During the 2024-25 season, several Pittsburgh Penguins players will celebrate their birthdays, each one approaching 40 with each passing day. Now that 39-year-old Jeff Carter is retired, the title of eldest statesman falls to Evgeni Malkin, who is 38.
Right behind him on the list is Sidney Crosby, who recently turned 37, and Kris Letang, who is also 37.
Surprisingly, none of these three will get a year older during the season unless the Penguins advance to the playoffs, which gives Letang a chance to celebrate his birthday on Apr. 24.
Only Malkin and Letang have extensions that will take them to their age-40 season, while Crosby has yet to sign an extension despite being eligible since July 1.
With one of the oldest lineups in the NHL, no one on the 2024-25 squad is 40, which means they have yet to crack this exclusive list of the oldest Penguins players.
Who are the oldest Pittsburgh Penguins of all time?
Ken Schinkel (40 years 44 days)
Ken Schinkel played 12 years in the NHL, splitting his time between the New York Rangers (1959-1967) and the Penguins (1967-1973). He was 27 when he debuted and 35 when Pittsburgh drafted him in the 1967 Expansion Draft.
Schinkel scored 93 goals and 236 points in six seasons with the Penguins while finishing minus-144. He recorded a personal best 52 points in 1968-69 before collecting his one and only 20-goal campaign the following season, 1969-70.
Mario Lemieux (40 years, 72 days)
As Pittsburgh’s all-time leading scorer, seeing Mario Lemieux‘s name on this list is unsurprising. He debuted at 19 in 1984 and played until 1997, winning two Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992.
However, injuries and cancer slowed him down, despite being arguably the second-best player of his generation behind Wayne Gretzky with 1,494 points in 745 games.
But retirement didn’t suit Lemieux, who came back in 2001 and played parts of five more seasons before officially retiring in 2006, two months after his 40th birthday. He finished his career with 1,723 points in 915 games.
Patrick Marleau (40 years, 327 days)
Patrick Marleau played 1,779 games in the NHL, breaking Gordie Howe’s decades-old record for most games in 2021. As a long-time member of the San Jose Sharks (21 years), he also played in Toronto (164 games) with a brief stop in Pittsburgh (eight games) in 2019-20.
In February 2020, the Penguins acquired Marleau for a third-round draft pick (Luca Munzenberger). Because a global pandemic shut down the hockey season in March,…