12 Hot-Take Predictions About The Penguins' 2024-25 Season

From mild to medium to "is 'they're not good' spicy?"

With the Pens’ 2024-25 season imminently underway, I’ve collected my individual predictions for the season and arranged them by take-spiciness-level, from mild to medium to some novelty “mango heat” type flavor that’s pretty tasty but then you get sick of it after a couple bites to CRY LIKE A LIL BEOTCH (the restaurant’s spiciest novelty flavor that you’re embarrassed to ask for out loud.) Let the takes fly!

1. Mike Sullivan will definitely finish the season as the Pens’ coach

When the Pens didn’t fire Sullivan after missing the playoffs for a second straight season, their plans became clear. He’s not in a “must win” situation; instead, he’ll be tasked with shepherding this Penguins roster through an on-the-fly rebuild, and there’s simply no reason to fire him and eat $5 million while the team isn’t urgently trying to compete.

If they’re better than expected, he’s safe anyway; if they collapse, the team will gladly take the draft pick and he’ll at least get to finish out the season before they reassess. I don’t think this is too spicy of a take, but Sullivan topped The Athletic’s poll of which NHL coach will be fired first this year, so maybe I’ve just got a higher tolerance for SPICE than my colleagues in the take-slingin’ business.

2. Tristan Jarry finishes with a higher SV% than Alex Nedeljkovic

This sounds like a hotter take than it actually is, because Jarry had a higher save percentage than Nedeljkovic…last year. Nedeljkovic’s steady finish and Jarry’s terrible March skewed fans’ perceptions about how good their overall seasons were, but Jarry has much more of an NHL track record.

I did enjoy the weirdly persistent talking point that “Jarry’s numbers were inflated by all his shutouts.” True! Counting the starts when Jarry won the game by giving up literally zero goals does improve his numbers. REAL goalies don’t use SHUTOUTS to selfishly pad their stats. Hopefully Tristan Jarr-ME puts the TEAM FIRST and gives up at least one goal in all the games this year.

3. Rutger McGroarty scores 11 goals and finishes the season on Crosby’s line

Pens’ top prospect Rutger McGroarty will end up on the opening night roster because of a couple forward injuries, but Kyle Dubas appeared to imply at his presser this week that if everyone’s healthy and there’s not an NHL spot for McGroarty, he’d likely get sent back down.

I forsee him starting the year on the third line, eventually getting sent to Wilkes-Barre for a stretch to play more minutes per night in a higher role, then coming back up midseason and finishing the year on Crosby’s left wing after the trade deadline. I have very measured expectations for all the Pens’ prospects, but using this low-pressure year to get McGroarty ingratiated into the pro level so he can hit the ground running next year is the right move.

4. Kevin Hayes gets an extended look in the Top 6, but is untradeable

Hayes is an odd fit for the Pens’ bottom 6, but if either of their top two centers get hurt, he’s the most natural short-term fill-in as a second-line center (and possibly as a winger.) He’ll have one midseason stretch where he racks up some assists playing with top-6 forwards, and the Pens will look to trade him while his stock is high, but because he’s got another full year on his contract at $3.5 mil, he won’t be movable.

Ryan Graves, Rickard Rakell, Tristan Jarry, and Noel Acciari aren’t going anywhere either.

5. Jonathan Gruden plays more games than Ville Koivunen, Tristan Broz and Vasily Ponomarev

If the Pens need a bottom-6 callup in the first half of the season, Gruden will get the call in front of their more offensively-inclined prospects. He dressed for 13 games last season and is a more natural 4th liner (or a healthy scratch if the Pens just need to bring an extra body on a road trip) than players like Koivunen, Broz, or Ponomarev, all of whom the team will prefer to keep in top-6 roles in Wilkes-Barre til later into the season.

6. Sam Poulin gets traded in a minor league deal

I think the Pens will trade Poulin as a courtesy to give him a change of scenery. They have too many other left-handed forwards, and he doesn’t really have a future here. I see them flipping him elsewhere in something similar to their trade of Mark Friedman for Jack Rathbone last year, swapping AHL guys to rearrange their depth.

7. Michael Bunting ends up back with Crosby for a stretch and they click; 25 goals for Bunting

Bunting started with Crosby last year but they were separated after their line struggled badly. But this also overlapped exactly with when the Pens as a team were completely sucking right around the trade deadline, and appeared to be careening towards an end-of-season collapse that would drag them to a Top 10 pick. Things stabilized, and Bunting looked great down the stretch. He may continue playing just fine with Malkin, but he just seems so much like the ideal Crosby winger — a give-and-go type player who can thrive in tight spaces and has a finishing touch — that I have to imagine they’ll try it again at some point this year.

Bunting’s final goal total depends on his power play usage. He does seem like an ideal net-front / rebound guy, but the Pens seem to prefer having a right-handed forward with Crosby & Malkin, so Rust will get the first crack when he’s healthy.

