Edmonton OilersThe Pittsburgh Penguins finished second in the Metropolitan Division last season with 98 points, and the summer that followed was quiet in the way that ageing contenders' summers are quiet. Anthony Mantha, 33 goals, left for New Jersey. Andrei Kuzmenko came in on a one-year deal to replace him. Trevor van Riemsdyk arrived to play beside Erik Karlsson. Kaedan Korczak came from Vegas for Parker Wotherspoon. Evgeni Malkin signed for one more year at 40. Nothing dramatic, nothing that changes the shape of a team built around a 39-year-old Sidney Crosby who scored 74 points in 68 games and was, by the chances his line generated, still the best forward on the roster.
Except for the goalie. Stuart Skinner, who arrived from Edmonton in December and finished the season with the best number of his career, signed a two-year deal in Winnipeg on July 1. Pittsburgh let him go. The tandem it is going into the season with is Arturs Silovs, who was 12 goals below expected in 39 games last year, and Sergei Murashov, a 22-year-old with five NHL games and a minus-3.5 in them. The Penguins' goaltending, with Skinner in it, was a wash. Without him it was fifteen goals underwater, and the front office has chosen the version without him.
What the numbers said about the crease
Pittsburgh's team goaltending at 5-on-5 last season came out at plus-0.1, exactly average, which hides everything. It was the sum of two very different things.
Silovs faced 103 expected goals and allowed 115. Across a full season as a starter, that is a 25-goal hole. He had a good playoff run in Vancouver in 2024 and a Calder Cup in 2025, and he is 25, so there is a version of the argument where he is still developing. But 39 games at minus-12 behind a Pittsburgh defence that ranked 18th at suppressing chances is not a small sample of bad luck. It is a starter's workload at a backup's level.
Skinner, whom I wrote about from the Edmonton side, was the opposite. He came to Pittsburgh with an .891 in Edmonton and a reputation that had run out there, and over the full season he allowed 142 goals on 150 expected, plus-8.3, the best figure of his career. Edmonton and Pittsburgh gave up chances at the same rate at 5-on-5, so the improvement was not the defence in front of him. He was 27, on an expiring deal, and the Penguins had the cap room. They passed.
The finishing was borrowed too
The crease is the summer's big miss. The forward group is the season's quiet risk, because Pittsburgh's 98 points were built on finishing that ran 20 goals hot.
At 5-on-5 the Penguins scored 201 goals on 181 expected, the fourth-luckiest shooting in the league. Mantha, whose regression I have already argued at length, scored 25 at 5-on-5 on 12.8 expected and is gone. Egor Chinakhov scored 19 on 11.8. Crosby scored 16 on 10.8. Bryan Rust 17 on 14.3. Of the top-nine forwards, only Rickard Rakell and Tommy Novak scored fewer goals than their chances said they should have. Take the whole group back to average finishing and Pittsburgh is a plus-seven team at even strength instead of plus-27, and a plus-seven team with a minus-12 goalie is a lottery team.
Kuzmenko, van Riemsdyk, Korczak
The skater moves are fine and small. Kuzmenko was a 54 percent player in 607 minutes for Los Angeles, on the ice for 2.27 expected goals against per 60, and on a one-year deal he is a reasonable replacement for Mantha's minutes if not his goals. Van Riemsdyk, 34, was a 51 percent player in Washington at 2.62 against, which is roughly what Wotherspoon was in Pittsburgh at 50 and 2.59; the swap is a wash on the ice and saves nothing that matters. Korczak is the sleeper: 55 percent in Vegas on 1.98 expected goals against per 60 in 1,192 minutes, far better than Karlsson's 2.60 or Wotherspoon's 2.59. If he plays second-pair minutes, the defence gets better. If he plays third-pair minutes behind Karlsson and van Riemsdyk, the Penguins will have acquired their best defensive defenceman and hidden him.
The case for the summer, stated fairly
Crosby at 39 and Malkin at 40 produced 135 points between them last season and the front office's only real job is to give them one more playoff run without mortgaging the years after. That means short contracts, which is what Kuzmenko, van Riemsdyk and Malkin got. Skinner at two years and a starter's salary, for a goalie whose save percentage had fallen three seasons running before the trade and whose good half-season is the outlier in that record, is exactly the kind of contract a team in Pittsburgh's position should avoid. Silovs is 25, cheap, and has playoff pedigree, and Murashov is the most highly rated goaltending prospect the organisation has. If one of them is average, Pittsburgh is a playoff team again.
Where this lands
Short deals for an old core, a genuine suppression defenceman in Korczak for a depth swap, and no long-term money spent on a goaltender whose numbers had fallen for three straight years before the trade. Silovs is 25 and Murashov is the future.
Pittsburgh's crease was minus-15 without Skinner and plus-8 with him. Its 98 points rested on 20 goals of finishing luck that has already partly left with Mantha. The goalie who was above water signed elsewhere for two years and the front office replaced him with the two who were not.
What it means
Watch Silovs' goals saved above expected through November. If he is below minus-five at that point, on a Pittsburgh defence that has not changed, the Penguins are a team that will spend the deadline shopping for a goalie again, with Crosby's last good years running down the clock. Watch the team shooting percentage too: Chinakhov and Crosby both shot well above their chances last year, and the 5-on-5 goal margin that made Pittsburgh a second-place team was plus-27 on plus-seven in chances. A team that goes from lucky to average in both nets at once does not go from 98 points to 90. It goes to 84, and that is the number this summer was supposed to be defending against.