Penguins clinch first-round bye, home-ice advantage in Calder Cup Playoffs

A first-round bye gives Wilkes-Barre/Scranton something more valuable than a clean calendar: rest, matchup certainty and a guaranteed start at Mohegan Arena at Casey Plaza when the division semifinals begin. By locking up second place in the Atlantic Division, the Penguins bypass the best-of-three opening round and move straight into the part of the Calder Cup Playoffs where home ice, not survival, becomes the point.

The Penguins clinched second place when Hershey beat Charlotte 2-1 on April 11, a result that completed the job after Wilkes-Barre/Scranton beat the Cleveland Monsters 4-1 and pushed its record to 44-16-7-2. In the American Hockey League’s Atlantic Division, the top two teams skip the first round and go directly to the division semifinals, while seeds 3 through 6 fight through a short series. That means Wilkes-Barre/Scranton now knows exactly what it earned: extra days off, no opening-round risk and a home date waiting in the next stage of the bracket.

The seed matters because the Penguins had already built their place in the field well before the division was settled. They clinched a playoff berth on March 20 after a shootout win over the Belleville Senators, when they stood at 38-16-6-2 with 84 points. The club said that berth was its 21st playoff appearance, a number that underscores how often this franchise has reached this point and how rarely it gets to enter the postseason with this kind of cushion. By the April 3 game against Lehigh Valley, the Penguins were 41-16-6-2 with 90 points and a magic number of eight to secure the bye, while riding a run of six straight wins around the time they sealed it.

That cushion carries real weight after last spring’s sting. In April 2025, Lehigh Valley swept Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the first round, a quick exit that made the bye even more important this time. Instead of opening the postseason in a short series with no margin for error, the Penguins will wait for a first-round survivor and begin the chase from home, with the AHL regular season scheduled to end April 19.

For fans, the club has already packaged the payoff into the ticket offer. The Penguins’ playoff plan is pay-as-we-play and includes tickets to all confirmed home postseason games, plus an $8 concession or team-store voucher for every home playoff game. With the bye secured, the path is simpler now: rest, reset and prepare to defend home ice with a real shot to make the Atlantic race last deeper into May.