Hockey Insider Frank Seravalli stated today on the Daily Faceoff Rundown podcast that he expects the Pittsburgh Penguins to employ the same management structure they had with their previous group and hire a General Manager and a President of Hockey Operations. Previous GM Ron Hextall and President of Hockey Ops Brian Burke were fired after the season ended as they led the Penguins to their first season out of the playoffs in 16 years.
While it comes as no surprise that the Penguins would want to use that structure, some of the names of who they’ve reportedly interviewed are quite surprising. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun is reporting that Pittsburgh spoke with 10-12 candidates in their first round of interviews and included in that list were Marc Bergevin, Eric Tulsky, Jason Karmanos and Peter Chiarelli. LeBrun added that he expects some of those men to be interviewed a second time as the process goes on.
One name that will likely not be interview is Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas. The young GM held a press conference today where he expressed his desire to remain in Toronto while simultaneously stating he didn’t want to look elsewhere at this time after the past season was so difficult for him and his family.
Whoever ultimately lands the Penguins management jobs will be in tough to build around an aging core with multiple bad contracts to try and navigate. Pittsburgh correctly committed to Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin last summer, as well as Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell. However, they were saddled with a bottom six that couldn’t get going offensively, and a team that couldn’t find a defensive identity. All of this, coupled with inconsistent goaltending from Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith led to the Penguins missing the playoffs for just the second time in the Sidney Crosby era.
It’ll be a long summer in Pittsburgh; however, it could be the most interesting one they’ve had since Jim Rutherford plucked Phil Kessel from the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 2015 trade and kickstarted a two-year run of brilliance in the steel city. The Penguins still have a very strong top-6 and will have around $20MM in cap space once free agency begins.
Chia?
Bergevin and Chiarelli? The rebuild might be long in Pittsburgh.
Chiarelli really showed he didn’t have a clue in edm. Berggy while he made some very questionable moves he made a few good ones to. As a non french speaking Habs fan I feel the sergachev Drouin deal had alot to do with getting a top6 with Allstar potential. Was still a horrible trade at the time for me. The Habs biggest knock is sense 200u when there first 3 picks were mcdonough, pattcoritty and Subban theve done a horrendous job at drafting/developing guys. They got something like leckhonen, Gallagher, sergacov, Jake Evans and I think that’s it for drafties that played over 2 seasons in the league from 10+ years. It’s insane. EDIT: These are all of the too of my head I may have missed the odd middle 6 but that’s really about it. Checked also fringe nhlers like pezzeta, McCarron, mere, Galchenyuk and Sven andreghetto. In 10byears lol
2 typos* 1 biggest knock is sense 2007 draft when there first 3 where*
2nd
McCarron Mete*. All in 10 years is insane
@JD – With that pair in charge, the Roman Empire may make a comeback before the team gets back to where they want to be. I’d hope ownership has better sense than that.
Can someone pls explain what’s the job description is of a GM and president of hockey ops? I thought they were the same thing.
Kinda depends on the team, but typically the GM is the guy making the traditional day-to-day roster decisions, and the Prez of hockey ops is the guy with an eye on the business. But each team does it differently (or entrusts both jobs to one guy, like Joe Sakic in Colorado after they won the Cup.)
The window has slammed shut on the Penguins winning again in the Crosby era, If I’m smart enough to see it why isn’t management?
“Correctly committed” = delayed starting the rebuild that the team badly needs to contend in the future, just so they could miss the playoffs with a predictably thin lineup, saddle the team with untradeable contracts for brittle guys in their late 30s, and double down on being the oldest team in the league. $20 MM cap space doesn’t suck, until you consider they need to sign eight guys with it, and Zucker and Jarry alone will eat more than half of it.
Correctly committed to elite players and franchise icons who had great or admirable years respectively.
The Pens have as much to show for delaying their rebuild as the Bruins do…plus a first round pick.
Sid and Co. got to play 81 meaningful games this season instead of ZERO and had they gotten anything approaching consistent NHL goaltending would have easily made the playoffs.
Besides our clueless know nothing bandwagon fan base won’t support a rebuild. They whine about missing the playoffs…think they are going to sit through Rico Fata 2.0? Yinzers please.
