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Despite all of the excitement and fanfare surrounding the start of the 2025-26 Global Series, Friday simply wasn’t the night for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

And – despite nearly sneaking off with the two points – it showed in the results.

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The Penguins were defeated in overtime by the Nashville Predators, 2-1, in a game where the Penguins were outplayed for the final 40 minutes. Evgeni Malkin scored a fluke second-period goal to put the Penguins ahead 1-0 until the final two minutes of regulation, when Swedish forward Filip Forsberg knotted things up for the Predators and sent the game to OT.

Steven Stamkos got a partial breakaway just 44 seconds into the extra frame and buried the opportunity to give the Preds the win.

It was a sloppy game for the Penguins in general, but their goaltender gave them a fighting chance. Arturs Silovs made two breakaway saves and came up huge on several occasions, and he was – really – the only reason the Penguins even earned a point with the game they played.

He stopped 28 of 30 Nashville shots.

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“I thought he was outstanding tonight,” head coach Dan Muse said. “I mean, he kept the score the way it was. We got a point because of him and the way he played, so I thought he was great.”

Let’s get to some observations, both from this game and just in general right now:

– The Crosby line was pretty good in this game, regardless of the fact that they did not show up on the scoresheet. They were generating chances that they simply didn’t finish, even with some brutal defensive zone play from Crosby at times. At the end of the day, Kindel, Crosby, and Rust have some real chemistry.

That said, this team is really hurting without Kindel as its third-line center.

The Penguins May Now Have Three Pieces Of Their Future Core – And That’s A Big Deal

The Penguins May Now Have Three Pieces Of Their Future Core – And That’s A Big Deal Obviously, there is such a thing as getting too far ahead of the curve in sports.

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The problem, however, is that they don’t really have anyone else to plug on 87’s other wing right now. Injuries have caught up to them. Rickard Rakell isn’t an option and won’t be for a while still. Justin Brazeau isn’t an option, either, and will still be out another few weeks. Filip Hallander is no longer an option and won’t be for another three-plus months.

So, who does that leave? There’s Kindel. There’s also Ville Koivunen, who is struggling to produce anywhere close to the numbers he put up in a short stint last season. There’s Tommy Novak, who is currently filling Brazeau’s spot on the second line next to Evgeni Malkin and Anthony Mantha. You could try Connor Dewar there, but it’s probably not a sustainable thing, and he and Blake Lizotte have some serious chemistry.

Yes, you can move Kindel back down. But the top line will be worse as a result. And what is more important right now?

– On that note, I think it’s time for the Penguins to give forward prospect Tristan Broz a look.

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Obviously, that won’t happen ahead of Sunday’s game to wrap up the Global Series in Stockholm. But the Penguins’ bottom-six is lacking right now, and a large part of that is because they do not have an effective third line without Kindel centering it.

October Penguins’ Prospects Update: Forwards

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins/players/october-penguins-prospects-update-forwards" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:October Penguins' Prospects Update: Forwards It's a new season, and with the month of October in the books, that means it's time for the first Pittsburgh Penguins‘ prospects update of the season.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “> October Penguins’ Prospects Update: Forwards It’s a new season, and with the month of October in the books, that means it’s time for the first Pittsburgh Penguins‘ prospects update of the season.

They could use another set of youthful legs in the bottom-six. They could use a guy who has some good two-way potential and has shown an ability – at least at the AHL and NCAA levels – to put the puck in the back of the net. It also gives them the flexibility to keep Kindel on Crosby’s line – or at least bump someone like Koivunen up – because there will still be two capable young players left on the third line.

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This team desperately needs center depth and scoring depth. They need to make a move to try and address that now, especially with things beginning to go south and with some of their top producers still on the shelf for several weeks.

– Speaking of young players, this was the fourth consecutive scratch for 19-year-old rookie blueliner Harrison Brunicke.

I wrote a detailed piece a few weeks ago speaking on the potential for an AHL conditioning stint if Brunicke is scratched for five consecutive games. If he does not play Sunday, that will be five consecutive games, and he will have gone two weeks without playing a game.

