Philip Tomasino clears waivers, plus could the Penguins swing BIG this summer?

Philip Tomasino clears waivers, plus could the Penguins swing BIG this summer?

While we’re all enjoying and excited over the start of the Pittsburgh Penguins 2025 2026 season, it’s never too early to look ahead at the 2026 off season. Hunter and I are going to do that and more right after this. You’re Locked on Penguin, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked On podcast network. your team every day. Welcome in to another edition of the Locked On Penguins podcast. I am one of your hosts, Patrick Damp. You can follow me across all social media platforms at synonyonym for wet, joined as always by my partner in crime, the one and only Hunter Hodies. You can follow him on Twitter, Hunter Hodes. You can give our show’s Twitter account a follow at L_penguins. You can also find our show on Instagram at lockedon_penguins as well as Tik Tok at lockedonpenguins. And of course, as always, we appreciate you making us part of your daily routine. Don’t forget that we are free and available wherever you get your podcasts as well as YouTube. And if you’re following us on YouTube, which you should be, make sure you hit that notification button. That way you can be among the first to know when we drop our daily Monday through Friday episodes. Before we jump into it, this episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app now by going to fanduel.com and you could win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. More on them later because it looks like Hunter’s about to fall asleep with this intro. So, let’s perk him up with a little bit of talk about the upcoming off season. Now, before I get into what I’m going to deem the potential summer of Dubis, I want to add some caveats. Yes, a lot can change between November 19th, 2025 and June and July 2026. Whether it’s injuries, trades, roster moves, retirements, anything in between, this is all obviously a fluid situation. But with the Penguins still on their little mini break after their trip to Sweden, I had to do a lot of digging today and I went to Puckedia and thought, you know what, let’s start planning the 2026 off season. And as we have talked about on this show, going into this upcoming off seasonason, the Penguins are going to have a ton of cap space. They’re going to have just under $49 million in available cap space. And then I looked at who they have coming off of the books. And if you look at their Puckedia page right now, they’ve got 12 unrestricted free agents right now. Assuming there are no trades, assuming there are no other moves, as of today, they are going to have 12 pending UFAs and they include Genny Malin, Kevin Hayes, Anthony Mantha, Danton Heinen, Noelari, Blake Lazot, Connor Der, Yona Copenan, Sam Pulan, Matt Dumba, Connor Clifton, and Ryan Sheay. So, we’ll start with this. I look at that list and I see two of the th two maybe three of them that you’re probably going to bring back if Genny Malin, Blake Lazot, and potentially Ryan Shay. Everybody else at this point, Hunter, and I’m going to ask you this. I think everybody else on that list, you’re either going to trade or you’re going to let walk. I would agree. And honestly, I I still think even with Blake Lazot, there’s maybe a chance that he comes back, but also I could see them looking to move him at the deadline, depending on where they are. You know, of course, Ryan Sheay, I I think it’s likely that he comes back. He’s fairly cheap for what he does even in a top four role. I don’t think he’s going to command too much of a pay raise in my opinion. If Malin, they’re going to have that conversation in February during the Olympic break. And Pat, I retweeted that article the other day where he said he doesn’t want to go anywhere. He doesn’t want to hear about, you know, Florida, Colorado, all those other places. So, um, if he plays again, which there’s a good chance potentially it’s going to be here, and I assume it’s going to be a one-year contract, and it’s not going to be much money. So, even if they sign, you know, one or two of those guys, they’re still going to have quite a bit of cap room. And that doesn’t take into account, you know, other players that could potentially get, you know, moved off the roster at some point ju just, you know, overall. So, they’re going to have a lot of wiggle room. They’re not going to use all that cap space next summer. That’s just not realistic, especially with where they are in this rebuild. I still think it’s better for them to look at hockey trades in general, just because, you know, Pat, it’s funny. Everyone was like, “Oh, look at that 2026 reagent class. Looks so good, right?” And then Conor McDavid resigns and then you know Adrien Kempe resigns and then Kyle Connor resigns and then you have all these other players wanting to resign with their teams and you look at the best free agent right now UFA wise just strict UFA it might be what Alex Tuck or Tammy Paneran it’s it’s not great and who knows I think Alex Tuck might resign up in Buffalo and Paneran I think he’s has the best chance of like the top ones to get to market. Not sure the Rangers are going to want to bring him back and I think he can get a pretty good payday elsewhere. But again, it’s starting to look like, you know, last this past year where, you know, sure