There's a version of the Cal Petersen signing that reads like opportunity: a veteran with NHL games on his resume walking into a new camp to compete for a spot. That's the story teams love to tell, and it's the one the phrase "professional tryout" is built to suggest. I don't buy it here. The details make the case on their own.
Washington announced on Tuesday, August 25, that it had signed Petersen to a PTO for 2026 training camp. Fine. Depth is depth, and no team ever regretted having a warm body who can stop a puck in September. But look at the crease he's walking into. Logan Thompson is signed through the 2030-31 season on his six-year deal. Charlie Lindgren is signed through 2027-28. Those jobs don't open up because a 31-year-old on a tryout has a good week against the Bruins in the preseason. They open up because of injury, and you don't hand a starter's net to a PTO invite in that scenario. You promote from your own pipeline or make a trade.
So what is Petersen actually competing for? He'll be one of at least five goalies at camp, joining Thompson, Lindgren, Clay Stevenson, and Mitch Gibson. Stevenson is penciled in to start for AHL Hershey after a season that included a strong four-game NHL cameo with Washington. That leaves a competition between Petersen and Gibson for the backup role behind Stevenson. In Hershey. That's an AHL job, one rung below where Petersen already spent all of last season with Iowa.
So much for the open competition. Petersen spent 2025-26 in the AHL, put up a .896 save percentage across 33 games, and is now on a tryout whose best realistic outcome is a backup slot in the same league he just left. His last NHL action came with Philadelphia in 2023-24, five appearances, and it hasn't gone well enough since to pull him back up. One outlet called him a "Former Flyers Flop." Harsh, and it's opinion, but it's closer to the truth of this than any talk of a battle for a big-league net.
My issue isn't with the move. Signing an experienced goalie to make sure your minor-league affiliate has bodies and your prospects have a safety net is basic organizational hygiene. My issue is with the language. "Tryout" implies a prize at the end that a good performance can win. When the two spots above him are locked up through the end of the decade and the next spot above that already has a name on it, the prize is a depth contract, not a promotion. Calling that a competitive audition dresses up a courtesy invite as a fair fight.
Petersen catches with his right hand, same as both Thompson and Lindgren, so Washington's goalie room now has three righties — a weirdly specific pattern, as one outlet put it. Fun quirk. It won't move him up a depth chart that money and term have already decided.
None of this is a verdict on how camp will go. It hasn't started. Petersen could be excellent, and the veteran should have the edge over a goalie who spent half of last season in the ECHL if the AHL backup job really is the fight. Camp opens with the preseason on September 20 against Boston, and the regular season begins on the road at Carolina on October 2. By then this will be settled quietly, the way these things always are. This was never a run at an NHL roster spot, and the league should quit selling PTOs behind franchise goalies as if they were. Give a good soldier a look, and skip the pretense that the door was ever really open.
