Welcome to the 2024-25 NHL regular season!
Who: New York Rangers (0-0-0, 0 points) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (0-0-0, 0 points)
When: 7:30 p.m. ET
How to Watch: Nationally televised game on TNT, streaming on Max
Pens’ Path Ahead: It’s going to be a sprint right out the gate for the Pens. They play again tomorrow then have a dreaded three games in four days (and four games in six, five in eight and all the way up to 10 games in the first 17 days) right off the bat. And an early road trip with Pittsburgh going to Detroit tomorrow night, followed by Toronto on Saturday night and then in Montreal on Monday and it’s going to be a whirlwind right from the jump. The Pens are back home again a week from today to host the Sabres.
Opponent Track: Today is also the Rangers’ first game of the 2024-25 season. Their starting schedule is not nearly as hectic, NYR is off after today until a home game on Saturday night against Utah.
Season Series: The Pens and Rangers link up again on December 6th in New York, followed by another meeting at Madison Square Garden on February 7th. After that, NYR comes back to Pittsburgh on Feb. 23rd and the two rivals will be done playing each other somewhat early on for divisional foes that will have no March or April games this year.
Hidden Stat: Pittsburgh is 30-16-10 all-time in home openers, including a 7-3-1 mark in its last 11 games (stick tap to Pens PR).
Getting to know the Rangers
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Chris Kreider – Mika Zibanejad – Reilly Smith
Artemi Panarin – Vince Trocheck – Alexis Lafreniere
Will Cuylle – Filip Chytil – Kaapo Kakko
Adam Edstrom – Sam Carrick – Matt Rempe
DEFENSEMEN
K’Andre Miller / Adam Fox
Braden Schneider / Jacob Trouba
Zac Jones / Victor Mancini
Goalies: Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick
Possible scratches: Chad Ruhwedel, Johnny Brodzinski
IR: Ryan Lindgren, Jimmy Vesey
—New York has been dealing with some injuries, Panarin and Zibanejad got nicked up during preseason but are expected to play tonight.
—Not going to be playing tonight is Lindgren, whose injury absence has opened the door for 2022 fifth round pick Victor Mancini to potentially make his NHL debut tonight. Mancini played three years at Nebraska-Omaha and turned pro late last year to get some time in the AHL. At 22, he could be a quality find for NYR if the development of the 6’4”, 215 pounder continues.
Player stats (from 2023-24)
—It doesn’t take a lot to get to know the 2024-25 Rangers, their core is unchanged from last year’s Presidents Trophy winning team. NYR returns all six of their highest scorers from 2023-24, and 11 of their top-13 scorers overall. The exits were minor in overall scope (Erik Gustafsson, Blake Wheeler, Barclay Goodrow, plus their trade rentals of Jack Roslovic and Alex Wennberg). Otherwise, same crew that we all know are trying to run it back for what could be the final time.
—They’ll be looking for more secondary scoring, the four top forwards and defenseman Fox did almost all of the damage last season, while the lower lines chipped in very little offensively. That makes the add of Reilly Smith (at 75% of his cap hit) an important one for the Rangers if they can get him back on track and he rebounds from an uninspiring one-year stint in Pittsburgh.
—Special teams are usually special in Manhattan; last year NYR had the third ranked power play (26.4%) and third best penalty kill (84.5%) in the NHL.
And now for the Pens
Infographic courtesy of Pittsburgh Penguins
Projected lines
FORWARDS
Drew O’Connor – Sidney Crosby – Anthony Beauvillier
Michael Bunting – Evgeni Malkin – Rickard Rakell
Rutger McGroarty – Lars Eller – Jesse Puljujarvi
Kevin Hayes – Cody Glass – Noel Acciari
DEFENSEMEN
Marcus Pettersson / Erik Karlsson
Matt Grzelcyk / Kris Letang
Ryan Graves / Jack St. Ivany
Goalies: Tristan Jarry (Joel Blomqvist)
Potential Scratches: Ryan Shea, Valtteri Puustinen
IR: Matt Nieto (knee surgery), Bryan Rust, Alex Nedeljkovic, Blake Lizotte, Vasily Ponomarev
—Italicized above are the new players to the Penguins, if you’re catching up or just to have a visual representation to have all the new players to the lineup stand out. There’s four newly acquired forwards and six players overall to the 20 who are dressing tonight that will be playing in Pittsburgh for the first time (well Blomqvist has been recalled to the NHL before but hasn’t played in any games like he will this time around, so you get it).