Mitch Mner got really close and, you know, they traded his rights, but you look at this past year’s class, it wasn’t the best to to say the least, you know. So, that’s not really where you want to spend all of your money. I think they’ll still maybe make some depth moves, but I think trades, pure hockey trades, if you want to really get aggressive with a cap space, I think that might be their bread and butter for attacking things next offseason, no matter where they finish in the standings. And that’s a good place to pick it up because this is what my morning puckedia project was about. So, I talked about all of those players, the UFAS. You’re only going to probably bring back Gino and Blake Lazot. again, working under the assumption that here on November 19th, these guys are still going to be on the roster. You’re going to bring those two back. You’re going to bring Ryan Sheay back. And that’s going to cost you, if I would imagine, around $8 million, probably about five for Gino, two and a half for Blake Lazot, maybe three. And then when you go to the RFA side, there’s not many of note there. are the four that I would say are Philip Thomasino who given the way this last 24 hours have gone would be shocked if they bring him back unless he really turns it around. Arur Sheils, Yoel Blumquist and Vle Koven and obviously Kovven and you’re going to keep that is a no-brainer. We’ll see what shakes out with the goalending situation with Sergey Murishov, Tristan Jarry and all of that. So, I don’t know what they’ll do with that. But at the end of the day, let’s get into what you said about potential trades. You make all these moves and let’s operate under the assumption that they’re going to spend about $10 million in house to keep their people around. You’re operating with about $39 million of cap space now. So, they’re going to have to, or not have to, but they could make hockey trades. And I’m gonna throw out one big name that I think the Penguins could target this summer if the opportunity presents itself. Jordan Kyu out of the St. Louis Blues because as we have talked about, the Blues are a heavily disappointing team right now. They’ve got absolutely no goalending to speak of. They are not high in the standings whatsoever. And there are a lot of calls around that team for them to hit the reset button, if not fully rebuild. And then you add in that when the NHL and its people go to the Olympics in February, Doug Armstrong is part of team Canada’s management team, so is Kyle Dubis. If I’m Kyle Dubis in February and these trends continue where the Penguins are looking like they’re taking a couple steps forward with their young guys, there’s some potential there. They’ve got to really try to make maybe make the next step in this rebuild. I’m nudging Mr. Armstrong just about every day in Italy and going, “What do you want for Jordan Kyu there?” Because with him, he’s 27. next season 2627 he will have four years left of a 8 million8.125 million uh contract remaining and in the last three years he has eclipsed 30 goals if you end up moving Ricard Raquel at the deadline there is your Ricard Raquel replacement that is true though the jury is still out on what they’re going to do with those big three names at the deadline Russ Carlson Raquel you know and at least in February for the Olympics. Pat, it would be Doug Armstrong that he would be kind of nudging because he will be stepping down as the GM after the season and then Alexander Seen is going to be taking over. By the way, we are all old because I remember prime Alexander Steen in my teenage years. And the fact that he’s now going to be the GM of that team, time just moves so fast. But anyway, with Jordan Kyu, he does have a full no trade clause. So, you have to take that into consideration. He doesn’t have to go anywhere if he doesn’t want to. you are correct about how disappointing they have been. Now, now there’s still time. We’re doing this, you know, in the second half of November. They can still turn turn it around. Excuse me. Remember, last year they had a really nice end to the season. They got in the playoffs and they were really close to getting to the second round. They probably should have beaten the Winnipeg Jets in the first round, but this year everything has been really disappointing. If things don’t turn around this season and they miss, I could see teams, maybe even the Penguins going, “Hey, what would you be looking for for someone like this?” You know, with Kyu, he is 27 years old right now. He has six goals, 11 points in 19 games. This is a three-time 30 goal scorer. He had 36 goals in 70 points in 82 games last season. One of the best pure snipers in the league that we have right now. So, it would take a lot to get him. I I do think timelinewise it would make sense. I’m just not sure. Would they be willing to pony up the assets to go get someone someone like that, especially with the no trade clause, but you know, we’ll have to see. But it would make sense for me. I like Kyu a lot. I do too. And I think with just the bevy of picks that they have and a couple of other assets depending upon what St. Lewis wants to do like if there even if you want to move potentially a Sheilov’s or a Bloomquist because you know that you have hopefully your guy in Sergey Murishov that you have made those two somewhat expendable