How Long Will Holdout Be For Penguins' Top Defensive Prospects?

The Pittsburgh Penguins' struggles on the blue line to open the 2026-27 season have been well-documented up to this point. Each of the team's regular starters on defense this season have seen some good and some bad, with much of the bad accompanying the Penguins' four-game road trip that ended winless with a 5-4 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Monday. 

Of course, it's still early. The season is only 10 games young, and every NHL team is battling the results of a shortened training camp and preseason, with some seeing more success than others.

But the big question facing the Penguins is how long a leash they'll have with the current defense corps as is before they look to call on some of their younger talent.

Even though a similar situation presents itself on the forward front for the Penguins - and that was made even more interesting with a report from NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman on Saturday claiming the Penguins and GM/POHO Kyle Dubas are willing to trade veteran forwards to make way for youth - the situation on the blue line is, arguably, just as interesting. 

The Penguins have some defensive depth in their system, with prospects Owen Pickering, Harrison Brunicke, and Jake Livanavage, in particular, knocking on the door of NHL opportunity. However, part of the trouble is that the Penguins loaded up on defensemen this summer, subtracting Parker Wotherspoon and Ryan Shea but bringing back Ilya Solovyov and bringing in Declan Carlile, Trevor van Riemsdyk, and Kaedan Korczak. 

And during the small runway of the 2026-27 season so far? They've already added two more NHL-fringe blueliners in Spencer Stastney and Ryan Johnson via trade, both left defensemen. 

While defensive depth is great, it doesn't make much difference when the guys playing in the NHL simply aren't getting it done. And it becomes borderline counterproductive and problematic when younger players in the system are playing up to a certain level to earn playing time from struggling vets. 

Even though it's unrealistic to expect Erik Karlsson to come out of the lineup unless he has anything to say about leaving the Penguins altogether at some point, the standard for everyone else should not be the same. Solovyov has only played in one game, and Stastney has actually looked pretty good in five games so far for the Penguins, with the most recent outing coming on the top pairing with Karlsson. 

But everyone else? Let's take a look at the list and some of the numbers in the early going (with the emphasis that it's very early):

- Carlile: Despite having three goals and five points in 10 games, the 26-year-old Carlile - who signed a two-year, $3 million contract with the Penguins this summer - is a minus-4 and, according to HockeyStatCards, is in the 1st percentile for defense rating at minus-2, making him one of the very worst defensive blueliners in the league through 10 games. And, per Moneypuck, his 4.63 expected goals against per 60 minutes is the second-worst mark on the Penguins to Bryan Rust's 5.81. The left blueliner has made several costly errors in his own zone, and it's becoming a bit too much of a theme at this point. 

- Kris Letang: Surprisingly to some, the advanced stats, defensively, bode well for Letang so far, as HockeyStatCards has him in the 100th percentile for defensive rating this season at plus-2.5. His offense, though, has all but fallen off entirely. He hasn't been the biggest problem to begin the season by any stretch, and objectively, he has been one of the Penguins' better defensemen in a sheltered third-pairing role. But he still leads the team in giveaways (22) and defensive zone giveaways (11), and he'll be turning 40 this season, making load management a reasonable thing to ponder for the veteran right defenseman. 

- Korczak: He began the season pretty steady defensively on the right side of the second pairing, but his play has waned along with the Penguins' general play. Acquired over the summer from the Vegas Golden Knights for Wotherspoon, he is signed for four years at $3.25 million per year, so Korczak is likely to have some runway. He has shown some decent ability on breakouts and frequently gets himself in shooting and passing lanes, second only to Carlile (20) in blocked shots with 18. But he hasn't shown that upside two-way ability consistently enough yet. 

- Sam Girard: Offensively, the left-shot Girard has been outstanding for the Penguins so far this season, as he is in the team-leading (among defensemen) 94th percentile league-wide for offense rating, again, per HockeyStatCards, at 1.8. But, the fact that, other than Letang, Girard has been Pittsburgh's most consistent defensive defensemen, too, isn't exactly encouraging, as he is only in the 23rd percentile defensively and still makes some poor own-zone decisions. Still, he's been Pittsburgh's best all-around defenseman through 10 games, and he's on the final year of his current contract paying him $5 million annually.

- van Riemsdyk: The 35-year-old veteran, formerly a Washington Capital, has only played in five games due to a lower-body ailment he is currently on injured reserve for, and his last couple of games did not look so good. However, in the first three games, his veteran-level own-zone stick work was at play, he showed an ability to clear out the net-front, and he was a steadying presence for Letang on the left side despite being a right shot. He signed in free agency for two years and is generally reliable - and his versatility is a plus - but, like Letang, he needs to show the ability to string good performances together despite his age. He's a guy who probably doesn't need to play every night.

The moral of the story here is that there has been next to zero game-to-game performance consistency on the blue line for the Penguins this season, Stastney aside. There is, arguably, not a true top-four left blueliner at all on the Penguins' NHL roster, and two guys on the right side are 36 and 39, with respect to Karlsson and Letang.

Because the Penguins have so many new faces on the blue line, it's fair to give the coaching staff some runway to figure out the best pairings and allow guys some time to gel. The sheer number of new faces on the back end is a disadvantage Pittsburgh has had to deal with in comparison to other NHL teams with regards to the shortened preseason and less practice time as a result.

However, the length of the leash on each of these guys should probably not be too, too long. Pickering, 22, is a towering 6-foot-5, 213-pound first-round pick (22nd overall in 2022) who was outstanding for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS) down the stretch and into the Calder Cup Playoffs last season. He is the Penguins' best hope in their system as a shutdown-type left blueliner, which is something that the NHL club needs in short order.

Brunicke, 20, is finally AHL-eligible, and he is far and away the best defensive prospect the Penguins have. He was, arguably, WBS's best player in the playoffs last season despite not being with the team for most of the year, and he had three goals and 15 points in 26 combined games between the AHL regular season and playoffs in 2025-26 and has two points in six games, along with a plus-7, to begin this season. He has handled top-pairing minutes well in his short AHL sample, he plays in all situations, and he has improved many of the defensive details the Penguins asked him to.

Livanavage, 22, was signed to a two-year NHL entry-level contract out of the University of North Dakota near the end of the 2025-26 NHL campaign and has performed a bit under-the-radar. After a pretty impressive camp, he has a goal and five points in five AHL games to start the season, and he has largely been quarterbacking the top power play unit for WBS. He has a booming one-timer and enough two-way upside to be intriguing, even if the defensive side of his game could use some tinkering in the AHL before full-time NHL duties.

In addition, WBS is currently rostering eight defensemen, even after sending Maleek McGowan to the Florida Everblades of the ECHL Wednesday, as David Breazeale came the other way. With Pittsburgh's forward logjam, it's difficult to see them carrying eight defensemen once van Riemsdyk is healthy enough to return, meaning they are likely to get another blueliner in the near future. 

The bottom line, though, is this: If the current crop of blueliners on the NHL club can't begin to bring some consistency within the next few weeks, and these three guys earn their opportunities through their AHL play in the meantime, how long will the holdup be for these guys to see NHL action? If Pittsburgh is going to struggle on the back end, it might not be the worst thing for the struggle to be coming from the younger players who are supposed to be part of the future. 

These next couple of weeks will tell a lot about the direction the Penguins are headed this season. Yes, it's early.

But the returns have not been good enough so far, and if things don't improve in short order, youth and development needs to become the priority. 

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