Питтсбург Пингвинс болон Вашингтон Кэпиталз багуудын соёлын ижил төстэй байдлыг шинэ тоглогчид онцолж байна

Throughout the careers of most NHL players, there are, at least, a few different uniforms that they sport until the day they decide to hang up the skates. Some are NHL legends themselves, and some have the rare opportunity to suit up next to NHL legends on teams that folks talk about for a long, long time.

For new Pittsburgh Penguins Hendrix Lapierre and Trevor van Riemsdyk, having legends as teammates and being part of winning organizations is the only thing they’ve known.

The 24-year-old Lapierre was dealt to the Penguins from the Washington Capitals a few days prior to free agency this summer, which means he’s had the opportunity to skate with the two biggest stars of their respective generation in Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. The same goes for the decade-older van Riemsdyk, who was the first confirmed signing of NHL free agencythis summer with his two-year, $8 million deal and who also won the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2015 during his rookie season.

Lapierre and van Riemsdyk are good friends, so when they learned they were both going to Pittsburgh – a very familiar foe – it eased the transition.

“It’s always a nice thing to have a familiar face when you go somewhere new,” van Riemsdyk said. “My first day here, I walked in with Hendrix, so I felt a little less… I don’t even know how to describe it. But it’s always good to have a buddy.”

Granted, both just arrived in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, and they are still new to everyone and everything here. But, given the air of living hockey legends and the respective places Washington and Pittsburgh find themselves directionally, they see similarities between the organizations, their veteran players and their approach to competitive rebuilding.

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Changing course

After winning the Stanley Cup in 2018, the Capitals experienced four consecutive first-round exits before missing the playoffs in 2023 – the same year that Pittsburgh had their first miss since 2006. The Penguins were also ousted in the first round four times in a row beforehand, and when the early playoff exits became a pattern, both teams started to hold onto higher-value draft picks.

The Caps got a bit more ahead of it than the Penguins, as they selected Alexander Alexeyev (31st overall), Connor McMichael (25th overall), and Lapierre (22nd overall) in consecutive drafts from 2018-20, although none of them are still with the club. They traded their first in 2021 and have kept every first since, selecting left wing Ivan Miroshnichenko (20th in 2022), right wing Ryan Leonard (eighth in 2023), right wing Terik Parascak (17th in 2024), left wing Lynden Lakovic (27th in 2025) and center Oliver Suvanto (18th in 2026) consecutively.

The Penguins didn’t start keeping their first-round picks with some consistency until 2022, when they took Owen Pickering 22nd overall. They selected center Brayden Yager with their 14th pick in 2023 – he was later traded to the Winnipeg Jets one-for-one for a different first-round selection in Rutger McGroarty – before dealing their 2024 first for Erik Karlsson, although they probably got first-round value out of one of their second-rounders in Harrison Brunicke (44th overall). Then, the last two years, they have selected Ben Kindel (11th overall) and Liam Ruck (22nd), both of whom figure to be part of their future.

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Pittsburgh may be a bit behind Washington timeline-wise with how they’re building out, but the approach is the same: Keep the NHL roster competitive with a few all-time great veterans and acquisitions, and make sure they’re mining gold in the drafting, scouting and development departments along the way despite lacking lottery-zone picks.

Lapierre has confidence in the way Pittsburgh is building because he’s seen it happen with some success so far in Washington, even if the Capitals missed the playoffs last season. He said that all the organizations have known is winning, so they know how to add playoff assets and grow young talent simultaneously.

“You can kind of see both teams trying to add some good players, some assets to try to make the playoffs,” Lapierre said. “At the same time, I didn’t know much about the young players here, and watching them play, I’m super impressed. And it was the same thing in Washington. So, I think it’s two teams that are kind of doing the same thing, which is very good.

“In the last couple of years, the good trades that have happened around the league, or the good contracts, a lot of them involve these two teams. So, I think they’re just very two well-driven, good-cultured teams, and they’ve had success for a number of years because of that.”

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It’s all about timing, talent and winning

Of course, the success the organizations have had in staying relevant and generally competitive as long as they have starts with the championship culture that has been cultivated in the last two decades.

And that tone is set by some of those NHL legends mentioned earlier.

“[The Penguins] have core players that have been here for 20-plus years. Same thing in Washington,” van Riemsdyk said. “I think people probably expected both organizations to fall off maybe a little bit more than they have. I know, two years ago in Washington when we had a great season, I don’t think many people were expecting that from us. And then, last year here in Pittsburgh, I don’t think many people predicted the season that they had, and they had a ton of guys step up.

“It just shows with both organizations how much that culture can carry you even when there’s a lot of turnover in players.”

It’s worth repeating that the Penguins are a few years behind the Capitals in terms of what they’re trying to accomplish. Washington’s hand was forced two summers ago when longtime veteran forwards Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie both hit long-term injured reserve and, eventually, retirement, giving them cap room to acquire defensemen Jakub Chychrun and Matt Roy as well as forward Pierre-Luc Dubois. Those guys helped elevate them to a first-place finish in the East with 111 points during the 2024-25 season.

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This summer – after taking a step back last season – Washington decided to take advantage of the rising-cap environment and use some of its assets and young players, including McMichael, to acquire high-end talent up front in veterans Jordan Kyrou, Alex Tuch and Boone Jenner. The Caps are at a point where they have infused their system with enough talent that they can begin to take swings in the trade market to help keep them competitive, perhaps even after Alex Ovechkin calls it a career.

As for the Penguins, they find themselves facing some decisions about moving on from key veterans in Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Erik Karlsson in order to infuse a similar youth movement both internally and externally. They have some key complementary young pieces on the verge of full-time NHL minutes, but they still need some elite young talent at center and on defense in addition to promising young players in Kindel, Brunicke, and goaltender Sergei Murashov, who could be core pieces for them moving forward.

Like the Caps, eventually, they will probably need to say goodbye to some of their good young players and those veterans not named Crosby – like Ovechkin in Washington – in order to reach a point where their cornerstone generational talent marries with the organization’s youth and high-end talent acquired via trade to build a true winner, hopefully, with said living legend still on the roster.

But the bottom line for both teams is this: Neither organization plans to go the traditional route of “tear-it-to-the-studs” in order to accomplish sustainable contention. They both have young pieces in place and plan to keep adding them as the timing, acquisition cost and market make sense.

There’s no one like Sidney Crosby pic.twitter.com/aWv2itNeuL

— Empty Netters (@EmptyNettersPod) September 17, 2026

And that culture of refusal to “lose in order to win” still makes both places a favorable destination for players – even if both teams, to different degrees, have some work to do in building toward consistent Cup contention, even if unconventionally.

“Obviously, when you get traded like me, you don’t really have the option to choose which team you’re going to. But, I think being a free agent, or even just getting traded, you’re super happy to come [to Pittsburgh],” Lapierre said. “I’ve only been here for a week and a half or two weeks, but it seems like it’s super well-ran.”

And, as a 35-year-old free agent veteran who had a ton of say in where he ended up, there are a couple of reasons why van Riemsdyk signed with the Penguins so quickly: the organization’s promising outlook for the future played its part, but so did the guys who have always made it a winner’s destination – and could continue to.

“Obviously, I was part of a Cup team my rookie year. It’s 13 years later now, and haven’t gotten back,” he said. “You realize how hard it is, and when you get older, you realize the chances are going to be limited. So you want to go places where success is on the forefront, and here, it is always like that. Sid is always pushing guys, Geno, Karl, Tanger… they’ve been part of great teams.

“As long as they’re around, I think they’re always going to be pretty damn successful.”

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