and if you need to move maybe a Btier prospect or something to get a 27 soon to be 28-year-old pure sniper that kind of fits into your timeline without giving up everything. That could be a move to make and all. But again, as you said, as I have said, all the caveats apply here. St. Louis could turn it around in the second half. They have been known to do that for the last few years and maybe suddenly the bottom falls out for the Penguins and they say, “Hey, forget that. We’re going to keep stockpiling prospects and assets.” Who knows what happens? But with the Penguins off until Friday and basically only practice happening today, it needed something fun to talk about. And who doesn’t love talking trades and playing armchair GM? It’s pretty much the only reason I keep downloading EA NHL because I love playing armchair GM. It’s one of my favorite things in the world to do because it’s no risk and it’s fun. But that was just some stuff we wanted to get into to start the show to get everybody’s antenna up because this rebuild is still in the beginning stages and there are a lot of places it can go. So obviously that’s going to be a topic of discussion on this show for quite some time. But that is going to do it for our opening segment. When we come back, Penguins were back at work today and it was a mandatory work day. We’re going to talk about the practice, the vibes, and some other things from the Penguins world today when we come back right after this. Before we do that though, we’ve got to tell you about today’s first sponsor, and that is RouiT. Let’s be real, making excuses doesn’t solve anything. We’ve all heard them before. It’s just stress. I’m tired. Or it happens to everyone sometimes. But when it comes to performance, sometimes your body just needs a little extra support. And that is where Rouiette comes in. Rouette.com offers fast acting doctor prescribed treatments for ED designed to help you stop making excuses and start making moves. Rouette makes it really easy to get started. You just connect with a board-certified doctor, 100% online, so you avoid those awkward waiting room visits where you’re looking down at the floor, you’re not making eye contact, and everybody knows why they’re all there. And if it’s prescribed, your treatment ships discreetly right to your door. The process is fast, simple, and private, and it’s all handled by real doctors. It’s all about confidence, connection, and getting back to the moments that matter. Visit rugg.com/locktonnhl to get 15% off your first order. That’s rugg.com/lockedonhl. And don’t forget to use our code locked on NHL. So they know that we sent you. Rouiette, stop making excuses and start making moves. All right, we’re back here on the Wednesday edition of the Locked On Penguins podcast. I’m Patrick Damp right alongside Hunter Hodes. And let’s start with the big news of the day. Philip Thomasino has cleared waiverss. He goes unclaimed by any of the other 31 teams in the NHL. So, he is now eligible to be sent to Wilsbear and the AHL. That one I am a little surprised by. I figured that there would be one maybe two teams taking a chance on Philip Thomasino with injuries, underperformances, and disappointing as Thomasino has been this year, the track record and the potential are still there. And I really thought between that a very affordable contract, his time in Pittsburgh was probably at its end. But here we are. He was at practice today and we’ll see if he ends up getting sent to the miners. Yeah, I was watching him at practice. You could definitely tell by his body language, at least to me, that he felt a little deflated. I mean, who wouldn’t? You get placed on waiverss yesterday. You’re learning to find out your fate a few hours later. I I felt really bad just watching him. But he cleared waiverss and I’m with you. I thought maybe a team or two would potentially try to take a chance on him. He’s still very young, relatively cheap contract. Could maybe be a depth score on a team that’s battling injuries, but a team didn’t decide to do it. And now he can be sent to Wolsbury. If it happens, I expect someone to come up. I know a lot of people are waiting for Tristan Rose. We keep getting comments about it. And trust me, guys, I’m excited, too. Tristan Rose has had a really nice start. He came really close to making this team out of training camp, but I’m going to tell you all what I’m saying to some people in the YouTube comments. You got to be patient. I I think he’s going to be coming up a bit later this year and I think he is going to have a bit of a runway. You know, even when this team gets healthy, I think he is going to come up at some point. So, I get all the fans clamoring for him, but I think we got to be patient. Also, he’s now playing with Rucker McGordy. McGordy just came back. I think they want to get those two some chemistry together. So, just be patient. If I had to pick one guy that would come up from Wilsbury, I would say Avery Hayes, but he’s still dayto-day right now. But the one player I would say potentially to watch out for is Booumama. He’s someone that is very wellliked in that locker room. Brings some snarls, some physicality, some toughness. Doesn’t bring a lot of the offense, but I could definitely see him coming up for a game or two before being sent back once some of the injured players are able