Penguins in position to buy approaching the trade deadline

As the NHL gets set to return, the focus on the hockey calendar turns to the upcoming trade deadline and what teams might do to alter their rosters.

Heading into the 2025-26 season, the Pittsburgh Penguins weren’t expected to be much of a contender in the Eastern Conference. Even with players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Bryan Rust, few believed they could be considered threats to make it to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Yet, as we come out of the Olympic break, the Penguins sit second in the Metropolitan Division, fighting for home-ice advantage. It has not only given the team belief that they could make a run in the playoffs, but it has also maybe pushed general manager Kyle Dubas to take a swing to bolster the lineup heading toward the postseason.

On Monday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Penguins play-by-play broadcaster Josh Getzoff explained why the team might be buyers at the deadline.

Josh Getzoff: It’s interesting, because I think Kyle Dubas has kind of looked at this Penguins team, really over the last couple of months and thought to himself, ‘Okay, you’re giving me a reason to add.” The adds that Kyle Dubas had made…they’re lower risk kind of additions…guys like [Yegor] Chinakhov, guys throughout this lineup that have come up from Wilkes-Barre and had a lot of success as well.

So, I see him potentially being active. I know they’d like to add another defenseman. I know they’d like to add to their forward group. They have some in-house solutions as far as guys in Wilkes-Barre that can come up and be productive, but do you want to make that big splash? Do you want to try to give guys a reason to think, ‘Hey, we’ve done our job, can you do yours and give us a piece to take the next step?’ We’ll see if they do just that.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…