We have one more round of over/unders for the 2026-27 Pittsburgh Penguins, and it includes the four big-money, big-name players at the top of the lineup — Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson.
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.
Sidney Crosby: Over/under 90.5 points
At some point things are going to really start slowing down for Sidney Crosby. As great as he is, as great as he has been, as much of an all-time legend that he has become in NHL history, there is going to a come a time where he is not a 90-point player. Are we at that point? Is it getting closer? It does not seem to be.
While Crosby did not top the 90-point mark in 2025-26, that was largely due to the fact he missed extended time following an Olympics injury. But his 74 points in 68 games still put him on track for 89.2 points in an 82-game season, and 91.4 points in an 84-game season.
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He topped 90 points in each of the three previous seasons.
Now, potential injuries are certainly a part of this game, and a 39-year-old forward could be more vulnerable to that sort of thing just because, you know, he’s a 39-year-old player in the NHL. But until the Olympic injury Crosby was going through one of the healthiest multi-year stretches of his career until a fluke play in an international tournament sidelined him. So who knows. You can’t really predict it.
Crosby may not always have that extra gear he had at his peak, but there is still enough there for him to be a major contributor offensively.
Enough to get back over the 90-point mark again?
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Evgeni Malkin: Over/under 22.5 goals
Malkin is back for at least one more year, and a lot of the same points and questions listed with Crosby also apply here.
When will he REALLY start to slow down? How well will a 40-year-old player hold up over a full season? Does Malkin still have as much left in the tank as Crosby does?
Malkin’s 2025-26 season was a really nice bounce-back year when he was on the ice, scoring 19 goals with 42 assists and 62 total points in 56 games. But it was the second year in a row where he played in less than 65 games, and this time it was not just simply due to injury — he also missed multiple games for a suspension.
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Over the past four years he’s scored at a 25-goal pace per 82 games, and was at a 27-goal pace in 2025-26. That is, by the way, the exact number of goals he scored in each of his past two full seasons.
Will he play in enough games to get back to that level?
Kris Letang: Over/under 5.5 goals
Of the Penguins big-three players, Letang is the one that seems to have slowed down the most over the past few years. Not just in terms of production, but also overall impact. There were times this past season where he seemed to be bordering more toward liability than productive player. There were still games and stretches where he showed something, but they were not as consistent as we have been used to seeing. His production also reached all-time lows for himself, both on a per-game level and in terms of the raw numbers.
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Despite playing in 154 out of a possible 164 games the past two seasons, he has scored just 12 total goals during that stretch. He used to score 12 goals in a single season, even if he missed 15-20 games.
The brilliance just is not there as much.
Five goals is both a low bar for him given his career, but it also seems like it might be a high bar given what he showed a year ago and the reality that he is going to be a 39-year-old defenseman this season.
Erik Karlsson: Over/under 50.5 points (with the Penguins)
I am including Karlsson in with the big-three even though he has not been here as long or had anywhere near the same level of team success here. But he is a Hall of Fame player, he is their highest-paid player, and he is also one of their best players.
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There is an argument to be made he was their best player in 2025-26.
Nobody seemed to benefit from the coaching change from Mike Sullivan to Dan Muse more than Karlsson, and he started to play like the player the Penguins thought they were getting when they traded for him prior to the 2023-24 season. He was sensational.
I would imagine some of that is still there for him this season.
He has tallied at least 53 points in each of his first three seasons with the Penguins, and went as high as 66 in 75 games this past season.
So I a confident in saying he is going to get to 50 points again.
The question is, will he do all of it with the Penguins?
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Karlsson is in the last year of his contract and is a 36-year-old defenseman.
You do not need to work overtime to put the math together on that.
Could he be a potential in-season trade chip? If the Penguins are struggling as a team and not really in a playoff spot, it seems like it would be inevitable. Would they still do it if they are in the playoff race? Would they potentially extend him? There are a lot of options on the table here, but for the purposes of this exercise we are going to throw a curveball into the mix and set the over/under of 50.5 points with the Penguins, and not necessarily for the season overall.
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