to get healthy. So, just putting that out there for everyone. I wouldn’t be shocked on that either just because he is your classic well-liked loyal soldier kind of player where he kind of understands his role that he’s going to be a mostly AHL guy. He’ll get his opportunities from time to time in the NHL and he takes that as a positive. You saw it last year when he came up. Everybody was happy to have him on the team. He brought a spark. He brought energy. He brought physicality and in a long season that has its value. He’s not going to be a consistent full-time NHL player, but he can provide you that little bit of a spark. And with as tough as this upcoming stretch is going to be in December, you might just need that. You might need that int intangible spark where you bring this guy up, he’s happy golucky. You put him on the ice, he’s throwing big hits, he’s not afraid to get into scraps and that lifts some spirits. That gets the guys going. And wouldn’t be shocked if that’s something that the team feels it needs. As for the other guys, aside from the injuries and everything, I’ll keep reiterating this. I’ve said it on the show. I’ve said it to people on social media in the comments when we’re talking about this. When you bring those guys up, you want to bring them up. You want to put them in more prominent roles. And right now, those roles aren’t there for them. It won’t do them any good to play very limited bottom six minutes. You want to see can these guys come up and perform? And if you’re putting them in sheltered limited roles, it’s probably not the best for them. Let them continue to cook in the AHL. Let them continue to get those big time minutes and really continue to develop. And then once they’re ready, they are ready. So, we’ll see what happens with them. As for the rest of practice, not a whole ton to really get into other than the third line of Tommy Novak, Ben Kindle, and Sam Puland. Yes, we talked about Puland yesterday. I I don’t want to put too much undue expectation or hype on Ben Kindle, but as we have seen does a really good job of driving his own line and with what has ailed Sam Puland since he’s had his opportunities. Maybe a little bit of time with Ben Kindle could raise that stock ever so slightly. We’ll see. I mean, Ben Kindle, you know, one of the smartest players on the team. It really hasn’t mattered who has been on his line. He’s been driving it no matter what. He has really good chemistry with Tommy Novak. So, I like that they put Novak back down there after a couple of games with Malin. It at least shows that Novak and Malin do have some chemistry that they he can go up there if needed. But, I do like the chemistry that Novak and Kendall have. And now I’m curious to see what Puan is able to do with Kendall. So, you know, that’s a real opportunity for him here. he gets to try to impress the coaching staff, this new staff that is to see if he can maybe get an extended stay with the Penguins even when some injured players come back. Time will tell. Speaking of that, Justin Brazo was skating once again before practice. Ricard Muel was skating before practice. Jackson Ivan was before joining the team again. Tristan Jarry was back out there for another practice. So, he’s starting to get a little bit closer. So, some guys they’re not some of them are not at practice yet, but they’re getting closer, which is what you want to see. This team is so banged up right now and they need to get guys back ASAP, especially with the December that they have coming up. Also, Harrison Brunick spoke after practice. Damn Muse talked about that. It very much feels like this is going to end up with a conditioning stint in Wilsbury and then going to the World Juniors. Like Muse and Brunick both said, “Yep, they have a plan for me.” Or, you know, for Muse, I you know, we have a plan for him and all that. So, I would be surprised if it didn’t involve that conditioning stint in the AHL and then the World Juniors. You can’t just keep having him rot up there. I feel really bad. He’s got to play in some games like right now. That is if you’re not going to play him here, Pat, now that you have the five games at Loophole, send him down to the AHL and then you have the World Juniors coming up. Okay, loan him to there and he can play in high stakes games. You’re you’re not having him learn anything by just sitting in the press box. I I agree overall that he does need to get into some game action again. I do think I I still lean on what I said about both him and Kindle earlier in the year where they don’t really have anything left to do or to prove at the junior level. So, there is something to be said for sticking around an NHL program and getting that kind of experience, but at the same time, yes, he does eventually need to get into some game action because workouts, practices, travel, all that isn’t really doing that much for him. But you can kind of see they’re hinting towards this because if they weren’t gonna do it, they probably would have sent him back to juniors at this point. So, it really does feel like it’s trending toward sending him to Wils Bear for a few games, then giving him to team Canada for the World Juniors, and then after that, you re-evaluate. If you want to keep him around, get him into some games, fantastic. If you do want to send him back, you’ve at least