Some of the names being tossed around are scary.
No Chia, no Bowman, FFS.
Give me Ray Shero back before any of those retreads. That dude was a thief in the night and I never understood why NJ dumped him.
Pens need to trade as many non-core pieces as they can, get some assets for them and then backfill the spots with free agents. Gain assets and roll the dice that you get the chemistry right bringing in new blood.
But, 99% of our off season is figuring out the goaltending situation. We are in a terrible spot.
Jarry is a good goalie when healthy, but that seems rare and there are whispers he’s not putting in the work to be elite. How do you commit long term to him at this point? But, that’s probably what it takes to keep him with such a weak UFA market. That weak market also makes replacing him that much harder.
Gibson, Korpisalo, Vejmelka might be the best options and none of them are as good as Jarry is when he’s right.
I was hoping this year’s draft would have a Wallstedt, Askarov or Oettinger for the Pens to use their first round pick on to shore up the future, but it doesn’t seem so.
It’s not up to the GM to appease fans, or make decisions based on any player’s legacy or popularity. It takes courage to make difficult decisions, and they didn’t have the fortitude to do what needed to be done. And now they’re going to pay for it… for a really long time. That’s how it works.
If you thought a rebuild would have been tough for the fans to sit through when they traded for assets and were flush with draft picks, wait until you see what it’s like when you have no significant draft capital, no young players on your roster, and the worst farm system in the NHL. Along with long term deals for 35+ year old players.
That is the way you take your organization to a really bad place with no way out for 8-10 years.
They had a really nice off-ramp last year…. they could have sacrificed basically 1+ years of contention and been absolutely flush with assets moving forward. Instead they floored it past the exit ramp and drove straight off the cliff.
Also putting Boston is the same situation as Pittsburgh is way off base.
Boston has a 26 year old superstar that they just wrapped up long term, as well as two top defensemen who will both be top 10 in Norris voting this year and are 25 and 29 years old.
They also have a number of very solid players in their mid 20’s (Carlo, Zacha, Frederic, DeBrusk) that are signed up for various amounts of time.
They will have a much easier time remaining a playoff team with what they have in place moving forward, especially on the blueline where there top 4 is elite, and signed up for the next several seasons.
Yes, allowing two elite players to walk as UFA’s for nothing is a “really nice off-ramp”. To where exactly, I’m not sure…
“Absolutely flush with assets”…how, exactly?
The Boston Bruins had the greatest regular season in league history. The Penguins … decidedly did not. Kinda tough to tout “81 meaningful games” if your premise is that a season that doesn’t result in a Cup means nothing.
But if you truly think that the Pittsburgh fan base won’t support a rebuild … well, heck, you’re going to have to have one ANYway, aren’t you? Pittsburgh’s the oldest team in the league. Its leading defenseman had his second stroke this season. You have exactly ONE key player under contract next season who’s under 30, and he’s going to be 29. For Pittsburgh, the whole “let’s keep the gang together for one last hurrah” FAILED. Why do you presume that with everyone a year older, with the same team that’s failed to win a single playoff series for five years, it’ll somehow be better now?
The definition of insanity is continuing to do the thing that didn’t work the previous times out.
So the San Jose Sharks?
Yeah, well, now they have those two players tied up, at their ages, for the next several years, and have nothing to show for it … and this is with Geno having the first completely healthy season he’s had in *fourteen years.*
It’s rather bemusing. What possible path are you imagining here? They’re just all going to get a year older, and a year slower, and a year more banged up: the Penguins are NOT GOING TO IMPROVE here. There aren’t much by way of UFA superstars out there, and too many roster slots needing to be filled to sign one even if there was. Jarry in fact had a decent year, and they neither have the $ nor the draft capital to get a Vezina candidate to replace him.
The greatest regular season in NHL history becomes a punch line when you lose to an 8th seed.
The Bruins played 89 meaningful games vs. 81 for the Pens and each had their season’s ended by the Panthers.
The “your plane didn’t have the smoothest landing so you should have crashed into a mountain as soon as the flight started” logic continues to escape me.
If we get a few more saves here and there, we could have been the 8th seed that rendered history irrelevant.