8. Lars Eller, Jesse Puljujarvi, Matt Grzelcyk, and Anthony Beauvillier get traded by the deadline

If the Pens aren’t comfortably in a playoff spot at the deadline, which I don’t think they will be, they’ll look to flip as many as their pending free agents as possible. I imagine they tried to move Eller last year but the extra year remaining on his contract made that tricky; playoff teams are always looking for extra centers, though, so he’ll have suitors this year. If Puljujarvi continues on his current track and adds some scoring to his skillset as a big defensively-responsible winger, he’ll be an interesting trade chip with his $800k cap hit. Beauvillier and Grzelcyk will have to re-prove themselves to the league over these next couple months, but both will be extremely available for late-round picks to whomever wants ‘em.

9. One of the “big four” misses at least half the year

There’s no way the Pens will get as lucky with star-player injuries this year as they did last year. One of Crosby, Malkin, Letang, or Karlsson will almost certainly miss significant time this season, and injuries overall are going to be the biggest story of the season around December/January.

10. Drew O’Connor hits 20 goals - and gets traded to the Avalanche at the deadline

Drew O’Connor scored 16 goals last season while playing only part of the year on Sidney Crosby’s line and not scoring a single power play goal. If he sticks in the top-6, gets any power play time, and/or improves on his run-of-the-mill 10% shooting percentage — all of which are possible — he should easily eclipse 20 goals this season. And if the Pens head into the deadline out of a playoff spot, and have a 26-year-old forward with 20 goals who’s a pending unrestricted free agent and could fit under any contender’s salary cap, they’d be foolish not to see what they could get for him. Colorado’s always looking for flexible, bargain-cap-price forwards and they’re always all-in. Yes, the Pens will be tempted to extend him if he’s playing that well, but I don’t think sinking ~$4 mil into a pretty good winger will be better for their timeline than adding an asset and backfilling him in the offseason. Though they could always do the “trade a guy then re-sign him yourself” move, which never works… but might work for us…

11. The Penguins trade Marcus Pettersson to the Maple Leafs before the deadline

There were rumblings earlier this offseason that the Penguins are looking to extend Marcus Pettersson, but I never personally understood why. Dubas appeared to throw cold water on that during this week’s press conference. Yes, he’s their best defensive defenseman. But he’s also an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year and he’s already 28. By comparison, Brady Skjei, another mid-pairing left-handed defenseman, just signed with Nashville this Summer for 7 years x $7 million a year. Skjei brings more offense than Pettersson, but he’s also already 30; if Pettersson has a good year, his deal will be at least in that ballpark. As much as I like Pettersson, the Pens aren’t in a position where they can sink $5-6 mil a year into a solid defensive defenseman into his 30s. Teams are always desperate for extra defensemen at the deadline, and there usually aren’t too many true sellers with top-pairing D available to rent on reasonable cap hits. Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and other contenders will be looking for a LHD and are all all-in. This is the Pens’ best chance to land a 1st round pick.

12. The Penguins finish with the 7th overall pick

Look at the other teams in the East that missed the playoffs last year. New Jersey: new coach, new goalie. Ottawa: new coach, new goalie. Buffalo: new coach. The only teams that you could even argue are “rebuilding” right now in the East are Columbus, Montreal, and maybe Philly, and the latter two both added top prospects to their rosters this year and have guarded expectations about being competitive. No team in the entire conference is involved in an active “teardown” or “tank” phase of a rebuild.

Now, look at the Pens’ offseason: they retained the coach after two playoff misses, and they only added players on easily-flippable one-year deals or took on bad contracts in exchange for draft picks. The front office has as much admitted that they’re in an “acquiring assets” phase, and they traded Jake Guentzel at the deadline last year when they were within striking distance of a playoff spot — do we really think this team has any plans to add at this trade deadline? They are completely engineered to be deadline sellers, acquire more picks, shed more salary, bring some younger complimentary players into the mix, and reassess everything in the offseason.

Plus: they’re not that good! They were a bad defensive team last year with no scoring depth, and they’re still a bad defensive team with no scoring depth. Do we think a slight uptick of power play production is going to make up for the loss of Jake Guentzel and the inevitable way-worse-injury-luck they’ll suffer this season? Yes, there’s always the chance they overperform, and I think they’ll hang around a playoff spot for the first half of the year, but I think mounting injuries, the allure of jumpstarting a rebuild by adding assets at the deadline, and the chance to call up prospects to get their feet wet post-deadline will make the decision to punt on the season pretty easy by the time March rolls around.

Also: I’m not rooting for this outcome. I will be hoping they win games like a normal fan. So please do not feel the need to screenshot this and tweet it at me whenever they win a game. I’ll be happy if that happens, I promise! I am hoping it happens!! And I don’t want to be some “told you so” antagonist if they’re bad! I want to be wrong. Deal? [Internet absolutely refuses to shake.] Cool.