Vitals
Player: Egor Chinakhov
Born: February 1, 2001 (Age 24/25 season)
Height: 6’ 1”
Weight: 203 pounds
Hometown: Omsk, Russia
Shoots: Left
Draft: 2020 first round (21st overall) by the Columbus Blue Jackets
2025-26 Statistics: 72 games played, 21 goals, 21 assists = 42 points (w/ Penguins: 43 games played, 18 goals, 18 assists=36 points); 6 games played, 0 goals, 0 assists in playoffs.
Contract Status: Just completed a two-year contract originally signed with Columbus. Set to become a restricted free agent and is arbitration eligible.
Monthly Splits
For reference when looking at Chinakhov’s monthly splits for this season, he was acquired by the Penguins on December 29th from the Columbus Blue Jackets, and made his Penguins debut on January 1st. Knowing that removes any confusion about what stats belong with Columbus and which with Pittsburgh.
While he didn’t score in his debut with the Penguins on New Years Day, he didn’t wait long to make an impact with his new team, scoring in his second game just two nights later in Detroit, then adding another five in January and becoming one of the Penguins most valuable players in the second half of the season.
March was a make or break month for the Penguins playoff hopes, and they faced a daunting schedule without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for lengthy portions. That is exactly when the Penguins needed their depth to step up and Chinakhov held up his end of the bargain, scoring six goals and recording 15 points in 17 games to help keep the Penguins afloat during the crucial stretch.
Story of the Season
When a player is described as needing a fresh start or a change of scenery, it’s often deployed as just a nice way of saying that specific player isn’t very good. Since Kyle Dubas took over the Penguins front office, he has brought in a few names that have been labeled in that fashion and the results have been mostly as expected with those players.
Then there is Egor Chinakhov.
Brought over from Columbus just before the new year, Chinakhov carried the “change of scenery” moniker as a former first round pick who was struggling mightily with the Blue Jackets, recording just three goals and three assists through the first 29 games of the season. It was a high price for Dubas to pay for Chinakhov, sending over a second and third round pick plus Danton Heinen to Columbus, but the pay off was well worth the cost.
Chinakhov joined the Penguins at a critical juncture of their season, coming off a December that saw them go 5-5-4 and lose eight straight at one point, including a slew of embarrassing meltdowns that resulted in several blown multi-goal leads.
Although Chinakhov didn’t arrive in Pittsburgh until around the midway point of the 2025-26 season, his impact was felt the rest of the way. After making his Penguins debut on New Years Day, he scored nine goals in his first 20 games with the team leading into the Olympic break and helped them post a 12-3-3 in that same span, putting an ugly December behind them and giving them momentum for the home stretch once the season resumed.
Coming out of the break, the Penguins were sitting in a playoff spot but facing a daunting March slate and missing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Like many of his teammates, Chinakhov stepped up with an outstanding performance throughout this stretch, recording 15 points across 17 games that solidified the Penguins as a playoff team.
In total with the Penguins in 2025-26, Chinakhov played in 43 games, tallying 18 goals and 18 assists for 36 points. That works out to a .84 points per game pace over an 82 game season and a massive improvement over his time with the Blue Jackets where he was at just a .21 PPG pace.
Regular season 5v5 advanced stats
Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of 18 forwards on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.
Corsi For%: 49.1% (10th)
Goals For%: 59.7% (2nd)
xGF%: 49.5% (16th)
Scoring Chance %: 48.8% (15th)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 49.0% (18th)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 13.4% (2nd)
On-ice save%: .909% (6th)
Goals/60: 1.72 (2nd)
Assist/60: 1.29 (6th)
Points/60: 3.01 (1st)
One thing Egor Chinakhov does very well is put the puck in the net. His shot speaks for itself and Penguins fans saw first hand just how lethal he is when the puck is on his stick. Chinakhov does not create many high danger opportunities on the ice but he doesn’t need to when he can shoot the puck as well as he does.
Chinakhov ranked second in both GF% and G/60, but the only players above him in those catrgories were Filip Hallander and Avery Hayes respectively, both who played significantly less minutes this season than Chinakhov. He was the only Penguins player to top a P/60 of three this season, and even though that number is isolated to his time with the Penguins and does not account for him time in Columbus, that gives him the fourth best P/60 in the entire league this season when just looking at his second half.
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
Chinakhov is an offensive weapon. His shot enables him to look very good on goals and finishing, it’s going to be exciting to see a full season’s worth of data next year with him in a scoring line role surrounded by players who can get the puck to him. Figuring out how to get a spot or role on the power play ought to be a top off-season coaching priority for Dan Muse to ponder to unlock even more from Chinakhov’s game to help the team.
Chinakhov’s shot is otherworldly, and his speed is right there to boot. Those are scarce skills to combine a shot like that on a player who can move as fast. Maybe Chinakhov is the long awaited good karma the Penguins were due for Konstantin Koltsov, a player with all the speed in the world, but cursed with cinder blocks at the end of each arm where his hands should have been.