Lol if u think the penguins had any possible chance to beat Boston let alone win a game against them in the series I want what you’re smoking! Also the no one knows hockey except for me shtick is getting really old.
Yeah, and if Ullmark had had a few more saves here and there, Florida would be on the golf course right now. (Doesn’t affect the truth that Boston still has plenty of young horses and will be a contender next year, and Pittsburgh won’t.) You’re still rolling out lines you don’t seem to actually believe.
Flush with assets as in the dealine last year. That was the off ramp. They had ZERO chance of winning the Cup last year, not sure that’s even up for debate.
So instead they kept all of thier assets they were “flush with”, in the form of UFA players other teams would have killed for.
Malkin= 1st round pick plus an elite prospect.
Letang= 1st round pick plus an elite prospect.
Rust = 2 second round picks.
Carter was playing well, with his playoff pedigree you were getting a 1st for him, or two second rounders at the very least.
And as an added bonus, YOU COULD SIGN ALL OF THEM AFTER THE SEASON!
Whoa! Crazy, huh?
If they love Pittsburgh so much, and Pittsburgh loves them so much, then so be it. Get the band back together.
Instead you spent actual rebuilding capital on players like Rakell and (lol) Granlund who grow on trees in FA.
And now you have nothing… a complete dumpster fire ahead that will probably last until 2030.
You gambled a first round exit for an instant rebuild. You basically bet 6 second round picks, (the 4 you could have had plus the two you moved) 2 first round picks, and two elite prospects for one last shot at the playoffs with an aging, tired roster that had no chance at a real run.
Good luck with that.
And yes, two elite prospects, 2 first round picks, and 6 second round picks and you are halfway there to a full rebuild. Crosby would be heading into his twilight years with legit talent around him for him to lead.
I skimmed this until I saw a first for Carter.
Good day.
I picked Florida to win that series, I’m sure you’d have said the same about them two weeks ago.
Good day.
Boston will be a contender if several of their top players borderline collude with the team to artificially lower their cap value again, yes.
Remove their top two centers (unless you have viable replacements handy who work cheap) and they will fight for an 8th seed next year.
And after 3 Cups instead of just 1 in recent memory, I guess I can live through the down times easier than most.
Until then, the idea of asking the second best player ever to slog his final years through a rebuild is vulgar blasphemy. Luckily, FSG understood that.
And that is relevant to the Penguins how?
You’re still about to enter the black hole of hockey and freeeee fall, out into nuthin’.
And everything I said was right, and you 100% could have had two second round picks for Carter last season.
At the halfway point of the season last year, he had 12 goals and 15 assists, a 54 point pace. He was one of the leading faceoff men in the league. He had a tiny cap number that any team could easily fit. His playoff pedigree speaks for itself. If you don’t think he had value, you don’t have a clue about what has value in the league or how anything works.
(yawns) And a lot of folks predicted that Boston would fight just to make the playoffs this past year.
As far as asking for below-market contracts so their team could complete, huh. D’y’know, Malkin and Letang could’ve done that, couldn’t they have? If a guy like Patrice Bergeron could walk away from several million dollars to give his team an extra edge, who stopped Malkin and Letang from making the same offer? Pretty reasonable to think that extra $5-6 MM would’ve put them into the playoffs, huh?
But no, they’re not going to ask Sid to go through the “blasphemy” of an intentional rebuild. Too late for that. Instead, he’s gone through five seasons of one-and-done flameouts at best. He might not see the playoffs again before he retires.
And THAT’s the shame that anyone who really gave a damn about the Penguins should see. If they blew things up last summer, you’d at least have Crosby around to mentor the youngsters and teach them how to be winners. You wouldn’t be asking him to swallow the okeydoke and *pretend* they were going to contend, *pretend* the team was going anywhere. You’d be asking him to take pride in where the team would be in the future, and in a profession where Father Time is undefeated, that’d have been something.
What do you think is going to happen? They’re going to be awful….. like, forever.
They have no young talent, no draft picks, and the worst farm system in the NHL.
You really think they’re contending moving forward? How? It takes years from the time you strip it down until you actually start to see some daylight, when you are delusional about it you basically end up where the Devils were more than 12-15 years ago.
