Penguins Should Keep Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust on Roster Amid NHL Trade Rumors

The Pittsburgh Penguins have low expectations for the 2025-26 NHL season.

Those expectations will get even lower if they decide to deal Rickard Rakell or Bryan Rust or both this offseason.

According to The Athletic's Josh Yohe, league sources believe at least one of the two forwards will be dealt. The Carolina Hurricanes made a call to the Penguins on both players before signing Nikolaj Ehlers in free agency, per the report.

Rakell and Rust combined for 135 points last season. They were easily the two best players on the team not named Sidney Crosby.

It would be easy for the Penguins to waive the white flag on the 2025-26 season and trade either, or both, of the players to continue piling up assets for their rebuild.

The goal in mind for that strategy would be to tank and have the best draft lottery odds possible to land Gavin McKenna with the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL draft.

The counter to that is the Penguins already had the second-worst team in the Metropolitan Division last year with Rakell and Rust partnering Crosby.

A handful of the league's worst teams already look better on paper, like San Jose and Philadelphia, and should either be on the same level of points as the Penguins, or higher, as the spring rolls around.

Dealing away Rakell and/or Rust also diminishes the quality of players Crosby shares lines with at the back end of his career.

Pittsburgh's worst-case scenario is for Crosby to share time with developing players on the top line, and because of that, the long-time Penguins forward requests a trade around the deadline.

The talk regarding a possible Rakell or Rust trade would be different if the Penguins were open to trading Crosby so that he could chase another Stanley Cup.

But right now that doesn't appear like it is a possibility, and with that in mind, Pittsburgh should at least keep its top three forwards together.

Pittsburgh will lose plenty of games with them in the lineup because the team doesn't have great depth right now.

The goal is to be competitive enough to be in games, but also lose them to improve lottery odds for 2026.

With Rakell and Rust still on the roster, the Penguins can achieve that goal while also providing Crosby with the best opportunities to have at least one more productive season in Pittsburgh.