Pittsburgh Penguins Reportedly One Of Several Teams That Pursued Top Free Agent Winger

Through the start of free agency and the 2025 NHL Draft, the Pittsburgh Penguins have made some small, solid moves to get younger, with many believing they're entering a full-on rebuild stage.

Many expected them to come into this off-season as pure sellers and nothing else, and while that's been the case thus far, that doesn't mean that they haven't checked in on buying a big piece or too.

According to Insider Frank Seravalli, that's exactly what the team tried to do, as he reports that the team were one of many pursuing winger Brock Boeser before he ended up re-signing with the Vancouver Canucks.

On paper, Boeser fits exactly what this team need, and that's a consistent winger to play alongside either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin in the top-six, but with Boeser wanting to stay where he's played his entire career, the Penguins truly never got close to landing the former 40-goal scorer.

Instead, the Penguins focused on low-risk, potentially high reward targets like Anthony Mantha, who could be a short-term piece that they flip at the trade deadline, and given where the Penguins are as a franchise, that's a much safer move.

Moving forward, we'll likely see Pittsburgh look to move on from the trio of Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson as they look to get younger and build for the future of the Penguins organization, and while Boeser would have been a fantastic addition at other points in the history of the team, as of right now, he likely never considered them as a genuine option.