{"id":388313,"date":"2025-11-18T20:15:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388313\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T20:15:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:15:17","slug":"pittsburgh-penguins-place-philip-tomasino-on-waivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388313\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins Place Philip Tomasino On Waivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman<\/a>, the Pittsburgh Penguins have placed forward Philip Tomasino<\/a><\/strong> on waivers today.<\/p>\n

This move could end Tomasino\u2019s tenure in Pittsburgh just one year removed from when the team traded a 2027 fourth-round pick to the Nashville Predators to acquire him. The Penguins likely viewed Tomasino as a player who could potentially benefit from a change of scenery. The 2019 first-round pick was once viewed as one of the Predators\u2019 top prospects.<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u2019s Scott Wheeler ranked<\/a> Tomasino No. 2 in the Predators\u2019 system in 2021, writing at the time that he saw \u201cclear top-six upside\u201d and a player who was a \u201cmulti-faceted play-driver\u201d that could still find a way to impact games even without consistent puck touches.<\/p>\n

After Tomasino\u2019s rookie season in 2021-22, it looked like Tomasino was still on track to living up to the hype he\u2019d garnered as a prospect. He scored 11 goals and 32 points, providing useful secondary scoring to a Predators team that reached the playoffs. Tomasino would go on to score 38 points across his next 72 NHL games in 2022-23 and 2023-24, but those numbers didn\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n

Tomasino\u2019s propensity for defensive lapses and inability to consistently win puck battles or play through the middle of the ice cost him the trust of Predators head coach Andrew Brunette, who took the team to the playoffs and won 47 games in his first season at the helm in Nashville. Tomasino averaged 15:36 time-on-ice under John Hynes the year prior, but his ice time fell to just 12:34 per game under Brunette.<\/p>\n

After Tomasino scored just one point in 11 games to start 2024-25, the Predators traded him to Pittsburgh. Initially, the Penguins\u2019 bet seemed to be paying off, as Tomasino scored three goals and four points in his first five games with the Penguins. The rest of the way, it was a relatively similar story to Tomasino\u2019s time in Nashville. He had decent box score numbers (23 points in 50 games, a 38-point 82-game pace) but lackluster all-around impact.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s come on an accelerated timeline, Tomasino\u2019s time in Pittsburgh appears to have followed a similar track to his time in Nashville. There were those aforementioned early flashes, followed by passable scoring numbers and a sense that he consistently left fans and coaches wanting more.<\/p>\n

So far in his second season in Pittsburgh, Tomasino\u2019s time has gone similarly to his later tenure as a Predator. A coaching change happened, and he\u2019s not nearly as trusted by new head coach Dan Muse as he was under former coach Mike Sullivan. Tomasino\u2019s ice time has again declined to just over 12 minutes per night, and he\u2019s found himself a healthy scratch on some nights, just as he was in Nashville.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the last few weeks, there was a growing sense in the media that Tomasino\u2019s days on the Penguins\u2019 NHL roster could be numbered.<\/p>\n

The Athletic\u2019s Josh Yohe reported on Oct. 27<\/a> that the Penguins were \u201cnot thrilled with Tomasino\u2019s current play,\u201d and that when he was still in Pittsburgh, Sullivan \u201cbelieved that Tomasino concerned himself too much with his statistics and the scoresheet and not enough with the finer aspects of the game.\u201d Yohe also wrote that Tomasino had been \u201cpainfully invisible\u201d in games so far in 2025-26.<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\u2019s Matt Vensel<\/a> wrote earlier this month about how Muse had implored Tomasino to find a way to consistently \u201cimpact the game\u201d and forge his own identity as a player at the NHL level.<\/p>\n

Vensel wrote at the time that Tomasino \u201cwould presumably be on a short list of players they would consider sending down\u201d in the event that the Penguins needed to clear a roster spot if his play did not improve dramatically, and if he remained unable to impact the game in the kind of way Muse wanted him to.<\/p>\n

Based on his placement on waivers today, it appears the Penguins may feel Tomasino is not likely to discover that identity, or find a way to consistently impact the game, in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note, of course, that Tomasino remains just 24 years old, and despite his struggle to establish himself as an NHLer, remains a player with legitimate offensive talents. While things haven\u2019t worked out in Pittsburgh, there are only so many players going around who possess an ability to dazzle with puck skills and offensive ability.<\/p>\n

While Tomasino has only been able to show off those talents on an inconsistent basis at the NHL level, it\u2019s possible another club could look to claim Tomasino and see if their coaching staff can unlock the potential Tomasino wasn\u2019t able to realize with his prior two teams.<\/p>\n

Photos courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman, the Pittsburgh Penguins have placed forward Philip Tomasino on waivers today. This move…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":388314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,185112,1334,62,67,132,68,46705],"class_list":{"0":"post-388313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-philip-tomasino","10":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-waivers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115572541868874390","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388313","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=388313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}