Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Columbus Blue Jackets 11/28/25

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (11-6-5, 27 points, 5th place Metropolitan Division) @ Columbus Blue Jackets (11-9-4, 26 points, 7th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. eastern

How to Watch: Broadcast locally Sportsnet Pittsburgh and FDSNOH, nationally on NHL Network

Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens return home to play Toronto tomorrow night before embarking on a three-game road trip next week that will have stops in Philadelphia (Monday), Tampa (Thursday) and Dallas (a week from Sunday).

Opponent Track: Columbus has lost their last three games, though two of those have come past regulation. It hasn’t been the best five-game stretch for the Blue Jackets, who are 1-2-2 in the last 10 days.

Season Series: The Blue Jackets claimed the first game between these teams in a shootout. Tonight is round two for PIT/CBJ this year. They’ll play two more times after this on January 4th back in Ohio and then January 17th in Pittsburgh.

Hidden Stat: Columbus hasn’t won a game by more than one goal since October 29th….Most of their games have been extremely close, needing

overtime in seven of their last 10 games.

Getting to know the Blue Jackets

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Dmitri Voronkov – Adam Fantilli – Kent Johnson

Luca Pinelli – Sean Monahan – Cole Sillinger

Miles Wood – Charlie Coyle – Isac Lundestrom

Zach Aston Reese – Brendan Gaunce – Yegor Chinakhov

DEFENSEMEN

Zach Werenski / Ivan Provorov

Denton Mateychuk / Damon Severson

Brendan Smith / Dante Fabbro

Goalies: Jet Greaves and Elvis Merzlikins

Potential scratches: Mathieu Olivier (injury), Kirill Marchenko (day to day injury), Jake Christansen

Injured Reserve: Erik Gudbrandson, Boone Jenner

• Tough break for Marchenko, who got hurt during the morning skate in Washington and was expected to be out for tonight’s game.

• In better news, Werenski was injured in that game against the Capitals but was able to come back and play the next game against Toronto, looks like CBJ dodged a bullet to avoid an injury to one of their most irreplaceable players.

• Chinakov, a 2020 first round pick, hasn’t found a huge role and has requested a trade. Columbus doesn’t look in a huge hurry to honor the request but it might eventually get in that direction.

Season statsvia hockeydb

• Columbus ranks just 24th in the NHL so far this season with 2.79 goals/game, and their top-four goal scorers (Fantilli, Voronkov, Werenski and Markchenko) have created over 50% of the team’s goal total (34 of 67).

• Gotta be at least a little disappointing that Monahan only has two goals and 10 points in 24 games this season after putting up 19 goals and 57 points in 54 games last year.

• Many were ready to see what Greaves could do in his first full season in the NHL, he hasn’t disappointed yet. Merzlikins plays to about the same level every year, Columbus now might have found a goalie that they can rely on.

Keep it close

Columbus isn’t good at much, besides keeping games close and getting them to overtime more often than not. There’s some value in that for the standings. The Blue Jackets only have six regulation wins in the 24 games this season, but they do have 11 wins overall – almost doubling up their win total via extra time. Overall, CBJ is 2-3 in games decided in OT and 3-1 in the shootout for a 5-4 overall record in games that go past the scheduled 60 minutes.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines 

FORWARDS

Connor Dewar – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust

Kevin Hayes – Evgeni Malkin – Anthony Mantha

Ville Koivunen – Tristan Broz – Tommy Novak

Joona Koppanen – Blake Lizotte – Danton Heinen

DEFENSEMEN

Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Shea / Kris Letang

Ryan Graves / Connor Clifton

Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Tristan Jarry

Potential Scratches: Ben Kindel (development plan), Matt Dumba, Harrison Brunicke (AHL rehab assignment)

IR: Filip Hallander, Justin Brazeau, Rickard Rakell, Caleb Jones, Noel Acciari

• The Pens were off yesterday following their big win over Buffalo on Wednesday night.

• It’ll be interesting to see if the goalie rotation continues. One on hand, you’d think it would settle back in to the successful groove the Pens were in earlier in the year when they rotated Jarry and Silovs evenly. On the other hand, Jarry was awesome on Wednesday and Silovs got pulled in his last outing. There’s games today and tomorrow, so both should be getting the opportunity to play soon enough, just a bit intriguing to see how the team will choose to handle the ordering for an important divisional matchup against a team the Pens could be competing with for positioning throughout the season.