The wildest part about the shot metrics are how many wrist/snap shots Chinakhov takes. He has almost unmatched velocity and often can release these just as quickly. As long as they’re on target, goalies don’t stand a chance against this type of power. Interestingly enough, however, according to NHL Edge, Chinakhov did not score a goal on any of his 10 hardest shots of the season.
The speed bursts and acceleration that Chinakhov regularly displays is just absurd. It’s one trait besides his shot that really makes him stand out on the ice and there were several instances this season where his speed caught defenders flat footed and created chances for the Penguins.
Highlights
Questions to ponder
What will Chinakhov’s next contract look like?
There is little reason to believe Chinakhov won’t be in a Penguins uniform next season, but he will need a new deal this summer since he is a pending restricted free agent. He made $2.1 million against the cap on his last deal that was signed with Columbus and he has surely done enough to warrant a pay raise on this deal. How much of a pay raise remains to be seen but given the Penguins cap space it won’t be any issue for them to take on.
Besides money, the other question regarding Chinakhov’s new deal will be length and that’s where more of the risk comes into play. Perhaps Dubas has seen enough and is convinced Chinakhov can live up to his first round billing and will feel confident in giving him a long term deal to remain in Pittsburgh. On the flip side, maybe Dubas is more interested in a bridge deal as a “prove it” challenge for Chinakhov. It will be interesting to see how this plays out between the front office and the player this summer.
Bonus question: What is Chinakhov’s ceiling as a player?
After coming over from Columbus in Decemeber, Chinakhov was an absolute offensive force for the Penguins. His numbers in Pittsburgh spread out across a full NHL schedule work out to roughly 35 goals and 70 points. That puts him in company with players like Adrian Kempe, Brandon Hagel, and fellow pending RFA Pavel Dorofeyev. Those are some pretty good comparables and the Penguins will be thrilled to have Chinakhov post those type of numbers.
It almost feels like we are putting blinders on when we only look at his work with the Penguins and ignore how bad he was in Columbus, but that team was a complete disaster until their midseason coaching change so it’s hard to know exactly what to make of that.
Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but given how good Chinakhov looked in the Penguins system, it doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch to think he could be a centerpiece for the Penguins future both in the short and long term.
Ideal 2026-27
Taking his 43 game sample size with the Penguins from this past season and extrapolating it over the course of 84 games is the ideal scenario for Chinakhov next season. He’s more than earned a top-six role and as long as he’s playing with guys who can get the puck on his stick he can do the rest with his speed and shooting ability.
His own playmaking ability gets overshadowed by his lethal shot, but in his time with the Penguins this season he showed that he was more than capable of dishing the puck just as well. Getting him looks from his teammates combined with setting up chances for his teammates will go a long way towards the Penguins success in 2026-27.
One major focus for the Penguins this offseason involving Chinakhov will be figuring out a way to get him more power play time, ideally by getting him a permanent spot on the top unit with the likes of Crosby and Karlsson. Simply having his shot lingering as a threat should be enough to open up opportunities for others on the ice, but knowing he needs little space to get shots on net at even strength, the extra space on the man advantage could turn him into even more of a weapon and fully unleash his game.
Bottom line
There’s no question about it, Egor Chinakhov has been one of the more important and impactful acquisitions by Kyle Dubas since he came to Pittsburgh. From a healthy scratch in Columbus to a top-six mainstay with the Penguins, Chinakhov shattered whatever expectations anyone had of him when he was acquired.
It didn’t take long for his game to blossom in the Penguins system and it has everyone wondering what exactly the Blue Jackets were doing that they failed to unleash the player we were watching on a nightly basis. His shot is lethal, he can skate by you in a flash, and he has playmaking ability that the Penguins were sorely lacking in years past. Every shot he takes feels like a rocket coming off his stick, and more than once did he score where no one was actually sure the puck went in the net or not.
There is a new deal to iron out this summer between the Penguins and Chinakhov and it’s a deal he certainly earned with his play once the Penguins traded for him in December. If he can continue to develop and be the player we saw in the second half of the season, then it’s a safe bet he’ll have a home in Pittsburgh for many years to come.
Final Grade
A.
It’s fair to say the Penguins probably don’t survive that March stretch without Chinakhov playing at the level he did. With Crosby battling injury and Malkin either being suspended or injured himself, the Penguins needed players to step up and Chinakhov was one who did on almost a nightly basis.
Even outside of that March stretch, it was clear Chinakhov brought something to the Penguins that they did not have on the roster before he arrived and helped take an already good offense and make it that much better. Working closely with fellow Russian Malkin seems to have unlocked something in Chinakhov that remained buried during his time in Columbus.
If there was one knock on Chinakhov from this season it’s his performance in the playoffs against the Philadelphia Flyers. In his first taste of playoff hockey, he put up a goose egg in all offensive categories over the six games. It wasn’t even that his process in those games was bad he just could not buy a goal and the Penguins were desperately in need of some.
All in all though, not much to complain about from Chinakhov in his first stint with the Penguins. He’s an exciting player who revitalized his career and has the makings of a player who could be a very important piece in what Kyle Dubas is trying to build in Pittsburgh.
