{"id":762355,"date":"2026-07-14T12:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T12:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/762355\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T12:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T12:45:10","slug":"potential-surprise-players-for-the-penguins-in-2026-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/762355\/","title":{"rendered":"Potential surprise players for the Penguins in 2026-27"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer we highlighted potential surprise players <\/a>for the Penguins with a spotlight on Filip Hallander (no), Harrison Brunicke (kinda but not really), Alex Alexeyev (no) and Arturs Silovs (yep). 1.5 out of four is a .375 batting average that would look pretty good in baseball, at least. With hindsight, there were no shortage of players who ended up being major positive surprises like Kindel, Parker Wotherspoon, Anthony Mantha, Justin Brazeau and Ryan Shea at the top, with the total number impressive performances exceeding expectations stretching all over the lineup. Finding basically a point per game winger in Egor Chinakhov wasn\u2019t one that many had in the sights either at this time last season, showing that the best surprises are ones that aren\u2019t even on the radar ahead of time.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, who could be some players that make a major mark on next season? For this, I\u2019m not going to consider Sergei Murashov – most expect he will be in the NHL and while it would be a surprise if he plays at a high level, it\u2019s not exactly out of the range of possibilities that no one would have expected. That\u2019s too easy of a development to see on the horizon to stretch the surprise element. I\u2019m not going to go with Andrei Kuzmenko either, though he might have a large impact on the season since he\u2019s a guy with a 39-goal, 74-point NHL season under his belt. Seeing him producing points when given an opportunity wouldn\u2019t be a shock, even though it would be a nice development if he performs a little better than the general expectation.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t going out on a huge limb to point out that Carlile will have the opportunity to make a big impact, but this is the showcase example of probably the casual fan looking up in the middle of the year and thinking \u2018wow who is this guy\u2019. The Penguins have a history of success when it comes to plucking defenders out of obscurity and see their stocks rise as a result, with Wotherspoon and Shea being prime recent examples. Carlile, as one of the few NHL caliber left defenders with the organization, should be in-line for as big of a role as he can handle. His underlying metrics show that he just might have some potential for a Wotherspoon-esque glow up. For a surprise, Carlile would have to slot in as a top-four matchup defender and handle it pretty well. There\u2019s no guarantee that will happen (even though he\u2019s carrying a decent amount of excitement and hope), Carlile has only 46 career games under his belt and has never spent a full season in the NHL at this point. Then again, like Wotherspoon, Carlile could find himself practicing in September with Erik Karlsson – possibly never to surrender that spot for the balance of the season.<\/p>\n

It seems like Lapierre is very tertiary in the eyes of many right now, nearly forgotten given all the other, flashier acquisitions of the summer. A surprise for him would be getting a jersey consistently and making a positive impact. He\u2019s done that at times in his career already, and he can also play center – a position that isn\u2019t exactly very impressive<\/a> or settled on the team right now. Not sure this will be a surprise in the vain of finding a 50-point player this season, but considering expectations are pretty low for this player this is more of a \u2018buy low\u2019 guess that it won\u2019t be too hard to clear the bar of what most have in mind at the moment. I could see Lapierre being a guy that suddenly you see has played 60+ games and made a couple plays along the way. (Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it\u2019s not like he\u2019ll have to be Kucherov to be a surprise, given the manner he\u2019s mostly thought of on the internet).<\/p>\n

The Penguins might not get the NHL star Robertson brother, but similar to Lapierre\u2019s case, I think expectations and excitement for the Robertson they did get recently is too far on the low end for where it should be. Despite a lack of ice time and steady progression in Toronto, Nick Robertson has been a productive player. He\u2019s scored 31 goals in the last two seasons, he\u2019s figured a little something out. The Pens are a bit overstocked (for the moment anyways) with a ton of scoring-line wingers like Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell to presumably go with Chinakhov and Evgeni Malkin, so it\u2019s also a case of wondering just how and where Robertson fits in at the moment. Be it through injury, performance, a trade or some other variable that hasn\u2019t happened yet, here\u2019s to guessing Nick Robertson has a big year for the Penguins. It\u2019s within reason that he scores 20 goals and gets over 40 points without the benefit of a ton of power play time, which just might be surprising the fan base at-large when they look up in January or February and realize that this has become a key player on the squad.<\/p>\n

Gotta dare to dream on this one, since Zonnon, 20 in October, will just be in his first pro season next year. This could be premature, he\u2019s probably better off being a solid candidate for a surprise in 2027-28. But hey, summer\u2019s the time to live a little. It\u2019s going to be a long season of now 84 games, and the Penguins dressed 25 different forwards last season for one reason or another. For whatever you want to say about them, Pittsburgh is a team that isn\u2019t afraid to call a player up from the AHL and see what he\u2019s got for a game or two. Zonnon took to the AHL like a fish to water by scoring a goal in each of the first three playoff games he played as a pro this spring. He\u2019s got great wheels and a knack for going to the net, and is also a center. Zonnon will have to prove himself in Wilkes and then have the door opened (probably by injuries at the position, stay the thought!) so maybe in some ways it would be nice enough if he\u2019s not seeing NHL action in 2026-27. But as Ben Kindel showed last year, if a player can make a good enough impression and keep making things happen, an NHL look isn\u2019t out of the question.<\/p>\n

Similar to the Zonnon case, it might be a stretch to figure too strongly on Ilyin getting an opportunity in 2026-27. Like Zonnon, Ilyin also flashed in the AHL playoffs (nine points in 15 games) in basically his first taste of North American hockey after playing five AHL regular season games. The 21-year old was a historically good point-producer at a young age in the KHL, he\u2019s succeeded at every level by showing the playmaking and hockey IQ chops that can\u2019t be denied. It won\u2019t be a surprise to see Ilyin blossom into a pretty good AHL player in 2026-27, it can be easy to try and hope that gets accelerated into some sort of NHL impact. We\u2019ll see, but it\u2019s a name to keep in mind somewhere as a potential candidate for a player that might be able to step up and make a name for himself if the conditions are just right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer we highlighted potential surprise players for the Penguins with a spotlight on Filip Hallander (no), Harrison…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[257,385,99],"class_list":["post-762355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-general","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762355","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=762355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}