To close out the 2024-25 season, Pittsburgh Penguins president of hockey operations and general manager Kyle Dubas spoke with the Pittsburgh media on Monday.
And if fans weren’t sure about the approach that the organization plans to take this summer and beyond, Dubas seemed to clear up a few things.
After their third consecutive season of missing the playoffs, the Penguins find themselves in the midst of a rebuild. During locker cleanout day on Friday, both players and head coach Mike Sullivan expressed confidence that this team may be able to get back to contention again in a relatively quick manner.
While “returning the team to contention again as quickly as possible” remains the goal by Dubas’s own admission, he also wants to pump the brakes on labeling an exact timeline for that to happen. Instead, he invoked a reassurance that the team is going to remain invested in the process of not just returning the team to playoff contention, but to Stanley Cup contention.
“I think if you look at the history of these things, to go from where we’re at now all the way back to legitimate contention, I don’t equate just getting into the playoffs with being a contender,” Dubas said. “Various things happen, but I think if you look at some of the [playoff] games that have transpired already – and we’ll have the tale once the playoffs are done – that those two things are not the same.”
He continued: “So, when I say ‘as urgently as possible,’ I try not to put a timeline on it because I don’t this to be a perpetual and evergreen conference where we come in and say, ‘Oh, we’re just a year or two or so away.’ We’re pushing because I think that’s what the organization here is used to, what the fans want. We just have to stick to a very concise plan and then execute our butts off, that’s for sure.”
Even though he didn’t want to put a timeline on anything, though, rest assured: It doesn’t sound like Dubas is interested in doing a full-scale teardown, and he put it quite colorfully.
“I just think there are a number of teams in the leagues that, you know, there are two paths to go down,” Dubas said. “You can go into the mass teardown rebuild and hope you get lucky with the lottery and hope that all this happens. “But you can hope in one hand and s— in the other and see which one fills up first.”
He pointed to the Washington Capitals’ strategy of rebuilding and how they not only drafted well while contending, but how they also managed to keep veterans like Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, and John Carlson around and bridge that contention gap. Dubas believes that the Penguins need a few of those younger players – like Connor McMichael and Martin Fehervary – in order to execute something similar.
He stressed that the Penguins are “trying to rapidly get to that point,” and that they will use their assets to try to get themselves to the point where they have all of those necessary pieces, as he believes that the Capitals are now the standard.
“They had to do one thing, we have to do two, which is fill that lack of the young 22, 23, 24, 25-year-old NHL players and also continue to build out our assets to use them to acquire and trade. Also, if you look at their team, they drafted extremely well… They’re extraordinarily well-coached. I’ve known Spencer. We were together in Toronto.
“They’re not going to go anywhere. So, we have to haul a– and catch them because they’re way ahead right now, as the standings show. But they weren’t. They weren’t two years ago. But they’ve done a great job in coaching, development, drafting. It’s impressive.”
In terms of what the plan is for this summer, Dubas gave a few hints as to what the organization’s approach might be. He re-emphasized that the “execution” segment of their plan will kick into gear this summer, and given the assets and the cap space that the Penguins have, they may look to start setting the table for long-term contention with a few savvy moves.
Those moves may not include big splashes in the unrestricted free agent market or the offer sheet market – Dubas stressed that the rising cap will make offer sheets easier to match for other teams – but that doesn’t mean they won’t look to restricted free agency.
“I think the areas that you probably would see us spend more would be acquisition by trade, and then signing players that other teams might not be able to fit,” Dubas said. “I think the effect in free agency is probably going to be somewhat of a spike in salary, and so it’ll dry up the cap space rather quickly for us, and those players are mostly into that late 20-early 30 category.
“It could do two things. Number one, I think it’s going to allow us to maybe trade for players that other teams can’t afford that are restricted free agents, and then sign them longer range ourselves, using that cap space that way. You’re signing a player that’s 23-24 for seven or eight years versus going into free agency for someone who’s 27 to 32 and getting them for seven years. So, I think that would be the more likely route… and the owners have been excellent there. There’s no limitations on the player budget and spending. So, we need to use it in the right spot and not just say we were a cap team, but to use it towards getting us back to our goal.”
And, as Dubas has reiterated time and time again, that goal is getting the team back to legitimate contention. It remains to be seen whether players like Erik Karlsson, Bryan Rust, and Rickard Rakell will figure into the longer-term. He did mention that one area they’d like to add to is their left defense, which has struggled mightily.
With the assets and the veterans that the Penguins have, they might just have to give up some high value in return for such a piece, being that executing in the trade market seems to be a large part of the plan. Unlike the defense corps, Dubas believes their forward and goaltending prospect pools are in a pretty good place.
If they can revamp the defensive corps and execute on some trades and draft picks to bring legitimate young players into the fold this summer, it could help expedite the process and make good on the plan to turn the team into a contender again. And Dubas knows the importance of doing that with urgency to someone like Sidney Crosby, who wasn’t shy about expressing the toll that losing takes on him and the organization.
“Everything that we do is to try to get those young players around him,” Dubas said. “If you have guys in the group that have won and have been a part of it, I think it can exponentially improve and expedite the team’s return to contending. I don’t know if it’s a proof of concept. I think, from my end, it’s trying to build something that can sustain itself for a long time.
“Getting those younger players who are going to be a part of that core around Sid – him helping them and them helping him – is really what the focus is. It’s really not just Sid, it goes back to the question of Bryan Rust, Karlsson, Kris Letang, Geno, Rickard Rakell, all those others that are there… they can play a role in that as well. I’m trying to do that for every one of them because I think they are high quality people. They are high-end players who can help return us to where we want to be.”
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