The Penguins have assigned a player here or there back to juniors (like Travis Hayes and Quinn Beauchesne), but hadn’t had a mass cut of players from their 2025 training camp until Saturday. 15 players are leaving Pittsburgh and heading to the minor league training camp.
From the team:
The Pittsburgh Penguins have reduced their training camp roster to 58 players, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.
The following players have been assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s training camp (AHL), which begins on Monday, September 29 at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex:
Raivis Ansons
David Breazeale
Tommy Budnick
Kyle Criscuolo
Brayden Edwards
Zach Gallant
Max Graham
Brent Johnson
Jordan Kaplan
Gabe Klassen
Daniel Laatsch
Brett Murray
Maxim Pavlenko
Emil Pieniniemi
Zach Urdahl
No major surprises in that listing, plenty of those players are on AHL contracts that were headed back to the minors sooner than later anyways — that includes a player not to be confused 22-year old defenseman named Brent Johnson that isn’t to be confused with the Pens’ backup goalie from the 2010’s that has the same name. The rest of the cuts are rookies like Max Graham, Daniel Laatsch and Emil Pieniniemi that will be looking to stay in the AHL and avoid getting pushed down to the ECHL and can use the AHL acclimation and evaluation much more than they need to be in the NHL camp any longer.
Advertisement
While there weren’t any difficult decisions or tough cuts made today, that will be changing in a hurry. The Pens still have 58 players on their roster and will have to trim all the way down to 23 before you know it. The regular season starts in only 10 days and final rosters will be submitted before that point.