Pens Points: What next?

Penguins News

Let’s start off with something refreshing for the first time in a long time. Mario Lemieux unveils the new Reverse Retro jersey and it looks great n’at. But everything looks great in that trophy room. What a snapshot of how dominant of a player he was.

The Penguins are fortunate to have several great cap hits for great players on the books for next season and beyond. The Hockey Writers named the top three the team possesses, and it’s hard to argue against. [THW]

A Seattle Kraken Expansion Draft blog was making it’s way through a fantasy Expansion Draft and landed on the Penguins yesterday. Here’s a good reminder that the expansion draft is supposed to be less than a year away. I don’t agree with the defense on this particular protection list, but there is some logic to the author’s reasoning. [Hockey Buzz]

It’s all too early to be sure, but many talking heads in the NHL have come up with their list of potential NHL Divisions for next season if/when the league does indeed have a Canadian division. However, most of those lists have the Penguins and Capitals in separate divisions which would be very strange and I’m not sure how to feel about it. [Russian Machine Never Breaks]

Citing the same source for the new divisions (Greg Wyshynski) as the RMNB article, that would also mean the Penguins and Flyers would no longer be in the same division. That’s another impactful rivalry gone, but as of right now nothing is even close to being hammered out yet. [Yahoo!]

Here’s 10 interesting facts about the Pittsburgh Penguins. Some you probably know, some you probably didn’t. Certainly interesting either way. [THW]

League News

As of right now, things are not good in the NHL due to the pandemic. The NHL still wants to start around New Years, but things appear to be trending in the wrong direction as the owners and players appear to disagreeing on the finances. [Sports Illustrated / The Hockey News]

The players have every right to be upset about deferring such a high percentage of their salaries after negotiating in good faith for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Owners also have to figure out ways to pay players millions of dollars along with the high costs of operating a professional sports team. But when the rest of the world is struggling just as much, and much worse in most instances, watching professional athletes and millionaire owners argue about such large amounts of money is a bad look for both sides. [SI/THN]

It’s not all doom and gloom for the NHL, though. Both sides appear to be willing to figure out a way to play the upcoming season. For a league that’s seen it’s fair share of labor disputes, at least cancelling next season seems to be very much off the table. Here’s a good guess what next season will look like. [SportsNet]

There’s still business happening in the NHL and a new road was paved in this week. Keep up the great work to all parties involved in this hiring, and congratulations to Brett Peterson:

This article began with a good Tweet. Let’s finish with a good one, too. This improbable save happened one year ago. Here’s a great little video of MAF from the Golden Knights Twitter machine: