2026 Pittsburgh Penguins Preseason Game 2

The Pittsburgh Penguins stay at home for the second of their back-to-back exhibition games, facing off against the Detroit Red Wings. Once again they have a list of 22 players who are suiting up for the game: 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 2 goaltenders. They will have to scratch 1 F and 1 D before puck drop, so it emulates the way they normally handle the regular season with bringing along a full lineup and making the final decisions on who plays right before puck drops. Below we will go over the lineup for the game and speculate lines and D pairs based upon what they have been using in practice as well as using the post as an open game thread with updates during the game itself.

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2026 Pittsburgh Penguins Preseason Game 1

The Pittsburgh Penguins open their 2026 NHL Preseason with an exhibition game at home versus the Buffalo Sabres. They have a list of 22 players who are suiting up for the game: 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 2 goaltenders. They will have to scratch 1 F and 1 D before puck drop, so it emulates the way they normally handle the regular season with bringing along a full lineup and making the final decisions on who plays right before puck drops. Below we will go over the lineup for the game and speculate lines and D pairs based upon what they have been using in practice as well as using the post as an open game thread with updates during the game itself.

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Seattle Kraken Training Camp

The Seattle Kraken posted their NHL Training Camp roster back when they announce the Rookie Camp one, but I didn’t write up a post at the time since I was working on other things and I figured it could wait. However, camp officially begins on Wednesday September 16, although they will not hit the ice for practice until Thursday, so it is time to write up a post to look at the schedule and see who will be attending this year. Most of the players who were at the Prospects Showcase will be attending, they only cut three invites. Overall they have 5 goaltenders, 18 defensemen, and 31 forwards invited.

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Unconventional Wisdom – Puckalytics

Today I wanted to continue looking at stats that I don’t usually post about, so we are going to dive into David Johnson’s Archetype stats from Puckalytics. I have been a fan of his since back in the old days of his former site Hockey Analysis which he now uses to post articles, he often focuses on writing about Canadian teams but sometimes has articles that are relevant to the league in general. He also made his own salary cap site a few years ago when CapFriendly shut down, so check out The Stanley Cap as well, he also shows his data and player cards on that site. Today we are going to use his data to throw together some bubble charts to examine the players currently under contract in the Pittsburgh Penguins system, everybody who played in the NHL last year.

2026 Pittsburgh Penguins Training Camp

The Pittsburgh Penguins posted the schedule for their 2026 NHL Training Camp yesterday, so I figured it would be a good time to take a look and see what we may expect. The Pens have no released the roster yet, if they continue the recent trend from the last few years we won’t get a list until a day or two before it begins. I may just update and edit this post when that happens rather than making a new post, since I usually use the comments of these Training Camp posts as an open thread to post updates like practice lines and keep track of who gets cut from camp. But for now I wanted to take a dive into the schedule.

One thing to bear in mind is that the rules for Training Camp is different starting this season. They cut the length of training camp down from the previous 21 days to now only lasting 13 days. In addition, teams used to be allowed to schedule up to 8 preseason games, although most teams usually played fewer, but this year we are down to just 4 preseason games. We also have the added twist that both of the Pens home games are their first two preseason matches. And because of the lower number of games, players who are designated NHL veterans, which are those who have 100 or more career NHL games, are now limited to playing just 2 games. But the rule that teams must dress a minimum of 8 veteran players per game also still applies. So there may be a lot of logistical decisions which seem confusing, but make sense in context.

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