The Penguins got back to the playoffs, and now the harder questions start. Pittsburgh snapped a three-year postseason drought in 2025-26 before falling to the Flyers in six games, a result that reopened the debate over how to rebuild around a veteran core still headlined by Sidney Crosby. The Athletic’s Josh Yohe laid out the bind in a recent mailbag, and his read wasn’t especially rosy.
The organization’s stated goal, as Yohe framed it, is to get younger and contend again as fast as possible. He gave Kyle Dubas credit for stocking the pipeline, pointing to young additions like Egor Chinakhov, Elmer Söderblom, Ben Kindel, Bill Zonnon, Will Horcoff, Harrison Brunicke, Liam Ruck and Markus Ruck. The concern is pace. Yohe noted that Evgeni Malkin turns 40 this summer and Crosby turns 39, and he grouped Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Trevor van Riemsdyk, Andrei Kuzmenko and Tommy Novak among the aging regulars. By his count, those veterans make up half of Pittsburgh’s projected opening-night skaters.
Crosby himself is not the problem. Even with some missed time due to injury, he put up 74 points in 68 games and added five in the playoffs, and he passed Mario Lemieux to become the franchise’s all-time points leader, now sitting at 1,761. Yohe’s exception for the captain was explicit, calling him a living legend who wants to keep playing. The catch, in Yohe’s words, is that “you can’t rebuild around him,” and he’s skeptical a roster this old can build toward much of anything.
Yohe pushed hardest on the other veterans. He questioned what re-signing Malkin does for the future beyond nostalgia and floated moving pieces like Letang, Karlsson, Rust and Rakell to speed things up, warning that keeping them too long would slow the rebuild. Dubas, for his part, has resisted a full teardown, opting for a semi-pivot built around younger, NHL-ready players that keeps the Penguins competitive while they retool. How long Pittsburgh lets sentiment steer those calls is the question hanging over the roster.
