Ryan Graves has enough self-awareness to acknowledge his first two years in Pittsburgh went nowhere near as well as anybody had hoped, especially himself.
He said he is still trying to build back up his confidence amidst his ups and downs.
And he has been in the NHL long enough to recognize Thursday’s season finale could be his last game with the Penguins. After all, he has been traded twice before.
All that said, the much-maligned defender told the Post-Gazette he desires to win back the faith of the organization and be a part of the solution here in Pittsburgh.
“I want to play a role in helping to turn this group around,” Graves said Tuesday.
A month into his tenure as president of hockey operations, Kyle Dubas signed the gentle giant to a six-year, $27 million deal. Graves had thrived playing next to star partners elsewhere, and the thought was he would do the same with the Penguins.
His debut season was turbulent. He had difficulty adjusting from a unique scheme with New Jersey to the straight-ahead way the Penguins play under Mike Sullivan.
Specifically, Graves struggled on breakouts, with the Penguins preferring the long bomb compared to the short outlet pass the Devils wanted from their blue-liners. And he was out of sorts defending in open ice, unsure of when to apply pressure.
Graves had positive moments but couldn’t settle in and perform well consistently.
“Confidence is a funny thing. You start to lose that, you just kind of struggle,” the 29-year-old Nova Scotia native said. “You second guess yourself. You’re slow to close. Your gaps are looser. The game just gets away from you little bit by little bit. So that’s part of it. That’s a very hard thing to get back. So we’re still working at it.”
Dubas and the Penguins challenged him to come back for camp faster, better and stronger last fall. And for a while there, Graves performed well in a third-pair role.
But his play regressed before Thanksgiving. And after top defense prospect Owen Pickering was promoted, Sullivan made Graves a healthy scratch for the first time in his Penguins tenure. Graves had a few more stints in the press box this winter.
“I thought at the start of the year, there was some good. And then I struggled for a while, maybe starting 20 games in. I’ve worked hard to get it back,” Graves said. “There’s definitely been more ups and downs than I’ve wanted. But I think there’s some positives to take from the year, and you want to keep growing as a player.”
Graves and the numbers both say he’s picked up his play since the trade deadline.
Sullivan agreed Graves has indeed been better on the back end for the last few weeks. But his comments suggest general dissatisfaction remains with Graves’ play.
“We’ve tried to define in a fairly clear, transparent fashion what the expectations are and how we would evaluate him after every game,” the coach said Tuesday.
Sullivan rattled off a list of things they have asked Graves to do and which he might not have done consistently. They included using his size and length to “defend rushes aggressively,” being “harder” at the net front and keeping it “simple” with the puck.
“I think the last probably 20 games, he has improved a lot in that regard,” he said.
Some advanced statistics suggest Graves has defended better this season compared to last. And while his third-pair deployment has resulted in a lot of defensive-zone starts that have him defending from the drop of the puck, Graves by nature of his role is often matched up against lesser competition than he faced in his first season.
“I think it has been better than last year,” he said. “I work hard at it. I know it hasn’t gone perfect here. But there’s definitely never been a lack of effort from my end.”
But the 30,000-foot view on the player shows he has not come close to living up to the value of his contract. And it is fair to wonder if Dubas and the Penguins will look to trade away his contract or even buy out the defenseman this summer.
“I mean, I have been traded twice before. So it’s not like it’s something that would be unheard of for me. Obviously, you think about it. But I’m not going to lose sleep every night all summer thinking about it. But ... ” he said with a sigh, “it’s part of it.”
Graves said he will try to tune out the trade chatter this summer and keep his focus on winning back a prominent role on Pittsburgh’s blue line next season. He wants to be someone who can be trusted to play 18-plus minutes again and to be the first guy over the boards on the penalty kill, which was the case for much of his career.
Penguins management might be ready to move on and give those duties to somebody else. But Graves hopes to stick around here and finally make good on his contract.
“I had the opportunity, and then they gave other guys opportunities as I struggled. And now it’s on me to try to get that back,” Graves said. “My first priority is to be a Penguin and to play better and to contribute as we go through this stage as a team. I’m [signed] for a long time and I think that I can play a role that’s positive here.”
First Published: April 16, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
Updated: April 17, 2025, 4:21 p.m.
