As the new year approaches, PHR will be taking a look at what teams are thankful for in 2023-24. There also might be a few things your team would like down the road. We’ll examine what’s gone well in the early going and what could improve as the season rolls on for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Who are the Penguins thankful for?
There is very little doubt as to who the Penguins should be thankful for. Sidney Crosby is the face of the franchise, he saved the team, and in his 19th NHL season, he has had to drag the lifeless Penguins to victory on more than one occasion.
Crosby has quietly played at a level this season that few 36-year-olds have ever played at. In 33 games this season, Crosby has 19 goals and 16 assists. While it isn’t one of his best offensive seasons, he has put up those numbers without the benefit of a productive power play. The Penguins’ current power play is tied for the sixth worst in the entire NHL despite having Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, and Jake Guentzel on it.
Crosby’s productivity this season goes well beyond what he does in the offensive zone. He’s been downright dominant in the faceoff circle, stronger defensively, and has been more physical than in recent years. His two-way play is elite, and while it would be surprising to see this happen, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we could be seeing his name in the Selke Trophy conversation come the end of the season.
Crosby will likely end his career in Pittsburgh, and he should. He is not only the on-ice leader of the Penguins, but he is also the heart and soul of the entire organization, particularly with Mario Lemieux less involved with the team now. Many people have waited for Sid the Kid to see his play tail off but given his work this season it doesn’t appear it will happen anytime soon. And for that the Penguins and their fanbase should be very thankful.
What are the Penguins thankful for?
Their top six forwards.
The Penguins’ power play might be amongst the worst in the league, but their top-six forward group is one of the strongest in the NHL. Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Reilly Smith, and Rickard Rakell are a very strong group of scorers, and they have to be because they are the only ones who score on most nights for Pittsburgh.
Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan has been very busy this season shuffling the forwards around, and while he has dropped Rakell and Smith to the third line on occasion, he has largely kept the six men as a constant on the top two lines. Many Penguins fans have called for Sullivan to spread the offensive wealth over the top three lines as the Penguins have struggled to generate depth scoring, but anytime the Penguins coach has done so the results have been meek at best. The Penguins lack offensive forwards outside of the ones that play in the top six, and anytime they have sent a top-six forward to the third line, they have been unable to generate any additional offense, and the top two lines have suffered.
It’s been pretty obvious all year that the Penguins’ third and fourth lines lack an offensive component and that will be general manager Kyle Dubas’ biggest obstacle to overcome if he’s going to help Pittsburgh get back to the playoffs. But for now, Pittsburgh will have to continue to heavily rely on their top six forwards, as they have for most of this season.
What would the Penguins be even more thankful for?
The continued undoing of the Ron Hextall era.
Ron Hextall had a very tumultuous run as Penguins general manager and much of the work he did during his two-and-a-half-year run was undone by Dubas when he took control of the Penguins this past summer. Dubas was quick to identify Jeff Petry, Mikael Granlund, and Jan Rutta as players that didn’t fit the mould of how Sullivan wanted the Penguins to play and in two separate trades, Dubas was able to move on from those three players. Dubas was also able to let Ryan Poehling, Josh Archibald and Danton Heinen walk and move on from Mark Friedman in an additional trade. When all was said and done, Dubas was able to turn over nearly half of the Penguins roster from last year to this season, and while the group is improved, there are still many relics from the Hextall era that the Penguins could stand to move on from.
The most obvious is Jeff Carter, who is virtually unmovable thanks to an ill-advised two-year contract that Hextall gave him in January 2022. Fortunately for the Penguins, Carter’s deal finishes up at the end of this season and that $3.125MM should be allocated more effectively going forward.
The Penguins also have Ty Smith and Alex Nylander who are toiling away in the AHL after they were unable to show they belonged on the NHL roster. Smith was acquired in an ill-fated trade with the New Jersey Devils for top-four defenseman John Marino and Nylander was exchanged for speedster Sam Lafferty who has been a very effective depth piece in Vancouver.
The biggest change Hextall made was to the Penguins’ bottom two lines, they were dismantled under his watch as he moved on from Freddy Gaudreau, Jared McCann, Evan Rodrigues, Brandon Tanev, and the aforementioned Lafferty while choosing to hold on to more defensive-minded forwards who provided little in the way of offense.
