A family-owned, Chicago-based investment company is closing in on a deal to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins from Fenway Sports Group.
Multiple outlets, including Victory Sports and ESPN, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that the Hoffmann Family of Companies is nearing the final stages of an agreement to purchase one of the league's marquee franchises. Any purchase would need to be approved by the NHL's Board of Governors, though that is often merely a formality.
The financial details have not been released, though the Penguins were valued at around $1.7 billion recently by Forbes.
The sale, if completed, would end FSG's brief run as stewards of the five-time Stanley Cup-winning franchise. FSG, which owns Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox and Liverpool of the Premier League, agreed to purchase the Penguins from Ron Burkle and Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux in late 2021
The terms of that sale were not announced, though the team was valued at around $845 million by Sportico at that time.
The Hoffman Family, which counts the ECHL's Florida Everblades among the many companies it runs, will pay considerably more than that to become the team's third different owner in a half-decade.
The sale comes with the Penguins in a bit of a transitional period as the era defined by stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang nears its end. The trio — who are playing their 20th season together as teammates — have guided the club to three Stanley Cups (2009, 2016 and 2017), though Pittsburgh has not reached the playoffs since 2022 and hasn't won a postseason series since 2018.
The Penguins are in the midst of an overhaul orchestrated by general manager Kyle Dubas. They parted ways with two-time Stanley Cup-winning coach Mike Sullivan last spring and are off to a better-than-expected start under first-year coach Dan Muse, though they are currently riding a six-game losing streak heading into a road trip that begins on Thursday at Ottawa.
Attendance has dipped since the club's 633-game sellout streak ended in October 2021. The Penguins are currently playing to about 88% capacity this season at PPG Paints Arena, the third-lowest percentage in the league.
It's expected that Lemieux will retain some financial stake in the club, as he did when the team was sold to FSG. Lemieux's role during FSG's tenure was nebulous, though he has been around more frequently of late as Crosby neared Lemieux's franchise points record.
Crosby has 1,722 career points, one shy of Lemieux's total of 1,723.
Lemieux, who led the team to a pair of Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992, remains beloved in Pittsburgh, where a statue of him sits outside one of the gates at PPG Paints Arena, which was built during his tenure as one of the club's majority owners.
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Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby (87) defends against Edmonton Oilers' Connor McDavid during the first period of an NHL hockey game in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration and the Army played a role in causing the collision last January between an airliner and a Black Hawk helicopter near the nation's capital, killing 67 people in the deadliest crash on American soil in more than two decades.
The official response to the first lawsuit filed by one of the victims’ families said that the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated procedures about when to rely on pilots to maintain visual separation that night. Plus, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots' “failure to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid” the airline jet makes the government liable.
But the filing suggested that others, including the pilots of the jet and the airlines, may also have played a role. The lawsuit also blamed American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, for roles in the crash, but those airlines have filed motions to dismiss.
At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the American Airlines regional jet while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C., officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
Robert Clifford, one of the attorneys for the family of victim Casey Crafton, said the government admitted “the Army’s responsibility for the needless loss of life” and the FAA’s failure to follow air traffic control procedures while “rightfully” acknowledging others –- American Airlines and PSA Airlines -– also contributed to the deaths.
The families of the victims “remain deeply saddened and anchored in the grief caused by this tragic loss of life,” he said.
The government's lawyers said in the filing that “the United States admits that it owed a duty of care to plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident.”
An American spokesman declined to comment on the filing, but in the airlines motion to dismiss, the airline said "plaintiffs’ proper legal recourse is not against American. It is against the United States government ... The Court should therefore dismiss American from this lawsuit.” The airline said that since the crash it has focused on supporting the families of the victims.
The National Transportation Safety Board will release its report on the cause of the crash early next year, but investigators have already highlighted a number of factors that contributed, including the helicopter flying 78 feet higher (24 meters) than the 200-foot (61-meter) limit on a route that allowed only scant separation between planes landing on Reagan's secondary runway and helicopters passing below. Plus, the NTSB said, the FAA failed to recognize the dangers around the busy airport even after 85 near misses in the three years before the crash.
Before the collision, the controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. FAA officials acknowledged at the NTSB’s investigative hearings that the controllers at Reagan had become overly reliant on the use of visual separation. That’s a practice the agency has since ended.
Witnesses told the NTSB that they have serious questions about how well the helicopter crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.
Investigators have said the helicopter pilots might not have realized how high they were because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder.
The crash victims included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches who had just attended a competition in Wichita, Kansas, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.
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FILE - Attorney Bob Clifford speaks during a news conference regarding the Jan. 29, 2025, mid-air collision between American Eagle flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter, at the National Press Club, Sept. 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr., File)
FILE - National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy speaks during the NTSB fact-finding hearing on the DCA midair collision accident, at the National Transportation and Safety Board boardroom, July 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr., File)
