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, he only played eight regular-season games and four playoff games, and the Penguins were knocked out in the round-robin.
Marleau, who scored 566 goals and 1,197 points, just netted four points with Pittsburgh, scoring two goals and two assists in the regular season and playoffs.
Gary Roberts (42 years, 12 days)
Gary Roberts was an ageless wonder. After nearly retiring because of an ongoing neck issue, he got into fitness and played in the NHL until he was 42. Long associated as a player with the Calgary Flames, he came to the Penguins in 2006-07 in a trade for Noah Welch.
He played parts of two seasons with Pittsburgh, collecting 10 goals and 28 points while dressing for 11 games during the team’s march to the Stanley Cup Final in 2008.
That championship series marked the last time he’d play in the playoffs, as the Penguins dealt him to the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he played his final 30 games before retiring in March 2009.
Tim Horton (42 years, 88 days)
Most people in 2024 associate doughnuts and coffee with Tim Horton, with many forgetting that he is a Hall of Fame defenseman who won four Stanley Cup titles with the Maple Leafs.
Surprisingly, he played one season with the Penguins in 1971-72, dressing in 44 games at 42 years old. Horton scored two goals and 11 points. However, those totals were far from what he was used to in his 20s and 30s. That year, he finished 18th in team scoring.
Matt Cullen (42 years 165 days)
Matt Cullen has a special place on this list. Not only is he the oldest player to ever dress for the Penguins, but technically, he’d be on the list twice.
In 2015, he came to Pittsburgh as a free agent. He was 39 then and helped the team win back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in 2016 and 2017 before his 41st birthday.
Cullen departed in the summer of 2017, skating with the Minnesota Wild for one campaign. He returned the following season, playing with the Penguins for the second time in his 40s, retiring in 2019 at 42. In 225 games with Pittsburgh, he scored 36 goals and 83 points.
