As of writing, the Pittsburgh Penguins are the third-worst team in the NHL in terms of points percentage. They have the worst goal differential in the league. Pittsburgh is dead-last in the Metro having played the most games (tied with New Jersey). The team has visibly stopped responding to their coach, has failed at executing basic line changes repeatedly and every odd man rush against ends up in the back of their net. I don’t believe they could hold a lead if a fourth Stanley Cup was on the line. They get blown out night after night, and a playoff contending team shouldn’t be doing that. That’s what the Penguins are, right?
Wrong.
You probably already knew that from the standings and everything else. But Kyle Dubas also told you this. Repeatedly. Not in so many words, but he had indicated that the Penguins were not meant to be playoff contenders since last year. His vision for the Penguins involves it and possibly even needs it.
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The Penguins are struggling right now, no doubt about it. For weeks, fans and media have been clamoring for Kyle Dubas to Do Something about it. The closest he’s gotten is trading Lars Eller for two picks and bringing up Owen Pickering from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
He’s not going to Do Something about it.
Dubas’s interests do not align with improving this team much in the short term. The moves he made this summer were for adequate players, but look closely. Most of them, like Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass, came with picks attached. Free agent acquisitions like Matt Grzelcyk were given one- to two-year deals. Gone are the six-year signings à la Ryan Graves. Dubas’s priority shifted when the Penguins missed the playoffs again. The priority now is picks. Notice that he did not receive a player in the Eller trade. He wanted picks, not players. The picks are the point.
This isn’t to say that Dubas deliberately sabotaged the Penguins to make them bad so they would have to tank. It isn’t that. Making the playoffs right now simply isn’t his end goal. If it occurs through the hard work he has praised the Penguins for so often, I’m sure he’d be thrilled. But he isn’t planning for that right now, nor is he expecting it.
It should also be noted that this team is far worse than anyone expected them to be. Like last year, this team has potential but is simply not meeting it. Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang have been enormous liabilities on the ice and the team overall has no defense. Alex Nedeljkovic, once hailed by fans as the savior of Penguins’ goaltending, looks more like the tandem/backup he was in Detroit. This is not a team that looks like it possesses any of the things that Dubas feels Pittsburgh hockey is. They may be trying to be, but they are not.
Perhaps they should fire the coach. But a few things. Consider that Mike Sullivan was mentioned in the same breath as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Letang when Dubas was introduced, all of them portrayed as equally important to the franchise. Consider also that FSG believes Sullivan to be among the top three coaches in the league. The other two are presumably not available right now. There are very few coaches on the market available for Pittsburgh. Wilkes-Barre just replaced their coach this summer; it seems unwise to drag Kirk MacDonald away from his new post so soon when the Penguins are focused on developing their young players. David Quinn is maybe someone you want to lead a collapse, but that is not Pittsburgh’s goal and he is not who you want for a rebuild, as evidenced by his dismissal from San Jose just prior to the arrivals of Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. Perhaps you could find someone in the minor leagues as Edmonton did, but it seems unlikely. There are not many places for the Penguins to look.
Consider also that FSG believes Sullivan to be the coach of the future for the Penguins. They extended him and do not seem inclined to pay two coaches at once, no matter how deep their pockets. They have spoken glowingly about him and believe he is the coach to lead the Penguins’ youth movement long after Crosby and Malkin are gone. It seems highly unlikely that he would sacrifice that future Sullivan is a key part of just to shake up some veterans. It’s true that Sullivan and the players don’t seem to be communicating as effectively these days. Perhaps his messaging is getting lost with the veterans, and you don’t want that to trickle down to the kids. But if it is not a problem with those kids yet, I believe Dubas is unlikely to let Sullivan go simply because Karlsson won’t listen to him about defending in the neutral zone. Especially with Jim Montgomery now hired to the Blues, it just seems unlikely.
Dubas also has very little experience hiring coaches at the pro level, having mostly hired Sheldon Keefe throughout his tenure in various GM positions. He was there for the firings and hirings of Randy Carlyle, Peter Horachek and Mike Babcock as an assistant GM, but was only the actual general manager for Babcock’s firing and Keefe’s promotion from the Toronto Marlies. Who’s to say how much influence he had behind the scenes of the other ones, but Sheldon Keefe seems unlikely to leave his current spot in New Jersey and that is Dubas’s typical guy.
On top of that, we return to Dubas’s expectations for this season. They weren’t high. He said so as much in his pre-season press conference when he stated that a successful season would involve “taking steps in the right direction.” He did say later that he believed they would be on the low end of the bubble for the playoffs, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the team. His expectations are clearly set low. How much of the team’s poor performance can really be put on the coach when the roster is constructed this way, with cap-dump players who were acquired for picks? I think not much, especially when the coach is Mike Sullivan.
So what exactly is Kyle Dubas’s plan?