If I were a betting person, I’d bet that’s what’s happening here. If not, why take him on the trip if they’re not going to ice him and just plan to send him back to the WHL right after?

What Will The Penguins Do With Top Defensive Prospect Harrison Brunicke?

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins/players/what-will-the-penguins-do-with-top-defensive-prospect-harrison-brunicke" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:What Will The Penguins Do With Top Defensive Prospect Harrison Brunicke? On Thursday, it was confirmed by Pittsburgh Penguins‘ head coach Dan Muse that 18-year-old center Ben Kindel will remain in the NHL through his 10th game, meaning the first year of his three-year entry-level contract will kick in. ;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “> What Will The Penguins Do With Top Defensive Prospect Harrison Brunicke? On Thursday, it was confirmed by Pittsburgh Penguins‘ head coach Dan Muse that 18-year-old center Ben Kindel will remain in the NHL through his 10th game, meaning the first year of his three-year entry-level contract will kick in.

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Besides, Kris Letang, Connor Clifton, and Matt Dumba (save for a nice play he made on the Penguins’ lone goal Friday) haven’t been doing much to help their team defensively as of late. In fact, they – like Brunicke – have made plenty of defensive mistakes and misreads.

If he’s going to remain at the NHL level, he’s got to see the ice at some point. But, I do think the conditioning stint – at this current point – is what’s probably best for both sides right now.

– All that said, I do think Ryan Graves has been quite a bit better in his short four-game sample size so far. And he’s honestly looking like the kind of defense partner that wouldn’t be the worst thing for Brunicke, should he stay.

If Graves continues to play a solid game, I’d try it at some point.

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– It was a really special moment for Erik Karlsson, who had the opportunity to play in front of his own country. He was the last player announced in the Penguins’ starting lineup, and he got a nice ovation from the Swedish faithful.

SportsNet Pittsburgh (@SNPittsburgh) on X

SportsNet Pittsburgh (@SNPittsburgh) on X That crowd pop when Erik Karlsson is announced during the player intros 🔊 Sweden is READY for some hockey 🇸🇪

Karlsson was operating at a pretty high level during the first period in this game. Like everyone else, he didn’t quite stand out as much as the game went on, but it was a perfectly solid performance from him.

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And Stamkos’s overtime winner? Yeah, he was the defenseman on the play, but he couldn’t catch up because he was clearly out of gas. Can’t really put that one on him, in my opinion.

– All in all, these losses happen. In a vacuum, losing to one of the league’s worst teams isn’t a great look, especially on the international stage – and when things haven’t been going your way in general.

But I don’t think it’s time for folks to write off the Penguins yet. They’ve been a little less dominant as of late, their five-on-five metrics have taken a hit, and they can’t find the back of the net like they were doing with regularity before.

Is There Reason For Concern With Penguins’ Recent Stretch?

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins/latest-news/is-there-reason-for-concern-with-penguins-recent-stretch" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:Is There Reason For Concern With Penguins' Recent Stretch? After an 8-2-2 start to the season during the month of October, all seemed to be going well and right for the Pittsburgh Penguins. ;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “> Is There Reason For Concern With Penguins’ Recent Stretch? After an 8-2-2 start to the season during the month of October, all seemed to be going well and right for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

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But that tends to happen when two of your team’s top goal-scorers are out of the lineup. It’s not a mystery why the Penguins are struggling to score right now.

I wouldn’t read too much into their hot start, and I also wouldn’t read too much into this current stretch for now. Yeah, you’ve got some of the “I told you so” and “see, this team just isn’t good” folks populating sound boards.

The truth is that this team is likely somewhere in the middle of where they started and where they are now. Injuries have played a big part, but they’re not the only thing. Team defense hasn’t been great, either.

And that’s why their start was so important and why this stretch is so important. Somehow, they just need to find a way to tread water and play at least .500 hockey until some of their key players start to return. And that won’t be easy come December, when they have a gauntlet ahead of them.

