The Pittsburgh Penguins will have no shortages of options when training camp opens on Wednesday. The summer has brought the changes to the roster that every offseason is bound to do, and more than most years the Pens have loaded up on taking NHL contracts in order to pad future draft picks.

Now Sullivan and the coaches will have to figure out how and where they’re going to mix those players in with free agent signings and the holdovers from last year.

In the not too distant past it was fairly easy for just about anyone to predict 20 or 21 of the final 22 players that were going to make the team ahead of time. Sure, one could hope for (fill in your favorite prospect here) to take huge leaps forward and turn heads with an amazing camp performance, but more often than not the camp battles were over before they began. Those days are coming to an end as the Penguins morph from attempting to contend into whatever the current stage of veteran victory lap plus building for the future conglomeration they have going on this season.

For starters, the Pens have enough cap space to actually keep the maximum of 23 players this season, if they decide they want to do that. Or they can opt go with 22 and bank even more cap space as the prorated calculations work in their favor. So right off the bat the roster projections can go in different directions, simply based on the final form of how many players the team can afford to fit.

There are still locks though, if one used to be able and call 20 or 21 players locks, there still are 17 assured of making the team this year. Total anarchy of a roster completely wide open isn’t on the table just yet.

Penguins Roster Locks

Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Michael Bunting, Drew O’Connor, Lars Eller, Blake Lizotte, Noel Acciari, Kevin Hayes, Matt Nieto (IR)

Defense: Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, Marcus Pettersson, Ryan Graves, Matt Grzelcyk

Goalie: Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic

Those 17 players are going to be a part of the opening night roster, short of them getting hurt during the preseason and joining Nieto on the injured reserve. A trade to ease the jam isn’t likely to happen based on the league wide cap situations — there only 11 teams are showing $2.1 million or more in cap space per Puck Pedia. Five of these teams have significant restricted free agents to re-sign, at which point, they won’t have cap space. The other teams aren’t spending by choice. There’s a reason Pittsburgh was compensated in draft picks twice to take on contracts this summer, that’s the dynamic in the league right now for what it takes to clear space.

The Bubble Players: Who Will Get the Final Spots?

Now, we get to the bubble. Any and all players listed below have chances of making the team, should things break in the right way for them individually. At the same time, a poor training camp or stand out performances from others in the fray would push them off the roster. NHL seasons are six month, 82 game grinds, and several of the names below will still be needed at some point during the long year, even if the numbers game doesn’t go their way at first.

Forwards: Anthony Beauvillier, Valtteri Puustinen, Rutger McGroarty, Cody Glass, Jesse Puljujarvi, Sam Poulin, Emil Bemstrom, Vasily Ponomarev

Defense: Jack St. Ivany, Sebastian Aho, John Ludvig, Ryan Shea, Nikolai Knyzhov (PTO)

That’s a lot of competition for up to six spots on the NHL roster. Not all names are equal, some of the above will clear easily into the roster, as could the case of St. Ivany, Aho and Beauvillier. Others like Ponomarev and Knyzhov have much narrower paths toward the opening night lineup.

The splits offer further intrigue, Pittsburgh could take four forwards and two defensemen from the list above or they could opt for three of each. Another option would be going bare bones and taking as few as three forwards and two defenders from the bubble players. Waiver considerations to shield a Poulin or Ludvig (who might not otherwise make the team out of camp) could also be in play for that final spot.

The Center Conundrum: A Surplus of Options

Fitting this puzzle together will be quite the challenge and intriguing element of camp for Sullivan and the other coaches. Further conflating the matter is the number of natural centers the team has in Crosby, Malkin, Hayes, Eller, Lizotte, Acciari, Glass, Ponomarev and Poulin* with an asterisk, since he’s spent the majority of the last few years playing the position. Many of those can and will slide to a wing position but the sheer quantity stands out as a perfect illustration of what the Pens are dealing with and just how many realistic potential scenarios they could come up with.

Some of the answers are easy; Crosby and Malkin will be the top guys, Acciari is likely to work on the wing and it shouldn’t be a problem for Lizotte and Glass to do so as well. How to handle a player like Hayes will be interesting. Is he a center? A winger? What line? All viable questions to be discovered in the coming days and weeks. Will the camp wildcard of McGroarty force his way onto the squad at the expense of another?

All these questions and more will be front and center as the Pens craft their team by moving the pieces across the puzzle and finding where they fit.