The Penguins would do well to buck this trend in favor of more offensive-minded bottom-six forwards, which leads us to our next section.
What should be on the Penguins holiday wish list?
Bottom-six help.
It wasn’t until their 11th game that Pittsburgh received a goal from their fourth line, and while two-thirds of that line has been part of a very effective penalty kill, they need to get on the scoresheet a lot more if Pittsburgh is going to make a run at the playoffs.
In the previous section much was made about Hextall and the previous management regime making moves to create a bottom six that couldn’t score, however, current general manager Dubas failed to address the Penguins depth scoring woes in the offseason and doubled down on defensive-minded forwards by signing Matthew Nieto, Noel Acciari, and Lars Eller at a time when Pittsburgh needed to add a scoring forward. The Penguins have responded with strong team defense as they sit sixth in the league in goals against, however, they have struggled to score sitting 25th in the league in goals for.
In a perfect world, the Penguins would acquire a true third-line center with some offensive output who could push Eller into a fourth-line role. This would perhaps allow the Penguins to create a third scoring line and push some of those in the current bottom six into slots that better suit their skillset.
5 Cups, 6 Finals trips, a gajillion Art Ross trophies, a bunch of MVPs…
The two best players ever.
3 of the top 5.
Guys like Geno, Flower, Francis, Coffey, Recchi, Kovalev, etc. on top of it.
Having cameos by slam dunk HOF’ers like Iggy, Hossa, Robitaille, etc.
Going almost two decades without having to watch meaningless games.
Getting to see Sid pass Jagr for second all time in points. In a Pens jersey.
A lot.
Pretty darn ridiculous run I’d say.
Imagine their timeline if they wouldn’t have handed the keys to Hextall in 2021 for one of the worst GM reigns in hockey history.
Blaming Hextall for everything is the easy way out. From the outside, it looks like there were a lot of errors made by Rutherford in his last year or so that have been sort of hidden under the rug. Hextall got brought in with a mandate to keep the ship together for a few more cup runs and avoid a rebuild while getting younger, and apparently other GM candidates refused to accept these conditions (I believe this was reported on by the Pitt media).
I think Hextall’s biggest errors were not being good with organizational politics and not cleaning house in Pittsburgh when he got hired. Over the time he was in Pittsburgh, it looks like he was continually sabotaged by Rutherford loyalists-look at all of the damaging media leaks. The way Sullivan has protected Carter, it seems Sully should get equal blame with that extension. End result is that Hextall gets blamed for JR’s errors and every move that Hextall made that the Rutherford loyalists didn’t like. Hopefully Dubas learnt from Hextall’s mistakes and fires the rest of the Penguins crew; he’s brought in a lot of new hires so it looks like that is what he’s doing.
Jim Rutherford is a HOF’er who has won everywhere he’s gone, including now Vancouver.
Jim Rutherford tries to win. He has stones. Big ones.
Ron Hextall, beyond being a dunce, was SO timid. A potted plant. He managed slow because he was scared. He burned assets like an arsonist and sabotaged the cap. He gave away a 40 goal scorer for nothing when he did not have to do so. Literally no reason.
Anyone who defends Hextall’s tenure is either a blood relative or clueless.
I’m grateful that Dubas is so good at his job that he doesn’t even breathe the same air that most of us do, The Penguins will cruise unscathed to the cup this season, What were the Leafs thinking when they let the genius walk away?
Didn’t like his glasses
You have to wonder what on earth Dubas was thinking taking the Pens job. He’s going to be left holding the bag for an absolute train wreck, there is just nowhere to take this roster or situation. Usually these guys want to take over an organization from scratch, establish a vision, and see it through. It will take them a decade to climb out of the hole they will end up in, and he won’t be able to get a job running a pee wee team.
The fact that they have been so well run for a majority of this era, had so much success in the past and accomplished so much is only going to make him look worse lol. Total career suicide for him.
I mean, if Hextall got a GM job I think Dubas will have no problem finding work again after his Pens tenure. This is an industry that held Jim Benning and Dave Nonis in high regard not that long ago, too. Jarmo’s still miraculously employed in Columbus. A senile Ken Holland still gets by on his Detroit track record.
You’re probably right that Dubas didn’t realize how tough the Pitt job was going to be. And I feel confident in saying his tenure will 100% end without a sniff of a deep playoff run. But this industry loves its retreads. He’ll be fine.