The Penguins announced their pool of players for Friday night’s exhibition game against Detroit.

Below is the Penguins’ lineup for Friday night’s preseason game against the Detroit Red Wings at PPG Paints Arena. Puck drop is set for 7:00 PM ET and fans can watch a live stream of the game on SNP+ or tune in to the game on the Penguins’ official flagship radio station, 105.9 ‘The X’.

FORWARDS

8 – Aidan McDonough
10 – Aaron Huglen
11 – Filip Hallander
12 – Robby Fabbri
18 – Tommy Novak
19 – Connor Dewar
22 – Sam Poulin
23 – Nolan Renwick
43 – Danton Heinen
46 – Blake Lizotte
48 – Valtteri Puustinen
51 – Cal Burke
53 – Philip Tomasino

DEFENSE

3 – Jack St. Ivany
5 – Ryan Shea
24 – Matt Dumba
27 – Ryan Graves
44 – Chase Pietila
56 – Alexander Alexeyev
75 – Connor Clifton

GOALIES

35 – Tristan Jarry
37 – Arturs Silovs

While there are some NHL players in that lineup, the majority of the top players on the team still won’t play Friday. There’s a good reason for that, instead, they’ll practice ahead of Saturday night’s big preseason game (for as big as any preseason game can be) against Columbus.

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Below is the non-game group slated to practice tomorrow, September 26 at 12:00 PM at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.

Forwards – Justin Brazeau, Tristan Broz, Atley Calvert, Sidney Crosby, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Avery Hayes, Boko Imama, Ben Kindel, Ville Koivunen, Joona Koppanen, Evgeni Malkin, Anthony Mantha, Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust

Defensemen – Harrison Brunicke, Finn Harding, Caleb Jones, Erik Karlsson, Philip Kemp, Kris Letang, Owen Pickering and Parker Wotherspoon

Goaltenders – Marc-Andre Fleury, Filip Larsson and Sergei Murashov

Since it’s unlikely that the team would run any players on Friday’s game back into action the very next night at this time of the year, the pool of players in this second group is likely going to be where the Pens pick from to create Saturday night’s lineup. That tracks, since all of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have made various comments recently about expecting to play in Marc-Andre Fleury’s last game, which essentially will serve as something of what soccer fans might call a testimonial to see him off.

The splits are also intriguing since on defense it has what could be close to an opening night lineup type of feel with Harrison Brunicke and Owen Pickering getting to make their case in a game that will include Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson on the back-end, as well as potentially Pittsburgh’s entire top-six forward group of Crosby, Malkin, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Anthony Mantha and Ville Koivunen. The game could be a big one for players like Koivunen, not to mention Avery Hayes and Tristan Broz to show their stuff under a bright spotlight in a fairly close to actual type of game lineup.

Saturday won’t be a complete dress rehearsal, since apparent NHL roster players like Blake Lizotte, Connor Dewar, Philip Tomasino and Danton Heinen will play on Friday. It’s too early for a full dress rehearsal anyways, with over a full week of camp to go. But the Pens are giving context clues that Saturday night’s game with Fleury should be one of their strongest lineups of the early/mid preseason and probably included the 2025-26 season debuts of star players like Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Rust, Karlsson, Rakell and the like.

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One other cool wrinkle is that it could potentially be a “passing of the torch” type of moment should the Penguins decide to dress 21-year old Sergei Murashov alongside the 40-year old Fleury. Murashov could project to be Pittsburgh’s next top goalie one day in the future, what better way to have a changing of the guard than share a game with the franchise’s record holding goalie in every major category? That’s one of several little items that will be special over the weekend as Fleury makes his return and prepares to bid adieu.

If you want to go to practice tomorrow, well Godspeed and may the odds be in your favor, the team is expecting huge crowds at UPMC Lemieux.

It was a circus in 2024 when Jaromir Jagr practiced with the team, more people were around 30-45 minutes BEFORE practice than usually ever show up even during playoffs. If you are itching to go, the earlier to get there and sacrificing much of the morning is probably going to be required, if at all possible.