put him on a really good path to see what it’s going to take to not only make the team, but stay on the team. So, we will see what happens with him. But that is going to do it for our middle segment. When we come back, my favorite segment on Locked on Penguins, it’s Wednesday and that means it’s time to give out our MVP of the week as part of Warrior Helmet Wednesday and there are going to be two winners this week. So, stay tuned to see who’s getting the Warrior Helmets this week. We will do that when we come back right after this. But first, we’ve got to tell you about our last sponsor, and that is FanDuel. The NBA is back, and there is no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you missed Hip Off, or you just want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. Plus, you can even combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. FanDuel keeps every game exciting, especially when your team is making that late push. Right now, FanDuel is offering new customers $300 in bonus bets if their first $5 bet wins. So, head to fanduel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Welcome back to the Wednesday edition of Locked on Penguins. I’m Patrick Damp running right alongside my good buddy Hunter Hodies. And if you’re new here, welcome to Warrior Helmet Wednesday. This is where we give out our MVP of the previous week. And in doing so, we pay homage to the 2016 Stanley Cup winning Penguins where throughout that season, the team would give out their player of the game award in the locker room via a Warrior helmet. And we are going to keep that tradition alive here on the show. So, Hunter, I will give the floor to you. Who gets your Warrior helmet this week? Mine is going going to go to Sergey Murashav for his first shut out on Sunday. Was he tested that much? No. The Penguins did a great job keeping Nashville to the outside, only giving up a limited number of high danger chances. However, when he was tested, he made it look so easy. He was so calm, composed in that. He showcases agility. His rebound control was not really an issue, even though it’s crept up at times throughout his development, but I think it’s been a lot better this year. If you ask me, he played a great game for the Penguins and was very stable in net when the Penguins really needed a win. So, he gets my Warrior helmet for this week. And Pat, I know who you are going to give yours to. It’s also an excellent pick because he scored in both games for the Penguins, but mine goes to Mr. for Sergey Morashave. That is a very good pick. And yes, you are correct. I am giving my warrior helmet to number 71 of Genny Malin. If you’re checking us out on YouTube today, you can see the graphic on your screen. Hunter, appreciate your pick, but you kind of took away what I was going to say about Murishov. Not to take anything away from his shut out of the Nashville Predators in Sweden. He played extremely well, but the Penguins as a team did a really good job limiting the chances. So, his job was not that difficult, but it is still a monumental achievement for the 21-year-old goalender. As for my pick, if Genny Malin scores goals in both international games and as you said on the show in Sweden, if Genny Malin said the bank is open because both goals were bank shots, but he was also just a tremendous player throughout both games. He continues to have a really strong start to the season. So, I am giving mine to Genny Malin. And if you’re keeping score at home, you can see our tracker here on the screen of who has our Warrior helmets throughout the season. If you are listening on audio, leading the pack this season with two Warrior helmets is Justin Brazil, Benjamin Kindle of Genny Malin, and now Sergey Murish. Getting one each is Sydney Crosby, Kyle Dubis, Eric Carlson, Dan Muse, the penalty kill, and the power play. We’re obviously keeping track of it better this season because at the end of the year when we get to whenever it is, maybe the after game 82, maybe after the playoffs, who knows how this season’s going to go. But either way, at the end of the season, we will give our seasonlong Warrior Helmet awards to maybe a couple players, maybe one. Who knows? We’ll see how each week of this season goes. But thank you to everyone who tunes in to this goofy show each and every day. We appreciate you. And that is going to do it for the Wednesday edition of Locked on Penguins. Hunter and I will be back with a brand new episode for you on Thursday. So for now for Hunter Hodies, I am Patrick Damp. Thank you as always for tuning in and we will be back on Thursday.

With the Pittsburgh Penguins on a mini-break thanks to their international games, we’re talking a potential big summer trade! Patrick and Hunter are taking this little break from game action to talk about the 2026 offseason (2:10). With the Penguins expected to have a lot of cap space, and not many big-time free agents available, could they target Jordan Kyrou from the Blues? They discuss that before getting into some practice notes from Wednesday’s practice. They discuss how Philip Tomasino cleared waivers (15:03) and what the next steps are for him before looking at Sam Poulin getting an opportunity on the third line. After that, they give out their warrior helmet for the last week! (24:35).

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