You look up one day and all the other teams are younger than you, deeper than you, and better than you. Then you spend 10 years getting sand kicked in your face and watching highlights of the glory days.
If I was a Pens fan I’d be proud of what they accomplished, and royally pissed off that they missed out on a golden opportunity to rebuild so quickly because they simply lacked the guts to do it.
These teams are billion dollar businesses, you pay people to come in and make unpleasant decisions, not cater to fans who are sad to see their favorite player go. Wayne Gretzky got traded. Phil Esposito got traded… twice. Bobby Hull got traded. Mark Messier got traded.
It sucks, but that’s how this works.
Gee, you mean after 20 years of contention and winning 3 Cups and going to 4 Finals, they are going to have to rebuild one day? Whaaaaat????
Here’s the thing most fair weather, bandwagon smarmy so called fans don’t get…
A REAL fan loves the team the same when they are winning as they do when they are losing.
And if a fan can’t stomach the losing that comes after two decades of winning (time to pay the credit card bill) then they can hop off the bandwagon and get run over in the street.
I loved the Pens when Rico Fata and Milan Kraft were our top centers as much as I do when we have Mario and Francis or Sid and Geno.
Most fans can’t or won’t do this, so write your screeds for them.
I know the score.
PS- “These teams are billion dollar businesses, you pay people to come in and make unpleasant decisions”
Funny thing is that the people who paid almost a billion dollars for this business made the decision you are now second guessing. Weird “appeal to authority” there.
“If they blew things up last summer, you’d at least have Sid spinning his wheels mentoring the kids who don’t exist.”
Huh?
There were no kids to mentor. There are no kids to mentor.
I guess you are assuming they trade for NHL ready prospects, cuz you know, teams always trade their GOOD NHL ready prospects….?
The only thing that would have been achieved would be dooming Sid and Co. to irrelevance in October and short circuiting the finals years of their careers for a head start on a rebuild that will work much much better in a few years when they truly bottom out.
So, in order to begin a milk toast rebuild now that makes you the Wild or Preds (middle of the road), you’d doom the final seasons of multiple icons and HOF’ers and then end up preventing the truly deep , truly ugly rebuild that will actually result in the high picks needed to build a real contender again.
No thanks.
“Teams don’t trade prospects!”
Really?
They do it all the time. You don’t think Malkin would have fetched more than Giroux? Giroux got the Flyers a 1st and Owen Tippett.
A fast, physical 210 lb forward who just scored 27 goals in his age 23 season and was one of the best possession players on his team.
That wouldn’t have helped moving forward? He is signed for next year for $1.5 million…. do you have any concept what that is worth?
The Caps got Rasmus Sandin and a 1st rounder for…. Erik Gustafsson?
They immediately plugged him into their lineup, gave him 23 minutes a night and watched him put up 15 points in 19 games post deadline. He’s 22 years old and signed for next year for $1.4 million.
Both of those players are also heading into RFA years 2 years from now, you can bridge both of them and get 4 years out of them, in their early 20’s, for peanuts.
That’s just two examples, there are tons more. So yeah…. teams give away talented young NHL players all the time at the deadline, and have been doing it forever.
It’s how the deadline works.
To be honest, the guys you would have been moving would have gotten more than that. Quite a bit more. We’re in a league where Garnet Hathaway was basically bringing in a 1st rounder at the deadline.
Your premise is flawed because:
A. The team is already toast, they’re not competing for anything next year anyway.
B. First and second round picks are incredibly valuable…. the notion that giving up access to a huge bushel full of them will not hurt long term is insane. It will take you years to compile what you could have acquired in one month.
Need a younger GM , no more of these retreads. Give a guy with fresh ideas a chance. At the very least make sure they can manage the cap properly and use everything at their disposal to better the team. I’m not optimistic about the rumored people outside of Darche or someone like that. That’s what the team needs imo.
Tulsky is the guy the Penguins need.
Agreed, I couldn’t think of his name at that moment. Thanks for reminding me. He’s done awesome for Carolina, he’d be a great GM here.
Just curious, but what exactly has Tulsky done for Carolina? I know their team is good, but can you explain what his role was in that and how he’s impacted their team?