We continue our look at some over/unders for the 2026-27 Pittsburgh Penguins, and today we turn our attention to their secondary players. The players on that list include: Egor Chinakhov, Rickard Rakell, Tommy Novak, Elmer Soderblom and Samuel Girard. They are not new players, they are not among the Penguins’ youngest players, they are not quite depth players, and they are not the Penguins’ top core players. But they are still players that should be expected to play a significant role and produce this season.
Here is a quick look at the other over/unders we have looked at so far:
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Let’s get into today’s players and potential numbers.
Egor Chinakhov: Over/under 28.5 goals
There were a lot of big (and surprising) developments for the 2025-26 Penguins, and one of the most significant was the in-season acquisition of Egor Chinakhov from the Columbus Blue Jackets. It was not only his acquisition that made a difference, it was also the way that he arrived and immediately started to reach his full potential as a player, both with and without the puck. He was one of their best and most impactful players in the second half of the season, and looked like the player Columbus had always hoped he could be.
He finished the season with a career-high 21 goals and 42 total points between the two teams, including 18 goals and 36 total points in his 43 games with the Penguins.
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Those numbers with the Penguins come out to a 34-goal, 68-point pace over 82 games.
That is first-line production, and when you add in how improved he was defensively he looked like a potential star.
The question is what is he going to do over a full-season?
Was that performance with the Penguins a sign of what he can, and will, be? Or was it simply a hot streak where everything clicked for a talented, but still inconsistent player for a brief period of time?
I think the answer to that question resides somewhere in the middle.
He’s clearly better than he showed in Columbus, and very likely needed a fresh start and a different environment with different voices leading him to start reaching that potential.
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But I also don’t know if I expect him to spend a full season shooting over 17 percent. His shot is objectively great, but there might be some regression that comes there. I could see a situation unfolding where he might be the same player, or perhaps even improve, while not scoring goals at the exact same pace as he did a year ago with the Penguins.
With that said, 28.5 seems like a good target line. It’s still very good. It’s still very productive. But it might just be a little bit of a slower pace.
Rickard Rakell: Over/under 30.5 goals
I feel like Rickard Rakell’s time with the Penguins has been a little underappreciated. He had one down year in 2023-24, but other than that has scored like a top-line player and owns what has become a pretty team-friendly contract under the rising salary cap.
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He’s good. He is one of the few positive things that can be associated with the Ron Hextall era.
He also showed this past season he can be pretty versatile and held his own at center when the Penguins needed it.
In his four seasons with the Penguins his 82-game goal paces have been 28, 17.5, 35 and 32.8. That’s pretty good, and it’s not hard to spot the outlier. His past two seasons have been outstanding from an offensive perspective, and especially as a finisher.
He is going to be 33 years old this season, so there is a chance he starts to slow down, but after scoring at a 32-goal pace in back-to-back seasons I am not sure he is going to just suddenly fall off the map.
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The big thing that might limit him is the potential for injury as he has missed at least 10 games in two of the past four years. But if he stays healthy? Thirty goals should definitely be on the table.
Tommy Novak: Over/under 15 minutes of ice-time per game
At this point we have a pretty good idea of what Novak is as a player. He’s a very capable middle-six forward that can play a variety of roles up and down the lineup, and is probably going to score you between 15-20 goals and 40-45 points.
He is talented, but a little inconsistent.
He has obvious skill, but sometimes it leaves you wanting more.
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He is a good player, but there is a very obvious ceiling on what he is.
The Penguins also seem to really like him, as evidence by the fact he just a received a three-year contract extension.
For his over/under I am focussing more on role and usage than production, and I am wondering if he takes on a bigger role than before.
For his career he has averaged 13:45 of ice-time per game.
With the Penguins, that number has gone up a little to 14:15 per game.
But over the last two months of the 2025-26 season, and into the playoffs, his ice-time started to reach levels it has never reached at any point of his career, topping 16 minutes per game.
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Prior to those two months to close out the 2025-26 season, he only had three other months in his NHL career where he averaged more than 15 minutes per game, and one of those months came in a month where he played just five games.
With Evgeni Malkin now looking like more of a winger than a center, and with Ben Kindel still only being 19 years old, I wonder if we see Novak take on a more traditional second-line center role from the start of the season and get a slight boost in his ice-time.
Elmer Soderblom: Over/under 10.5 goals
Soderblom was another younger, mid-20s player that the Penguins rolled the dice on. Just as was the case with players like Chinakhov and Novak (and some of this past offseason’s additions), Soderblom was a player that posted strong rate and per-minute stats with his previous team, but never really had a chance to show what he could do with a consistent role.
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After joining the Penguins he scored five goals with 10 total points in 20 games, while still posting great underlying numbers.
While his raw box score numbers for his career do not jump off the page, he has still averaged 12 goals per 82 games.
He has obvious skill and tremendous size, and I think there is still some untapped potential in him as a player. He also might get a bigger role than he ever had with the Detroit Red Wings. All of that, combined with a new 84-game season, could put him in a position to reach double-digit goals in a full season for the first time in his career.
Samuel Girard: Over/under plus-6.5 rating
Sam Girard did not have a consistently great debut with the Penguins, but I am not giving up on him still having some sort of positive impact for the Penguins.
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He is still only 28 years old, has a track record of success in the NHL, and for as much as he struggled at times with the Penguins he still finished as a plus-5 after coming over in a trade from the Colorado Avalanche.
He has been a plus-6 or better in four of his NHL seasons, including this past season.
Can he do it again?
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