Dubas is led by visions of the Los Angeles Kings, pointing to them as an example of “teams that contended when this team was contending, that have pivoted in short order to replenishing their younger group of assets, whether that’s prospects, picks, players and then turning quickly while those key members of their group were still there.” After the Kings’ run of success in the early 2010s, including two Stanley Cups, they eventually began missing the playoffs. L.A. began a partial rebuild, which involved trading all good players except their core stars Anže Kopitar and Drew Doughty, and calling up their young players, such as Mikey Anderson and Gabriel Vilardi in late 2019, where they went on a small run. That run was halted by COVID-19, and they eventually received the second overall pick in the draft, which became Quinton Byfield. In 2020-21, they continued the rebuild. New stars such as Jaret Anderson-Dolan and Byfield debuted, but the Kings still missed the playoffs. It was only in 2021-22 that the Kings returned to the playoffs after missing them for three straight years, and they haven’t had much success in them since returning as they’ve been knocked out by the Oilers in the first round every year since.
I don’t know if this is Dubas’s preferred method of rebuilding if he had the choice. We’ve heard rumors that he would like to try a full tear-down and build something from the ground up. But he’s pushed back on that, saying in April that “it would be foolish not to try to get those younger players in and around those players like Crosby, like Letang, like Bryan Rust – people who come in every single day and operate at an extremely high level and get the most out of themselves.” He feels it is the “easy” way out, but even if he wanted to, it’s not an avenue that’s available to him. One, full rebuilds involve trading the biggest stars, as the Sharks did with Tomáš Hertl and Karlsson in recent years. Crosby and Malkin aren’t interested in that and Dubas feels it would be disrespectful to their greatness to ask them to do so. Two, FSG doesn’t seem interested in a full rebuild because that costs them ticket revenue and everything that comes along with that. Fans lose interest, and FSG wants to be competitive now. I think they’re willing to wait for a few years to let Dubas get his plan fully in motion, but they don’t want the full rebuild right now or possibly ever.
When Dubas arrived in Pittsburgh, he had a choice. He could throw it all in on the Penguins winning now, trade all their picks for players and go all in on one last run, then go tear it all down after Malkin and Crosby retire. It seems as though he realized that the Penguins didn’t really have substantial assets to do that with, having done that throughout the Jim Rutherford era. Also, what if the run never materialized? What if they spent all those assets for nothing only to end up with the rebuild that FSG doesn’t want?
Dubas picked the other option. He gave the Penguins one more shot at a run last year and took a big swing on Karlsson, hoping that would drive offense and get them over the line. When that run did not materialize, he pivoted to the remainder of his plan: sell off as much as possible and get as many picks and prospects as he could. This started with the Jake Guentzel trade. Try to get as many prospects as you can and develop them as fast as possible. Get them up to the NHL alongside Crosby, let him mentor them and be that veteran presence and see if they can get on one last run before he retires. The playoff run comes late in this scenario, and it still might never come, but there will be no full rebuild if Dubas can avoid it. The Penguins will slide from one era of competition into the next relatively seamlessly, if not in perhaps the Cup-contending or even playoff-contending shape Penguins fans might like.
Dubas obviously knows that Penguins fans, and Crosby himself, want another run at the playoffs. He would have been fine if they managed to compete this year, but the team has failed to do that despite his best efforts. He’s now in a race against time to get the best prospects he can and get them prepared as fast as possible so that they overlap with Crosby and have time to enter the playoffs like L.A. did.
Personally, I don’t think this is the worst plan. I have my questions about how a city whose hockey is built on always having a generational talent will accept not having one of those, but these Penguins clearly aren’t meant to contend right now. It would be a waste of resources to trade prospects like Rutger McGroarty or Joel Blomqvist for one more run right now, and make no mistake — for this roster to acquire players that could seriously help them contend, those are the kinds of assets they would have to give up. It’s shortsighted and likely won’t help them return to competition anytime soon. Better to plan for the future. Dubas wants to reduce the pain for Penguins fans following the end of the Sidney Crosby era and he thinks this is the way to do it.
Dubas also doesn’t really care what I or the fans think about the plan. He dealt with public pressure plenty in Toronto and it didn’t change his mind about much. His goal is the long-term success of the Penguins. Not Sidney Crosby’s legacy, not making the playoffs this year, but continued and sustained success into the future. He knows it might not make him popular, but it’s what he’s going to do anyway. He’s got his plan, he’s sticking to it.
We can debate over whether or not it is the right plan. I think many fans would prefer that the Penguins sell it now and then go in for the rebuild. It’s easier to swallow, isn’t it? Right now, fans have to watch Crosby be miserable as the team flounders, and there is no immediate bright spot visible in the distance to look forward to. Fans felt that this season was the one they would return to the playoffs, and Dubas saying things like they expect to be in the mix didn’t help. Fans came in expecting playoffs and instead got a bottom-three team that is nearly guaranteed to miss the playoffs again. Dubas has resisted labeling this as a rebuild or retool, but that is what is happening here. The Penguins are going full L.A. A top five pick is likely on the way.
