekend.<\/p>\n
The Penguins have to sit out two of their eight veteran players every game due to the AHL\u2019s \u2018development rule,\u2019 so it\u2019s possible a rotation of players coming in and out of the lineup \u2014 similar to the team\u2019s opening two-game weekend \u2014 will occur in the early portion of the season as things play out and lineup combinations can be seen and tested on the ice in games.<\/p>\n
So far, the trio of Samuel Poulin, Joona Koppanen and Valtteri Puustinen stuck together in the two games. They played a strong, consistent game Saturday and Puustinen\u2019s goal swung momentum into the Penguins\u2019 favor for good.<\/p>\n
The top line Sunday \u2013 McDonough, Tristan Broz and Koivunen \u2013 was the team\u2019s best line in that contest and will likely remain a unit while Koivunen is on the roster.<\/p>\n
Atley Calvert, Avery Hayes and Danton Heinen were the other three forwards who played in both games, leaving seven forwards \u2014 Raivis Ansons, Mathieu De St. Phalle, Aaron Huglen, veteran Rafael Harvey-Pinard, veteran Boko Imama, Gabe Klassen and Nolan Renwick \u2014 rotating in the two games over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The three defense pairings stayed the same in both games, with veteran Sebastian Aho sitting out both games as one of the team\u2019s two nightly veteran scratches.<\/p>\n
Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton made it through the opening two games relatively unscathed. Broz, who had a three-point night against the Phantoms on Sunday afternoon, apparentlytook an errant stick\/puck up high in the third period but other than that there weren\u2019t any injuries to report.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Taylor Gauthier and defenseman Scooter Brickey are on the team\u2019s injured list to begin the season. Both players are considered week-to-week with lower body injuries.<\/p>\n
Week ahead<\/p>\n
The Penguins have their first real \u2018road trip\u2019 of the season this weekend, heading up to Connecticut for a rematch with Hartford in the Wolf Pack\u2019s home opener Friday night at 7 before facing the Bridgeport Islanders on Saturday night at 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILKES-BARRE \u2014 The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins opened the 2025-26 season in style, winning both of their games on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1902,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-2028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-penguins","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}