The Penguins 2025-26 schedule has been released and while the Penguins are more likely to finish in the bottom-five in the NHL than make the playoffs this season, there are still some intriguing matchups, interesting quirks, and some fun potential road trips that this season’s schedule presents.
The first game of the season takes on a rather dramatic storyline when the Penguins travel to New York on October 7 to take on former head coach Mike Sullivan. If that wasn’t enough, just two days later Sullivan will make his first appearance back in Pittsburgh.
On Nov. 14 and 16, the Penguins will travel to Stockholm, Sweden for the NHL’s Global Series to play two regular-season games against the Nashville Predators. The times for the games are obviously out of the ordinary at 2PM ET on Friday, November 14th and 9AM ET on Sunday November 16th, but they could serve as a good excuse to skip out on work and Church, respectively (not that I would ever condone skipping either). The bad news about the Penguins playing the Predators in Sweden is that it means the Penguins will not travel to Nashville this year, which is always a fan favorite road trip destination.
While Nashville isn’t a possibility for a road trip this season, there are still several great road game/road trip possibilities. Of course, Las Vegas is the most popular destination for any NHL fan not located in Sin City. This season the Penguins visit Vegas on Thursday, March 12th. This sets up nicely for a cross-country trip as it leads right into the weekend, the weather is perfect in Vegas at that time of year, and what could a better place to be during the NCAA March Madness? Unfortunately, because of March Madness, hotel costs will be much higher than normal, so if you’re planning this trip, book early. You could also leave Las Vegas on Friday after the game and follow the team north to Utah where they will play the newly-named Mammoth on Saturday, March 14th. Closer to home, the Penguins visit Columbus on Black Friday, November 28th. The Penguins are also in Columbus on Sunday January 4th and the previous day they are in Detroit.
While road trips are nice, home is where the heart is and the Penguins have a very fan-friendly home slate this season with 21 weekend home games at PPG Paints Arena on either a Friday night (1), Saturday (13) or Sunday (7), accounting for 53% of all home games. The team will also play at home in the traditional Thanksgiving Eve game as well as New Year’s Day.
Two of those aforementioned weekend games come in a very odd scheduling quirk when the Penguins play host to the defending Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers in back-to-back home games on Saturday and Sunday, April 4th and 5th. Another schedule oddity is the long Olympic break February 7th-25th. In fact, the Penguins will only play five games during the entire month of February. Conversely, they will play 17 games in March.
Finally, with this potentially being Evgeni Malkin’s last season with the Penguins, his potential last home game with the Penguins would be April 11th versus rival Washington. This is also an intriguing match-up because it could also be the last time we see Alex Ovechkin in Pittsburgh, as there is speculation that this could be his last season in the NHL. Interestingly, the very next day the Penguins play in Washington in what could be Ovechkin’s last regular-season home game and, perhaps, the final match-up between Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.
While there might not be a deep playoff run in the cards for the Penguins this season, there are still plenty of captivating storylines baked into the schedule, not the least of which is appreciating one more season of the trio of Crosby, Malkin, and Kris Letang. So, “schedule” some time to watch the Penguins in the upcoming season.
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