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Rutger McGroarty, Pittsburgh Penguins (Photo by Joe Sargent/NHLI via Getty Images)

2 Areas the Penguins Should Focus on in the 2025-26 Season

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Zach Alvarado | Last updated Jun 6, 2025 8:35 AM ET

Another underwhelming season for the Pittsburgh Penguins officially ended over two months ago. They missed out on the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, making it a third-straight season without playing hockey into May. Since then, there has been plenty of time to reflect on the good and bad of the season. Some good comes from the Penguins’ general manager and president of hockey operations, Kyle Dubas, who has done a tremendous job so far in adding young pieces and acquiring multiple draft picks throughout the next three drafts. With the additions of Philip Tomasino, Connor Dewar, and Conor Timmins this season, they fit what he wants this team to look like.

With Dubas getting things done from a front office point of view, the players struggled this past season with things they must do right to succeed. While some good came from their game, such as chemistry from their top line and their power play being one of the best in terms of percentage in the league, there were way more negatives that should be key focus points to work on in the 2025-26 season.

The Kids Need A Better Look to Earn a Permanent Spot in the Lineup

A ton of talk coming from fans was about former head coach Mike Sullivan not being a fan of playing the younger guys in the organization. Sullivan repeatedly gave fans reasons to believe this, as he continuously played the older guys despite knowing playoffs were impossible to make. Whether that speculation is true or not does not matter now. With the Penguins now on to a new head coach with Dan Muse, one thing must be made clear to him: the kids need to constantly be in the lineup so long as they earn that right.

After trading for Rutger McGroarty before the start of the 2024-25 season, the Penguins were excited with the way he looked coming out of training camp and in the preseason. The Penguins gave McGroarty a shot to begin the season in the NHL. However, things did not go his way through the first three games. It quickly became apparent he was not NHL-ready following his first three games. Not only did he go pointless, but his skating was not entirely up to par to keep a permanent spot in the NHL. After his season-long stint with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the American Hockey League (AHL), McGroarty was recalled and played in five of the final eight games of the season. Tallying three points in those final five games put him a step in the right direction to becoming an efficient player in the league.

Alongside McGroarty being recalled, the Penguins gave a shot to another promising rookie in Ville Koivunen. The Carolina Hurricanes’ second-round pick in the 2021 NHL Entry Draft was acquired by the Penguins as a piece in a massive trade that sent Jake Guentzel and Ty Smith to the Hurricanes on March 7, 2024. In his first full season in North America, eyes quickly turned to the 21-year-old Finland native as he put up incredible numbers during his time with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. After putting up 21 goals and 56 points in 61 games in the AHL and Pittsburgh well out of the playoff conversation, Koivunen earned a call-up for the final eight games of the season. He impressed in no time as he collected his first assist and NHL point in his second game. He went on to tally another six assists in his next five games.

With young talent like that in the system and the trajectory of the team moving away from older players, Dubas and Muse need to turn to the younger players in their system to fill gaps, if they have any plan for them to earn spots. With the game as fast as it is, the likes of Evgeni Malkin, Matt Nieto, and other older players will only be able to keep up for so much longer in their careers. While this is not to say skip development in the AHL altogether, their top-end prospects should be getting better looks at earning a spot now, while the team is not competitive enough to get into the playoffs.

Defense and Goaltending Need to Be Better

From the moment the puck was dropped on the 2024-25 regular season, teams quickly figured out the Penguins’ kryptonite. Getting off to a fast start in games is crucial for success. The Penguins learned that their defense and goaltending’s lack of fast starts were going to be a focal point of their game all season. The defense and goaltending were a killer of momentum early in games, as fast starts were, supposedly, not in their game plans. With how the season was going, it seemed like an every-game occurrence was allowing the first goal on the first shot of the game.

Reaching the 62-game mark of their season in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins inside PPG Paints Arena, the Penguins reached 13 games of allowing a goal against on the first shot. That impressively horrendous stat came with a 3-9-1 record. In the final 20 games of the season, the Penguins went another two games of allowing a goal on the first shot after allowing one in a 7-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, and allowing one in a 4-2 win over the New Jersey Devils. Without a doubt, the Penguins need to be better if they want to be a Stanley Cup playoff-caliber team in the near future.

Though Dubas has not put a timetable on how soon he wants the team to be back in the playoffs, if they do want to be back in contention for a Stanley Cup soon, things have to change quickly when it comes to starting games on time. That change will need to begin in the 2025-26 season. This is not to say every game needs to have a perfect start, as it is rare for teams to start all 82 games that way; they do need to cut down on the number of goals given up on the first and even second shots of the game. It was not just the goals on the first shot of the game that killed them, but also the number of shots they gave up per game. The Penguins had the fourth-most shots against per game at 30.1, only behind the Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks, and Chicago Blackhawks.

It is quite obvious there is more that the Penguins need to focus on to get back to their prime winning seasons, but these are important things to begin focusing on as they head into the 2025-26 season. Goaltending and defense will be another focal point in the season ahead to see if they can make the adjustments in areas they lacked last season. Not just that, but it will be expected that the likes of McGroarty and Koivunen get to earn permanent spots on the Penguins, as well as other prospects that may be NHL-ready.

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This article first appeared on The Hockey Writers and was syndicated with permission.

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