And this is what Dubas intended. Perhaps he did not communicate it very well. Giving the team the bare minimum of players and saying they will be a playoff contender while also saying that the only way they’ll get there is faith, trust and pixie dust is not good communication. It would have been much more realistic for him to say that the Penguins would likely be lottery contenders unless they pull out a miracle. But he was speaking at the start of the season and he also feels that would disrespect Crosby and the other stars. He’s said he wouldn’t bet against them, after all.
Perhaps bringing in star players and selling the future for the present sounds more appealing. I get it. It’s hard to watch Sid struggle. It’s hard to watch everyone from Paul Bissonnette to the TSN panel tell you that your star player is sick of this and is leaving for greener pastures despite everything he’s said otherwise. It’s hard not knowing what your team is doing because your GM gave them another chance that they maybe didn’t deserve and didn’t really make his plan clear. People are worried Dubas is wasting the last few years of their greatest star’s career to get some mediocre third overall pick who won’t be nearly as great as Crosby is. Plenty of fans would take the hope now and go all in for the tank in 2029 or whenever Crosby finally decides to retire.
But that just isn’t viable, as I’ve laid out. I actually think Dubas’s plan is good. It’s just late. In an ideal world, this would have begun two to three years ago. But the Penguins were a very different team two years ago and Dubas wasn’t even in Pittsburgh then. He’s doing the best he can with what he has now. No matter how bad Karlsson looks on the ice, Dubas still traded away the Penguins’ worst contracts for the reigning Norris Trophy winner. He’s trying.
This process is going to take years. It’s going to be difficult. Dubas runs a secretive organization, which means that much of what fans hear is speculation that isn’t based in reality, adding to the confusion. Patience is hard when you’re up against a ticking clock that will end a once-in-a-lifetime era for the Penguins. Malkin said he wouldn’t retire until they get another run, and I hope that’s true, because it will probably take longer than his current contract has term for.
Pens fans are not used to mediocrity, and it’s hard to accept that bottom of the league is where the Penguins are right now despite the continued existence and stardom of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. It doesn’t feel like there’s light at the end of the tunnel right now, either. Dubas hasn’t said they’re selling. There is no visible star in the pipeline (though I think McGroarty will become one). Fans don’t know if they should be cheering every loss or cheering every win. And then the doubt creeps in. What if they go on a run this year? What if they do make the playoffs and don’t have to sell? What if they can get one more run right now?
I think Dubas is probably having the same thoughts, but I suspect he’ll arrive at the same conclusion I have. He’s a practical man and can recognize that “the standings don’t lie, we’re at where we’re at.” He said that last February, but the point still stands. The Penguins are currently in line for Matthew Schaefer at third overall. Dubas is very, very likely to sell. He’s probably not going to do so now because prices will go up near the deadline and he can get greater returns. But he will eventually sell.
I think this team is going to continue to plod along in the same miserable way it is right now because that’s the era the Penguins are in right now: the Miserable Rebuild era. Dubas doesn’t need to sell much to turn this team into a lottery contender. They’re already there. I think he’d prefer to wait for the deadline to sell off Rickard Rakell and Marcus Pettersson because prices will go up on some players, but I also don’t think he’s opposed to dealing them if the right deal came along as he did with Eller. Honestly, I’d almost encourage him to sell now just to ensure a top-five pick. Why give the Penguins the chance to go on another disappointing charge at the end that will leave you with the 12th overall instead of the fifth? Lock it down now.
This season isn’t going to be easy to watch. James Hagens probably isn’t in the cards simply because the Sharks are so bad, but if saying “Hurting for Hagens” helps you, say it all you want. What won’t help is telling Dubas to fix it. He’s working on it. In two years’ time, you are allowed to start yelling at him to fix things again. But not right now. This is a time for bigger-picture thinking. Know what Dubas’s constraints are and notice how he works around them. He’s said repeatedly that he wants this hard time to be as short as possible because the fans deserve better. He wants the next era of Penguins’ hockey to be ready after Sid is gone. He wants those kids to have been mentored by one of the greatest to ever play the game and to have him instill in them what playing in Pittsburgh means.
These next few years aren’t going to be easy for the team, but especially for the stars and the fans. I’d encourage Dubas to invest in social media as much as possible to give Pens fans something to smile about. Bring in players who bring some levity to the situation. Make the plan clear to Crosby, and then make that clarity clear to the media. Reassure the fans he’s not going anywhere. Make this as fun as possible. It’s clear that the hard times are now here. There will be no playoffs this year. There won’t be a first overall either, but it’ll be as close as you can get while Sidney Crosby is still a Penguin.
The Penguins are just at the beginning of several years’ worth of hard times. It’s not going to be pretty. For right now, have some patience. Enjoy every milestone, every silly TikTok and every smile on the bench. Cheer for the losses if you want to. Cheer for the wins, too. Kyle Dubas has a plan. He just needs time to execute it.
