Conventional wisdom states that a player with a big salary and years of NHL experience usually sticks with the NHL roster. The Penguins have been bucking that trend lately, starting with waiving goalie Tristan Jarry and sending him to the minors in the 2024-25 season. That continued in a major way last season in 2025-26 when Danton Heinen and Ryan Graves didn’t make the NHL club out of training camp and were waived then sent to the AHL. It wasn’t that long into the season before Matt Dumba and Phil Tomasino were sent in that direction as well.
Some of these players popped back up with the NHL teams at times last year (most notably Graves), some did not. The future is uncertain and getting cut from the team doesn’t have to mean the end of the road for good, but there are clear signals that the Pens value performance and ability over strictly just the contract and statuses of players involved. Being an NHL player in the past hasn’t locked in a spot for the future.
That’s a curious concept to consider when looking at the sheer volume of players that will be in the mix during the quick 13-day training camp. Barring future injuries, some tough decisions will need to be made on a number of cases. Let’s get into some of them.
Ryan Graves – Graves enters year four of a six-year contract on as shaky footing as ever. In the past, one could squint or offer hopeful reasons for improvement like “he’ll be better in year two now that he’s acclimated to the team” or “this year could be different with a new coach and fresh start”. Few reasons for optimism remain given the caliber of play when Graves has been in the NHL lineup lately. Graves would likely have to beat out many or all of Declan Carlile, Ilya Solovyov, Caleb Jones and Owen Pickering for a spot in the lineup. The odds look long to do that based off all evidence to this point. The onus is now on Graves to change the narrative and show he’s worth keeping, as evidenced last year when he was a training camp cut, the team has no reason not to jettison him if he’s not bringing a high enough level of play to be on the roster.
Hendrix Lapierre – The Penguins gave up a third round pick to acquire Lapierre, yet it seems like he’s got some work to do to turn some heads and earn a spot with the club this fall. Lapierre’s career has been in neutral or worse for a couple of seasons now. He might not have the chops defensively to fit into the heavy lift the Pens ask of their fourth liners in terms of d-zone starts and penalty killing. A natural center, Lapierre has floundered in the middle and become more of a wing option. Does he get a look at center? Is there a way to stand out and starting finding a niche somewhere in the lineup? These are unanswerable questions at the moment but loom large in the near future.
Justin Brazeau – Brazeau scored 17 goals last season, yet only five of them over his last 40 games. At the beginning of the year he was playing on a line with Evgeni Malkin and Anthony Mantha, by the end of the season Brazeau was a healthy scratch that was essentially surpassed in the lineup by newcomer Elmer Soderblom. Brazeau could be an important depth piece to have, his issue seems to be that the team keeps adding around him. Andrei Kuzmenko stands in for Mantha this year but the team has brought in wingers Soderblom, Egor Chinakhov and Nick Robertson within the last year. Not to mention younger options like Lapierre, Rutger McGroarty, Avery Hayes and the next guy on the list below. In totality, Brazeau had a career-year and would seem to be a shoo-in for a roster spot. Yet today, that doesn’t sound like a certain proposition. Of course players can’t think in this way, but overall for Brazeau, he might be the biggest beneficiary if an NHL forward gets injured in training camp the way Bryan Rust did last year. At that point, the math could change significantly for finding room to keep Brazeau around.
Ville Koivunen – What to do with the $4 million dollar man? That will be one of the most intriguing situations to watch unfold in Pittsburgh this September. The team clearly has high hopes for what Koivunen might become, the thing is the recent past doesn’t suggest that he is very close to getting there right now. This is where the advanced cap hit offers some benefit – Koivunen could have been a candidate for a top team to pluck off waivers if he had a ‘normal’ young unestablished player cap hit. Most of those teams are completely off the board for that idea now, since they don’t have an extra $4 million in cap space to play around with. Then again, the Pens might not intend to waive Koivunen at all, given his mastery of the American league. Is he bound to be a fill-in player as a scratch? Find a spot in the opening night lineup? Get placed on waivers? Each outcome sounds about as likely as any other at this point.
What could solve a lot of this is a great camp. Many times people think about that as a young player like Harrison Brunicke or Ben Kindel bursting on the scene and forcing their way into the team’s plans. Such situations are not just reserved for the up-and-comers trying to get on the radar. All four of highlighted players above make a decent salary and all to different degrees have been factoring into NHL lineups in the recent past. They too could be in-line to show out and grab a role at the start of the year.
The big unknown will be the opportunities at hand. Will someone like Brazeau get the chance to start training camp, say on a line with Kindel and Robertson? Or will Brazeau be placed with players more likely with immediate AHL futures? Placement could tell a lot about how the team is leaning, and a brief camp won’t allow for too many chances to explore a tremendous number of possibilities. That’s not to say fates will be sealed at all based on first glimpses – lines and roles are bound to have some amount of fluidity in the early going – but the clock on camp will be moving quickly with only so many practices and exhibition games to force the issue and make an impact.