—Also, from a deeper look, there’s only four forwards left on this team who pre-date Kyle Dubas (Crosby, Malkin, Rust, Rakell, and partially O’Connor- who Dubas didn’t acquire but had to re-sign to retain). Similarly on defense and in goal, it’s almost an all-new team around a few core players (Letang and Pettersson and partially Jarry, who had to be re-signed). All that change has happened in just the 16 months that Dubas has been on the job. I think it’s under-rated or maybe better put over-looked to many people about just how frequently NHL teams turn over around their staple group of 5-6 players.
—Rust skated yesterday in a no-contact jersey at practice. His whole IR status has been weird— the team backdated it so he can come off at any time to play, yet they only had (and still have) 22 players on the roster so they could have kept him on the regular roster without going over the limit. Not really sure the point or purpose there, besides keeping options as open as possible. Rust took some second group power play work but figures to be out at least for today. Given the 10-game start in the first 17 days, it’s fortunate it doesn’t look like he will miss a ton of action.
Milestone watch
- Rutger McGroarty takes the rookie warmup lap alone tonight for his first career game (it would also be Joel Blomqvist’s NHL debut, though he’s not scheduled to play today).
- Evgeni Malkin enters the day two goals away from 500 in his career
- Malkin is also two assists away from 800
- And add that up to see Malkin is four points away from 1,300
- Sidney Crosby is also four points away from a round number (1,600 career points in his case)
- Crosby starts his 20th (!!!) season tonight, and will become the 11th player in NHL history to spend their entire career with one team spanning a minimum of 20 seasons joining Alex Delvecchio (24), Stan Mikita (22), Steve Yzerman (22), Dit Clapper (20), Jean Beliveau (20), Patrik Elias (20), Henri Richard (20), Ken Daneyko (20) and Nicklas Lidstrom (20). Alex Ovechkin will be the 12th to join the list when his season starts. (Stick tap, Pens PR..And who would have thought we’d get a Dit Clapper reference in the first game of 2024-25?)
- Kris Letang is entering his 19th season, and he is only the third defensemen in NHL history who has played 19+ seasons with only one NHL team (Daneyko and Lidstrom are the others).
For young Rutger McGroarty goes to play at the PPG today
It’s been incredibly rare for someone as young as McGroarty to play in the NHL on the Penguins in this era where they have only had one top-10 draft pick in the last 18 years (Derrick Pouliot in 2012). McGroarty is set to be the eighth youngest Penguin in the Crosby era when he debuts tonight.
From Pens PR:
McGroarty, who was drafted by the Jets in the first round (14th overall) of the 2022 NHL Draft, has spent the past two seasons with the University of Michigan (NCAA). This past season, the forward ranked second on Michigan with a NCAA career-high 52 points (16G-36A) in 36 games, and his plus-17 led (tied) the club. McGroarty represented Team USA as the captain at the 2024 World Junior Championship, tallying nine points (5G-4A) in seven games.
If McGroarty is in the lineup tonight, he will be the ninth-youngest player in the Sidney Crosby era (since 2005-06) to make their NHL debut with Pittsburgh:
Rank Player NHL Debut Age
1 Jordan Staal Oct. 5, 2006 18-025
2 Sidney Crosby Oct. 5, 2005 18-059
3 Daniel Sprong Oct. 8, 2015 18-205
4 Olli Maatta Oct. 3, 2013 19-042
5 Kris Letang Oct. 5, 2006 19-164
6 Evgeni Malkin Oct. 18, 2006 20-079
7 Luca Caputi Feb. 3, 2009 20-125
8 Simon Despres Dec. 1, 2011 20-127
9 Rutger McGroarty Oct. 9, 2024 20-193
10 Dustin Jeffrey Dec. 26, 2008 20-303
The Pens aren’t truly in a youth movement just yet, their average age of 29.7 still ranks 31st out of the 32 teams in the NHL. But at the start of 2023-24 the Pens’ average age was 30.8, so it’s actually kinda impressive that while they’ve returned nine 30+ year old players (who all obviously one year older now than they were this time last year) the team was still able to shave a full year off the average age of the team.
Young players like McGroarty will help as the Penguins slowly and eventually move away from veterans and more towards the youth that they are attempting to bring along.