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Seven of their next eight opponents are outside of the current playoff picture. They need to bank the majority of those points, and it starts with getting two points on Sunday and three out of four on this trip.

Starting in Sweden, Penguins Must Win Upcoming Stretch Of Games

Starting in Sweden, Penguins Must Win Upcoming Stretch Of Games On Friday, the 2025-26 NHL Global Series kicks off.

Bookmark THN – Pittsburgh Penguins on your Google News tab  to follow the latest Penguins news, roster moves, player features, and more!

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England travel to Indore for their next two games to take on their toughest opponents in India, on Sunday, and Australia on 22 October.

Neither are ideal opponents to be facing with batting fragilities to address but the pitches there are expected to be flatter and friendlier to batters.

It was Knight’s gritty determination which rescued them against Bangladesh and Sciver-Brunt’s class ensured they posted a winning total against Sri Lanka, but when both fell early against Pakistan, England could not recover.

“Nat Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight have scored more runs between them than their team-mates combined at this tournament,” World Cup winner Alex Hartley said on BBC Test Match Special.

“That says something within itself, and neither of them batted in the first match. That is a concern.”

Beaumont and Jones have struggled against the swinging ball – stands of six, 24 and 13 following the chase of just 70 in the opener against South Africa – but Charlotte Edwards’ first move in charge was to show faith and re-promote Jones, and it feels unlikely she will disrupt the pair.

After Sciver-Brunt and Knight, England’s next best batter has been number eight Charlie Dean with a steady 27 not out in a tense chase against Bangladesh, a handy 19 against Sri Lanka and she top-scored with 33 against Pakistan.

There have been glimpses of promise from Alice Capsey at seven but Sophia Dunkley and Emma Lamb are struggling to start their innings against spin in the middle order.

Lamb has 18 runs in three innings while Dunkley has 29, each of their dismissals to spin, with the former being asked to play an unfamiliar role.

When batting in the top three in domestic and international cricket, Lamb averages 44 in 61 innings with five centuries. These three innings here are the first she has ever played at number six professionally in the 50-over format.

Danni Wyatt-Hodge is England’s unused batter on the bench, and played in the middle order for a number of years, so it will be interesting to see how long the Lamb experiment continues.

England may have dodged an embarrasing slip-up here, but will be aware things are not going to get any easier.

India and Australia await. Any wobbles against those two and England’s campaign could quickly fall flat.

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The Florida Panthers–Tampa Bay Lightning rivalry was once a regional sideshow, a quirky matchup between two southern expansion teams playing to half-empty arenas and polite indifference. But in the space of just a few years it has mutated into the nastiest, most revealing feud in hockey: one thatâ€s exposed the NHLâ€s double standards, cronyism and cultural divide.

Related: The NHL preached inclusion. So why has it got into bed with Donald Trump?

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Preseason hockey is meaningless by design, a handful of perfunctory tune-ups that even hardcore fans barely notice in the run-up to opening night, when the games finally start to count. Yet in the past week the Panthers and Lightning turned a pair of exhibition contests into three-hour fever dreams of violence: 114 penalties totaling nearly 500 minutes in the box, 16 game misconducts and one ejected player who somehow picked up an assist on an eighth goal that shouldnâ€t have counted. It was all-out bedlam before the season even began, but the uneven fallout has raised uncomfortable questions around the sport.

It all kicked off last Thursday when Floridaâ€s AJ Greer sucker-punched Tampaâ€s Brandon Hagel in the head – a callback to last springâ€s playoff meeting between the teams, when Hagelâ€s borderline hit on Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov sparked Florida defenseman Aaron Ekbladâ€s retaliatory headshot that left Hagel concussed. Greerâ€s cheap shot, punished with only a $2,000 fine, broke hockeyâ€s unspoken code: you never go after a player with a known concussion history, especially one youâ€ve already injured.

So on Saturday, Tampa iced a lineup of AHL enforcers and spent the night exacting frontier justice. The leagueâ€s response? Heavy fines and suspensions for the Lightning, none for Florida.

