Penguins announce Tuesday preseason game roster, haven’t used waivers yet

The Penguins have announced their playing lineup for tomorrow’s home against the Buffalo Sabres.

Forwards:

10 - Drew O’Connor

16 - Jason Zucker

17 - Bryan Rust

20 - Kasper Bjorkqvist

23 - Brock McGinn

36 - Filip Hallander

42 - Kasperi Kapanen

43 - Danton Heinen

53 - Teddy Blueger

57 - Anthony Angello

67 - Radim Zohorna

77 - Jeff Carter

Defensemen:

8 - Brian Dumoulin

28 - Marcus Pettersson

50 - Juuso Riikola

52 - Mark Friedman

58 - Kris Letang

73 - P.O Joseph

Goaltenders:

1 - Casey DeSmith

70 - Louis Domingue

This will be the final preseason home game, with contests on the road Thursday in Detroit and Saturday in Columbus. As such, it’s a fairly strong roster of veterans from the top of the lineup getting more exhibition action (Rust, Zucker, Carter, Kapanen, Blueger, Dumoulin, Letang) but also some players probably around the bubble and cut line also getting an opportunity to play (Zohorna, O’Connor, Angello, Riikola, Friedman) and some youngsters who might be at about their last NHL look for a bit (Bjorkqvist, Hallander and maybe even Joseph).

It’s also fairly notable through omission that neither of Sam Poulin or Nathan Legare are in the lineup tomorrow night. They may be in camp for a bit longer to get practice time in and perhaps even play another game, but any momentum towards making the roster for those two youngsters looks like it has gone out the window having not been used in preseason games recently.

One other item around the league is the NHL saw over 20 players go on waivers today. 32 went to the waiver wire yesterday. There haven’t been too many huge names and only two claims in recent days, but it does feel like quite a bit of early waiver action has started this pre-season.

The Penguins have only waived one player so far this year, defenseman Taylor Fedun on October 1st (he cleared and was assigned to WB/S). There are still quite a few candidates who will require waivers if they don’t make the NHL team in Pittsburgh in: Lafferty, Angello, Michael Chaput, Dominik Simon, Riikola and Dominigue. For timing it will be interesting to see when the decisions are made on those names if the team wants to keep them on the NHL roster or send them to waivers.

Luckily for Pittsburgh, several of the players on the bubble do not require waivers (O’Connor, Poulin, Legare, Joseph, Hallander, Bjorkqvist, Zohorna) and can be freely assigned to the AHL when and if the team elects to make final cuts. There’s always the chance players like O’Connor, Zohorna or Joseph could end up on the opening night roster too. Tomorrow night figures to be a pretty important game for all three of those players who will be dressing and having the opportunity to show their stuff.