After he watched his first Penguins team turn it on late but come up three points short of a playoff appearance, president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas said Friday that his broader plan has not really changed since the trade deadline.
Dubas wants to “reposition” the Penguins for the future by adding more young players while still trying to win again with Sidney Crosby and a veteran core.
And for those who would argue a quick turnaround for this team is an ambitious aim — perhaps even impossible — Dubas pointed to a pair of current examples.
Look at the first-place New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings, another playoff team that has a roster blended with graybeards and recent draft picks.
“The easy answer when you’re up here is to say, ‘OK, we’re just going to rip it all the way down and it’s going to require patience and it’s going to be painful,’ ” Dubas said. “With our group, it would be foolish not to try to get those younger players in around [veteran leaders] like Sid, like Kris Letang, like Bryan Rust.”
Dubas noted there are also examples of teams that bottomed out, got high draft picks and scored superstars. Like — ahem — the one he is now running.
But instead of going “full-on scorched earth” and looking ahead to the NHL draft lotteries in 2025, 2026 and beyond, Dubas pictures a path in which Pittsburgh pivots quickly and is able to rebuild on the fly to something that is sustainable.
“My view is that there are more examples of late of teams that contended when [Pittsburgh] was contending that have pivoted in short order to replenishing their younger group of assets, whether that’s prospects, picks or players, and then turning quickly while the key members of their group were still there,” he said.
Such as the Kings, who have put a young supporting cast around Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty, nearly a decade removed from their last Stanley Cup win.
“The Rangers went through their own pivot, we’ll call it, and now they just won the Presidents’ Trophy,” Dubas added, praising a Metropolitan Division rival.
Dubas acknowledged Friday the Penguins have a ways to go to catch up to the Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes — two measuring-stick teams in the Metro.
When this past season began, the Penguins were hopeful they would be up in their tier. In a flurry of moves in his first offseason, Dubas added Erik Karlsson, Ryan Graves and Reilly Smith, among others, and he re-signed Tristan Jarry.
But they started slow, had a brief surge in December then fell into a funk that stretched from mid-January until the end of March. In particular, Dubas said he was both “surprised” and “disappointed” by the lack of life the Penguins showed in the games directly before and after Jake Guentzel was shipped to Carolina.
Their late push failed, and they missed the playoffs for a second straight year.
“In the end, the responsibility for the year falls on me. That’s this role. Everyone that’s in place here is in place because I’ve either brought them here or have elected to keep them here,” he said in a 40-minute news conference. “I take the responsibility for the fact that we’re sitting here today and not in the playoffs.”
In the coming days, Dubas will sit down with Mike Sullivan, who is staying on as head coach, and his hockey operations team to do a “deep, thorough review” of the Penguins’ performance this past season. Dubas didn’t want to say much about his plans for the upcoming offseason until that was all completed.
“How [do] we stack up against the other teams in our division next year, the year after? Where [are those teams] in their own cycle, and how can we surpass them?” he said. “I’ve love to be able to give clear-cut answers right now, but I think that’ll become more clear as we get toward the draft and free agency.”
He did state a few things Friday. Of course, the Penguins want to re-sign Crosby to a contract extension this summer. Dubas expects better from Karlsson and Graves next season. And he expressed belief that Tristan Jarry will rebound in 2024-25 after Alex Nedeljkovic took the starting job from him down the stretch.
Interestingly, Dubas was noncommittal about trying to re-sign Nedeljkovic. But he suggested it has more to do with their top goalie prospect than “Ned.”
Joel Blomqvist is one of several young players whom Dubas expects will push for an NHL job or an expanded role in Pittsburgh during training camp next fall.
The Penguins are encouraged by the steps Drew O’Connor and Pierre-Olivier Joseph took in the second half of the season. Dubas expects Jack St. Ivany to be in the mix for a regular role next season. Ditto for Sam Poulin, who did not play much in his latest stint in Pittsburgh because he got hit by that stomach bug.
Dubas will be looking for their prospects down in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to step up during the American Hockey League playoffs, which will start later this month.
And he also is eager to see what prospects Brayden Yager, Owen Pickering and Vasily Ponomarev look like in the fall, challenging them all to “assert yourself.”
“We’ve shown here in this last stretch, if you’re a young player and you’re willing to push through the summer, you have a massive opportunity. You can have a shot here with us,” he said. “[Young contributors are] what we need, desperately.”
Dubas mentioned overall team speed is one area that must be improved.
The Penguins need that and much, much more to happen to quickly turn things around like the Rangers and Kings have in recent years. It’s a daunting task.
Dubas said it starts with replenishing the prospect pool and their draft capital.
“And then [we can] start to build toward being a contending team that everyone in this room and in this city expects and has gotten used to,” he said. “So that’s really the only goal for me here, and I knew that coming in, that this was this was all going to be part of it. It’s a matter of: How quickly can we get it there?”
Matt Vensel: mvensel@post-gazette.com and @mattvensel on X
First Published: April 19, 2024, 6:14 p.m.
Updated: April 20, 2024, 12:53 a.m.
