A look at the Pittsburgh Penguins landscape before the 2025-26 NHL season

For the first time in a decade, the Pittsburgh Penguins will have a different coach than Mike Sullivan, who led the team to consecutive championships in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

The Penguins have missed the playoffs the last three seasons. Now, the responsibility of guiding the club back to greatness falls on Dan Muse, who has two decades' worth of coaching experience at both the NHL and college levels.

The 2025-26 campaign will mark the first for Muse as a head coach in the NHL. The 43-year-old American spent the last two seasons as an assistant coach with the New York Rangers after holding that same position for three years with the Nashville Predators from 2017 to 2020.

A new coach and veteran stars fuel Pittsburgh's quest to return to the playoffs

On the ice, Pittsburgh has one of the strongest leadership teams in the entire league. When you have possibly four future Hall of Famers — with hunger and desire to return to glory — the outlook looks positive.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have played together for 20 years. In that time, the hockey world has seen Crosby go from being "The Kid" to one of the best players in history, recognized among the 100 best of all time, thanks to 1,687 points, including 1,062 assists. Malkin accumulates 514 goals and 1,346 points in total, while Letang will enter the new season just three assists away from becoming just the 20th defenseman with 600 or more assists.

The trio has surpassed 1,000 games played and has shared the joy of winning three titles. The other Hall of Fame candidate is three-time Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson, who is one of only six defensemen with 100 or more points in a single season.

To complement these pieces, Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas chose to make some changes to reinforce the team's depth.

Defensemen Connor Clifton and Matt Dumba arrived via trade, and after sending goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic to San Jose, the team acquired goalie Arturs Silovs from Vancouver as a new backup for Tristan Jarry. From the free-agent market, the Penguins signed forward Anthony Mantha, among others.

Malkin is heading into the final year of his contract, and that can be an incentive to prove that he is still an elite forward. In turn, that could inspire Crosby to do everything possible to guide the club back to glory in what could be Malkin's last season in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh can continue to rely on its power-play unit, which was the sixth-best in the league in the 2025-26 campaign, thanks to an effectiveness of 25.8%. Much will have to fit, and the goal will have to improve on some levels if the team's veteran stars want to have the opportunity to seek the chance to lift a Stanley Cup.