2025-26 Season in Review: Evgeni Malkin

Vitals

Player: Evgeni Malkin
Born: July 31, 1986 (Age 39 season)
Height: 6’ 5”
Weight: 213 pounds
Hometown: Magnitogorsk, Russia
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2004 first round (2nd overall) by the Pittsburgh Penguins
2025-26 Statistics: 56 games played, 19 goals, 42 assists = 61 points ; 6 games played, 2 goals, 1 assist in playoffs.
Contract Status: Malkin signed a one-year deal on May 26th to return to the Penguins in 2026-27 for his 21st NHL season after completing a four-year contract that wrapped up with the 2025-26 season.

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Story of the Season

At 39 years old, Evgeni Malkin entered the 2025-26 season as the fifth oldest player in the NHL, preparing to play in his 20th NHL campaign in what will be a Hall of Fame career. While he may no longer be the player he was at his peak, Malkin proved to everyone that he still has something left to give, posting over a point per game season as he approaches his 40th birthday.

Malkin wasted no time getting his season rolling with a red hot right out of the gate that helped propel the Penguins up the standings and had people raising their eyebrows after preseason predictions had them as basement dwellers rather than playoff contenders.

Through the first month of play in 2025-26, Malkin paced the Penguins in scoring, producing 17 points in the month of October. There was a short period of time where he was leading the league in points courtesy of his hot start. That pace eventually cooled off, but Malkin made it clear he still had gas in the tank and could produce at a high level for the Penguins.

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Coming off a 2024-25 season where he played 68 games, injuries (and a bad decision on his part) limited Malkin to just 56 games this past season. In December, the Penguins played 14 games, but Malkin appears in just two of those games, missing the rest due to injury. Malkin’s absence from the lineup coincided with one of the Penguins worst stretch of the season, surely not a coincidence given the level Malkin was playing at before going down.

In total, Malkin missed 15 games between early December and when he returned on January 8th but he wasted no time getting back on the scoresheet, recording a goal in his return to action and racking up 13 points across 12 games played in the month of January.

Of course not all of Malkin’s time out of the lineup was injury related. In an early March game against the Buffalo Sabres, Malkin slashed Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin across the neck and was handed a five game suspension for his actions.

Much like his return from injury in January, Malkin returned to the lineup on March 16th in Denver and did so with a bang against the Avalanche, recording a pair of goals and an assists in a shock 7-2 Penguins victory over the eventual President’s Trophy winners.

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In the playoffs, Malkin found the back of the net twice to tie the team lead for goals scored in the Penguins six game loss to the Flyers in the first round.

Monthly Splits

via Yahoo!

October and January are the big months here that really stand out for Malkin this season. It should be noted those two months are when his legs were the most fresh, at the beginning of the season and coming off a long injury layoff that saw him miss 15 games. December and February were low volume in terms of games played because of injury and the Olympic break, but Malkin was still clicking at above a point per game pace even in those small sample sizes.

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Regular season 5v5 advanced stats

Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of 18 forwards on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.

Corsi For%: 48.3% (14th)
Goals For%: 59.5% (3rd)
xGF%: 50.6% (13th)
Scoring Chance %: 50.3% (8th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 50.4% (16th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 12.2% (7th)
On-ice save%: .912% (5th)
Goals/60: 0.96 (8th)
Assist/60: 1.59 (2nd)
Points/60: 2.55 (5th)

Perhaps not the driver of play that he was at his peak, but Malkin’s scoring rates still remain among the highest on the team at 39 years old. His goal total improved slightly from last year, but it’s dishing the assists where he earned his money this season. Maybe Malkin does need to focus on shooting the puck more in 2026-27 with his GF% being that high and his shooting percentage being in the top half of qualified skaters.

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Charts n’at

Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge

2025-26 proved to be a major bounce back season for Malkin following his career-worst worst performance in 2024-25. The offensive impact this year was back in a major way and WAR rankings shine favorably on his game.

Malkin is always going to live in the Sidney Crosby shadow but has some incredible playmaking chops of his own. At this point he is a much more effective player setting up his teammates than taking the shots himself, and a shift to wing has freed him up to be more involved on the forecheck. Malkin also remained incredibly productive on the power play, leading the team in power play points per 60 minutes played and ending up with 26 PPP in his 56 games.

Malkin was able to increase his amount of shots from mid and high danger zones from last season, despite playing in 12 less games. That might say more about 2024-25 than this current year. Overall, through coaching inputs on zone starts and skill he’s still able to spend lots of time in the offensive end and as little as possible in the defensive part.

Age and a few knee surgeries have put a ceiling on what was once the most explosive skater of his generation back in his heyday. These stats show a real ceiling to how fast Malkin can be these days, right around the 20mph area. He still has the burst to remain worthy of playing in a league that gets a little faster each season, even as he slows, it’s just not quite the same as it once was and missing that high gear.

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Highlights