The Penguins are currently slated to have five selections in next week’s NHL Draft, set for June 26-27.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The draft is being held in Buffalo, N.Y., though it will have a decentralized format for a second straight year. Select prospects will make the trip to Buffalo, while team personnel will stay home and make picks from afar. Here’s what the Penguins will be working with in their Downtown war room:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Round 1, 22nd overall
\u2022 Round 2, 39th overall (acquired from Jets in\u00a0Luke Schenn\u00a0trade)
\u2022 Round 2, 54th overall
\u2022 Round 3, 86th overall
\u2022 Round 6, 170th overall (acquired from Predators in taking on Cody Glass)<\/p>\n
What happened to the other picks? Their own fourth went to Nashville when acquiring Schenn and Tommy Novak. Their fifth went to the Blues in a pick swap with St. Louis last year. The sixth-rounder went to Columbus in the Emil Bemstrom trade, and the seventh-rounder went to Colorado with Valtteri Puustinen last season to get Ilya Solovyov.<\/p>\n
So … what do the Penguins actually do on draft day?<\/p>\n
First, it’s worth looking at the next\u00a0two drafts. The Penguins have accumulated nine picks in 2027, including two second-round picks and two thirds. They’ve amassed 11 picks in 2028, including three second-round picks and two third-round picks.<\/p>\n
That’s a lot of picks coming in the next two years, and it comes after the Penguins made 13 selections in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It would be surprising if the Penguins end up actually using all of those picks to make actual selections in the draft. There are only so many roster spots in the minors, and only 50 contract slots for players on NHL deals, so having this many prospects turn pro at once would present challenges.<\/p>\n
Trades can and should be expected — whether it be to use those picks over these next three years to bring in players who can play now, or even packaging some of these picks and consolidating them to move up in the draft.<\/p>\n
That’s not guessing. Kyle Dubas\u00a0has been open about this for a while. He said in March that, from that point through June, the focus was to “get ourselves ready for the draft and (free agency) — not as much the draft, but trade activity going into the draft.” Then, in his season-ending media availability, Dubas stressed the importance of bringing in players in their mid- to late-20s who could make an impact now and bridge the gap between this big wave of prospects and the existing core.<\/p>\n
“If we’re going to take a really big step next year that’s a sustainable one, it’s going to be by using a combination of the cap space that we have, the assets that we have, draft picks, prospects, etc., to go and acquire somebody,” Dubas said. “Is that going to be possible? We’re sure going to find out.”<\/p>\n
At the same time, the Penguins still need high-end prospects. Ben Kindel\u00a0breaking into the NHL immediately after being drafted was great, but not the norm. Bill Zonnon, Will Horcoff, Harrison Brunicke, Sergei Murashov\u00a0and others look to have bright futures. But the Penguins still could stand to add more top prospects to the growing pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What do they do at the draft, though? Go after those NHL-ready players in their 20s? Or try to move up in the draft?<\/p>\n
With 25 picks over the next three drafts, including all three first-round picks, seven second-round picks and five third-round picks … why not both?<\/p>\n
The Penguins tried to trade up into the top-10 last year but couldn’t find any takers. With the futures that they’ve been accumulating over the last few years, plus potentially some assets from the NHL roster, it’s not out of the question that they could put together a package that involves their own first-rounder that allows them to move into the top-10 picks and get a better prospect than they’d find at 22nd overall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even if they can find a taker this year to make that move, they have plenty of assets left over and\u00a0ample cap space that would allow them to make trades involving players who could be on the NHL roster next season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the picks that the Penguins actually do make, is there a position that they should be focusing on in particular? Not really. One could maybe point to holes in the pool now, but in most cases there’s several years between a player getting drafted and even turning pro, let alone making the NHL. Going after the best player available is always going to be the safe bet, especially when those prospects themselves might end up being assets for trades in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s shaping up to be a busy week for the Penguins. A good week would require trades on some front, either to bring in those impact players in their 20s or moving higher up in the draft order. A great week would have them accomplishing both of those things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins are currently slated to have five selections in next week’s NHL Draft, set for June 26-27.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[201663,385,61536,15550,91698,99],"class_list":["post-715371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-feed-article","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-draft","tag-penguins","tag-penguins-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}