Jan 25, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin (71) during a stop in play against the Vancouver Canucks in the second period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images The Penguins are going to be miles behind the competition in the upcoming season, and there is nothing that they can do about it. And this time, that’s a good thing.
Last week, the NHL released the 2026-27 schedule, which features an 84-game jaunt across the continent for the first time since the 1993-94 season. The perks are that two extra games will allow for an even number of games against division foes, two home and two away. In past seasons, there were two division opponents that the Penguins only played three times instead of four.
Just one visit to Madison Square Garden for the Rangers and one to Washington, D.C. for the Capitals? Fortunately, that imbalance is gone.
Examining the schedule reveals that the Penguins will be, literally, miles behind the competition. They will travel approximately 31,800 miles throughout the season, which might seem like a lot, but it is actually one of the lowest mileage totals in the NHL. Compare that to the approximate 51,335 total travel miles for the Seattle Kraken, the most in the NHL.
That is a difference of 19,535 miles, or the approximate equivalent of a multi-city loop from Pittsburgh → Buenos Aires → Rio de Janeiro → Honolulu → Pittsburgh, which would cover 19,533 miles. One thing that stands out is that the Penguins have the most sets of back-to-back games in the NHL at 15. For the sake of comparison, Calgary and Vegas are tied for the fewest at eight sets each.
This logically makes sense since Pittsburgh’s geography means a lot of short Eastern Conference trips to cities like Columbus, Buffalo, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, rather than a few long western trips. This also explains why the Penguins are consistently near the top of the NHL in the total number of road trips. Last season, the Penguins led the NHL with 22 separate road trips.
This season they will take 19 separate road trips, which again ranks near the top of the NHL. The longest of those 19 road trips will be the post-All-Star break trip that will take the Penguins through Edmonton, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Minnesota. The trip will cover approximately 4,800 miles.
The team’s second-longest road trip takes place in November when the team travels to Los Angeles, Anaheim, and San Jose. That trip will cover approximately 4,700 miles, including the team’s longest flight of the season, the 2,240-mile return flight from San Jose to Pittsburgh. The whole process of creating the NHL schedule is rather fascinating and was done by hand until around the mid-2000s!
The parameters of the schedule are as follows. Each team’s 84 games break down as 28 divisional games (four against each of the seven division rivals — two home, two away); 24 games within the conference but outside the division (three apiece against those eight teams — two home/one away against four of them, one home/two away against the other four); and 32 non-conference games against all 16 teams in the opposite conference, one home and one away each.
It seems simple enough until you throw in rules of travel that are agreed upon in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). This season, several rest provisions are baked into the schedule, including a holiday break (Dec. 23-25), an All-Star break (Feb.
4-7), and a staggered multi-day bye for each team somewhere between late January and mid-February. Individual teams also get to make special schedule requests. For instance, the Penguins almost always request home games the night before Thanksgiving and over Saint Patrick’s Day weekend.
The requests are not a guarantee, but the NHL does its best to accommodate. This season the Penguins got both. They will take on Calgary at PPG Paints Arena the night before Thanksgiving and host both the Capitals and the Red Wings on Saint Patrick’s weekend.
With the mandatory breaks and special requests built in, it is time to construct the schedule. The NHL builds the calendar with optimization software working against a stack of input constraints, the largest of which is arena availability since many buildings share an NBA tenant, plus concerts and other events. The NHL then also considers items such as national-TV windows, competitive balance, and travel minimization.
Overall, the Penguins’ schedule is rather favorable: low mileage, no international games, and minimal Western Conference trips. Consider that the Penguins will not have to leave the Eastern Time Zone after they return home from their six-game road trip in February. Further, four of their five trips outside the Eastern Time Zone occur before New Year’s.
Not having to leave their home time zone for the last six-plus weeks of the season is certainly a welcome sight for the Penguins. So yes, the Penguins will be miles behind the competition this season, and surely the team’s aging core will be just fine with that.