NHL.com is providing in-depth roster, prospect and fantasy analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept. 1. Today, three important questions facing the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n
1. Could this be it for Malkin?<\/p>\n
Evgeni Malkin<\/a>, at 39 years old, is set for his 20th NHL season, the last on a four-year, $24.4 million contract he signed July 12, 2022.<\/p>\n The second-line center hasn\u2019t publicly addressed his NHL future. On the Penguins\u2019 end, general manager Kyle Dubas said a decision hasn\u2019t been made.<\/p>\n \u201cI talked to \u2018Geno\u2019 at the end of the year in the exit meeting and then followed up with him,\u201d Dubas said. \u201cI get it, it\u2019s the last year of his contract and it\u2019s been a topic of discussion. But with the way we\u2019re going to approach it, we\u2019re going to go into the year. Then, as I told Geno in his exit meeting, then (agent) J.P. Barry when it started to kind of gather some steam, we\u2019ll meet at the international break, at the Olympic break this year, see where Geno\u2019s at and then meet after the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Malkin has 1,346 points (514 goals, 832 assists), third in Pittsburgh history in each category behind Mario Lemieux<\/a> (1,723 points; 690 goals, 1,033 assists) and Sidney Crosby<\/a> (1,687 points, 625 goals, 1,062 assists). He won the Stanley Cup in 2009, 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n After this season, there\u2019s a chance Malkin will become the first piece to retire from arguably the Penguins’ most decorated era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NHL.com is providing in-depth roster, prospect and fantasy analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-165530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115070459490657763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}