The ugly scenes revived an old suspicion: that the NHLâ€s disciplinary system protects its favorites. The Panthers†connections only make the optics worse. The leagueâ€s director of hockey operations, Colin Campbell, is a longtime power broker whose son is a minority owner and assistant general manager of – you guessed it – the Panthers. The head of player safety, George Parros, is a former Panther himself. A decade ago Campbellâ€s leaked emails showed him berating referees for not giving Florida preferential treatment. Nothing changed.

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Across the NHL, this latest bloodbath looked like business as usual: a vivid reminder that hockeyâ€s old-boy network pulls the strings on a two-tiered system of justice.

The bad blood has been brewing for years. For most of their existence the Panthers were an afterthought, overshadowed by the more successful Lightning, who won the first of their three Stanley Cups in 2004. Then they traded for Matthew Tkachuk – a brilliant, agitating forward – and hired a coach who encouraged the chaos. Overnight, the franchise became an almost comically ratty heel team: relentlessly annoying, gleefully abrasive and somehow good enough to win anyway. They ran goalies, took liberties after whistles, and seemed to delight in their role as the villains of modern hockey.

Tampa, by contrast, had built its dynasty on cool precision: a team that mixed speed, skill and structure to win back-to-back Cups in 2020 and 2021. To Lightning fans, Floridaâ€s rise represented something else: the triumph of cynicism, of hockey as provocation rather than craft.

The long-simmering tensions finally exploded in Aprilâ€s postseason meeting. When Hagel flattened Barkov with what looked like a clean shoulder check – a hockey play at playoff speed gone wrong – the officials ruled it illegal because Barkov hadnâ€t touched the puck. Hagel was slapped with a one-game suspension. The next night Ekblad, whoâ€d already served a lengthy ban earlier in the season for performance-enhancing drugs, hunted him down and delivered a full-force shot to the head, concussing him – a retaliatory hit that earned just two games. Florida went on to win the series and their second straight Cup, while Tampa were left muttering about double standards.

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So when Greer targeted Hagel again – during a meaningless September preseason game, no less – the Lightning saw red. Coach Jon Cooper rested his stars and called up six players from the minors – two known enforcers among them – to ice a full lineup without exposing his smaller, skilled forwards. Within minutes, 32-year-old bruiser Scott Sabourin leveled Ekblad with a single punch that dropped him to his knees. From there the night descended into absurdity: brawls after nearly every whistle, fights in the penalty box, more than 300 combined penalty minutes and so many ejections that both teams ended with nine skaters. At one point, Floridaâ€s Niko Mikkola even picked up an assist despite having been sent off minutes earlier. Itâ€s not every night an ejected player somehow helps to extend an 8-0 lead before anyone notices.

The next day, the discipline meted out by the NHLâ€s department of player safety came down squarely on Tampa. Six players fined, two suspended, the organization docked $100,000 and Cooper fined another $25,000. Floridaâ€s Greer kept his token $2,000 fine. The perception was plain as day: the Panthers could do no wrong. And that sense of impunity is what has turned a once-anodyne cross-state rivalry into something much darker: a microcosm of how the NHL still protects its insiders and punishes its critics.

That defiance fits neatly with the Panthers†broader identity. Under owner Vincent Viola – a billionaire financier and one-time Donald Trump nominee for secretary of the army – the franchise has cultivated an overtly Maga aesthetic. After their first Cup win, team executives proudly visited Trump at the White House, presenting him with a custom “45–47†jersey. Violaâ€s longtime business partner and minority owner Douglas Cifu, the Panthers†vice-chairman and alternate governor, also runs Virtu Financial, the high-frequency trading firm he co-founded with Viola. In May, Cifu was suspended indefinitely by the NHL after an inflammatory social-media exchange with a Canadian fan where he invoked the Israel-Palestine conflict and Trumpâ€s 51st state taunts, a move that did little to distance the team from its hard-right image.

Across the state, the Lightningâ€s ownership has taken the opposite tack: removing a Robert E Lee statue from downtown Tampa, supporting diversity initiatives and hosting some of the leagueâ€s most inclusive heritage nights.

