Penguins Recall Alexeyev, Send Graves to WBS on Conditioning Loan

With Samuel Girard listed day-to-day with an upper-body injury and Jack St. Ivany sidelined for an extended stretch, the Pittsburgh Penguins moved to shore up their defensive depth ahead of a western road trip, recalling Alexander Alexeyev from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and sending Ryan Graves to the AHL affiliate on a conditioning loan.

Alexeyev, 26, joins the Penguins roster without having appeared in a single NHL game for Pittsburgh this season. The 6-foot-4, 230-pound left defenseman has played in 29 of WBS's 57 games, posting three goals, four assists, and seven points with a plus-4 rating and 15 penalty minutes. He signed a league-minimum deal with the Penguins last offseason and cleared waivers to start the year. A former first-round pick, selected 31st overall in 2018, Alexeyev spent parts of four seasons with the Washington Capitals before joining Pittsburgh, accumulating one goal and eight points across 80 career regular-season NHL games. He also appeared in 10 playoff games for Washington last spring, recording no points and a minus-2 rating.

The recall is a standard move, not an emergency, designed to give Pittsburgh an extra defender while traveling out west. The team does not want to make the trip without contingency coverage in case of a last-minute injury.

Graves, meanwhile, heads to Wilkes-Barre on a conditioning loan that can last up to two weeks. He has not played in nearly two months after missing time with a lower-body injury and has slid to a depth role as a seventh or eighth defenseman on Pittsburgh's chart. In 19 appearances this season, Graves has one goal, a minus-2 rating, and 15 hits. The raw numbers are thin, but his underlying defensive metrics represent a notable uptick: he has controlled 52.2% of shot attempts at 5-on-5 in defensive-minded deployment, his best such figure in some time. He remains in the third season of the six-year, $27 million contract he signed in 2023, carrying a $4.5 million cap hit that continues to count against Pittsburgh's active roster even during the conditioning stint.

The Penguins have been managing a compressed defensive depth chart late in the season, and getting Graves back to game speed in the minors before a potential return becomes the most plausible path forward for a player whose improved process numbers suggest his 2024-25 struggles may be behind him.