Training Camp Roster Set. Now Comes the Hard Part.

Pittsburgh announced a series of roster moves Tuesday, finalizing the group that will report to training camp later this week. The summer was busy enough — Kaedan Korczak arriving from Vegas, Nick Robertson added on a two-year deal, Ville Koivunen locked up long-term, Tommy Novak extended, Malkin back for another year. On paper, the roster looks different. Whether it's better in the ways that actually matter is the question training camp is supposed to answer.

The ways that mattered last season were specific and brutal. Pittsburgh went 12-23 in one-goal games — winning barely a third of the contests that came down to a single goal. The offense eventually woke up, but by then the season was already gone. You can't fix that problem with signings alone. It's a habits problem, a structure problem, a who's-on-the-ice-in-the-third problem. None of those answers show up in a press release.

The blue line remains the most obvious gap. Caleb Jones is still not healthy, and Korczak was brought in partly to cover that absence. Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang are still the backbone of the defensive group — both veterans, both capable, both carrying heavy minutes. That's a lot of load on a pair of aging defenders if Jones's timeline stays murky into October.

The youth pieces are real — the Ruck twins in the pipeline, Robertson in the lineup, Koivunen on a long runway — but none of that solves a one-goal game this November. The front office has built something that looks like a transition roster: veteran enough to compete, young enough to grow into. Training camp will tell us which version shows up first.