The Ottawa Senators produced a behind the scenes bit of content for the 2026 draft. The part around their decision with the 25th overall pick involved the Penguins. Per Ottawa’s GM Steve Staois, the Penguins had called and offered an unidentified roster player in order to get the Sens’ pick.
The clip shows Staios fielding an offer from Vancouver, who were attempting to send the 33rd and 41st overall picks to move up to 25 and get pick 72 back from Ottawa. Staios soon dismissed that among his Sens compadres saying, “no pick offers are good enough yet. But Pittsburgh is interesting with the roster player”.
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By the time the ultimate decision had to be made, Ottawa elected to hold tight and draft the 16th best prospect on their board at 25th overall, Swedish winger Jonas Lagerberg-Hoen.
The tidbit about the Pens will lead to intrigue. Staios didn’t mention if Pittsburgh included a pick (like 39th or 54th overall) to bolster their offer or if that unidentified roster player stood as the only piece involved.
The Penguins haven’t been in a huge hurry to trade players away. The didn’t end up moving any roster players on draft night and since that point they’ve only traded away Jack St. Ivany and Parker Wotherspoon, neither of which would be remotely close in value to making a team like Ottawa think long and hard about dealing the 25th pick.
It’s a bit easier to see what Pittsburgh’s end game was. The Pens had just drafted Liam Ruck at 22nd overall and it wasn’t exactly a state secret that the team was eager to add his twin brother Markus to the organization. They ended up not needing a trade, getting Markus at their next pick early in the second round at 39th overall. For their part, the Pens picked a partner in Ottawa who held another pick (32nd overall) in the first round as a potential target that might have been interested in adding a current NHL player with their extra pick early on.
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Who exactly the Pens offered is intriguing. One would think that a standalone for Bryan Rust or Rickard Rakell would have been enough for Ottawa to move a late first rounder, especially considering that the Pens’ reported price on both veterans is higher than one late first. By the same token, it makes sense to rule out Egor Chinakhov and Ben Kindel value-wise as nothing that Pittsburgh would offer. Same with trade clauses for obviously Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang. Plenty of others on the roster offered up wouldn’t have Ottawa even considering the move.
That leaves a few candidates in the sweet spot as being available but carrying some value, like possibly Tommy Novak or Justin Brazeau as the mystery offer. Possibly even down to near-ready prospects like Harrison Brunicke, Ville Koivunen or Rutger McGroarty, though considering players who finished in the AHL as ‘roster players’ may or may not have been in the cards. Some of those names make more sense than others but seem like the more realistic range of potential offerings.
In the end, the general public will never likely know exactly who the Pens offered up. GM Kyle Dubas runs a tight ship and almost zero details leak out from his side, especially about trades that didn’t end up getting made. General managers float tons of ideas to their counterparts all the time and most the talk amounts to nothing. A Pittsburgh/Ottawa trade for the 25th pick fits in that category of fizzling out before getting across the finish line. The only difference from most talks was that Ottawa used the conversation as part of their multimedia to give a little peak into what went on in their draft room. As a result, they gave a little bit of news to consider what could have been if Staios decided to move forward with the offer from the Pens and just how the team might have been different if he did.
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