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In miniature, the Battle of Florida now mirrors the United States itself: grievance and aggression on one side, progressive branding on the other, both locked in a fight over what the sport, and the country, should be.

The irony is that all this has unfolded during whatâ€s meant to be the NHLâ€s modern age of enlightenment. League executives boast about player safety and mental-health awareness, and evolving beyond the blood-and-guts spectacle of decades past. Yet its disciplinary machinery still operates with the opaque impunity of an old boys†club. When New York Rangers owner James Dolan semi-publicly condemned the leagueâ€s refusal to suspend Washingtonâ€s Tom Wilson in 2021, the NHL didnâ€t revisit the call; it fined the team $250,000 for daring to question it. Commissioner Gary Bettman scolded the Rangers for “demeaning†a league executive and declared such criticism “unacceptableâ€. The message was clear enough: silence is rewarded, dissent is punished and the culture that enables violence is the one most fiercely protected.

This time, though, the silence has cracked. Around the league, executives and players are said to be quietly rooting for Tampa – not because they condone vigilante justice, but because they recognize the futility of appealing to a system stacked against them. The Panthers may have won the Stanley Cup for two years running, but theyâ€ve also become the embodiment of a league that rewards swagger and punishes accountability.

That the NHLâ€s biggest controversy of the year erupted before a single regular-season game had been played says it all. The sport that keeps promising to modernize still canâ€t stop celebrating its own anarchy: a league where power, not principle, decides who gets away with what – and who gets left bleeding on the ice.

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And behind it all is the charismatic Glasner, a transformative figure at Palace and one chairman Steve Parish will be desperate to keep at Selhurst Park.

Palace, with eight wins and 10 draws, are enjoying their joint-longest unbeaten run as a club, also 18 from February to August 1969. Three matches in that unbeaten run have been against Liverpool too.

The Eagles are now the only unbeaten Premier League side, having won three and drawn three of their opening six games.

When they last achieved such a feat in 1990-91, Palace went on to finish third for their highest ever top-flight position.

A delighted Glasner told BBC’s Match of the Day: “We played an amazing first half and had a deserved lead. We deserved the win.

“To overcome the pressure of Liverpool – they deserved an equaliser – but I’m delighted at the reaction of our team.

“We talk about our personality. We always go for the win. Everybody who is close to Crystal Palace got their reward here.

“The players showed so much confidence. We made so many runs, the quality of the passes, runs into the box, it was excellent.

“We will analyse the game and take in all this positivity. You have to enjoy these moments otherwise you have to ask why you are doing it.”

Liverpool have, in some respects, had a day like this coming.

They have traded heavily in late goals this season to win against Bournemouth, Newcastle United, Burnley and Arsenal. It was unsustainable, although they almost did it again through Chiesa’s effort until Nketiah made Liverpool experience their own heartbreak.

For all their seven successive victories in all competitions, this is very much a work in progress with so many acquisitions.

The “stupidity” – Slot’s description – of in-form striker Hugo Ekitike landing himself with a one-match ban – a second yellow card and dismissal for taking his shirt off – after scoring the midweek winner against Southampton in the Carabao Cup, was underlined here.

The Frenchman, who has five goals in seven games, might have made a difference to Liverpool’s attack.

Alexander Isak, the club’s record £125m buy, was handed his first league start but looks a long way from full fitness, drawing the scorn of Palace’s fans with the predictable chants of “what a waste of money” when he was withdrawn after missing a clear chance he had at least created for himself.

Florian Wirtz, a little cheaper at £116m, is also still figuring out how best to fit into a side and system that dominated the league last season. The German was anonymous apart from one chance from six yards which he steered straight into Henderson’s hands.

Liverpool are still in pole position, but the issues that have troubled them finally came home to roost at Selhurst Park.

No such problems, though, for an ecstatic Palace and their supporters.

Can they, as the “Holmesdale Fanatics” suggested, win the Premier League?

It seems highly unlikely, but this thrilling, determined side will offer hope, and provide excitement and more joyous moments throughout this campaign.

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