It was inevitable. Some may have thought it would have come sooner, others thought it would have come later, but it had to come eventually: the Pittsburgh Penguins are officially bad. And while it may be seen as the beginning of the end of the Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin era, the truth is that we’ve been at the end for a few years now. The Penguins last won a playoff series in 2018, and for the next few years they were LARPing as a team that still had serious aspirations to win the Stanley Cup. But this is now the third year in a row that they have missed the playoffs, and they missed the playoffs this season by quite the deficit.
Thus, I find that it is more appropriate to say that we are at the middle of the end. Crosby, Malkin, Kris Letang, they are all still under contract for at least the next season, and Erik Karlsson, Bryan Rust, and Tristan Jarry are as well. The core of this team is probably not going to change much if at all this summer, and there aren’t any sure bets in the organization to make up the difference in production that will very likely come from the continued aging of these core six players. But more to the point, the last time the Penguins missed the playoffs for three or more seasons in a row, things were much worse for Pittsburgh than they are now. Between 2002 and 2006, the Penguins not only missed the playoffs but they also finished in the League-wide standings fifth-worst, second-worst, worst, and second-worst. Subsequently, their first round draft picks over the next six summers were fifth, first, second, first, and second overall. We still have a few weeks to go before we know where Pittsburgh will be drafting this June, but wherever they end up drafting will be the highest pick they’ll take 2012.
Unfortunately this also means that the rebuild is not really quite started yet. The Penguins do have some interesting prospects who we will surely see more of in the 2025-26 season, but none of which are certain to be top of the depth chart contributors. The upcoming draft will likely see Pittsburgh adding a top-ten pick (possibly two in the top fifteen, thanks to the Penguins owning the New York Rangers’ first round pick), but if Pittsburgh is to undergo a serious rebuild as their aging legends retire, it’s possible that those prospects will be developed more in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, rather than risk stunting their development on a Penguins team that sorely needs to focus on being bad. As bad as Pittsburgh looked at times this year, they were nowhere near as bad as those 02-06 Penguins; this year’s team eclipsed the point percentage of all those teams in ten fewer games.
A lot of what general manager Kyle Dubas does this offseason will have to do with what might happen next offseason. While Pittsburgh may not land in the top three in this summer’s draft, the consensus is that next year’s draft is worth losing for, particularly Gavin McKenna who many are touting as the next once-in-a-generation talent. As the late, great Mike Lange would say, “I’ve seen that fish before!”, and indeed we have seen the Penguins once before replace an aging legend with a future legend when Mario Lemieux passed the torch to Sidney Crosby in 2006. It would almost be too on-the-nose if Pittsburgh was to luck into another franchise-defining superstar, but there’s still a year to go and there will be plenty of other teams chomping at the bit for their shot at a savior.
This season’s Penguins were bad because of what makes most such teams bad: their insipid goal prevention. Pittsburgh ended the season tied for the third-most goals against and tied for the sixth-worst save percentage. One of the big questions then heading into this offseason is how Dubas will handle the goaltending situation. Tristan Jarry is arguably still the team’s #1 goaltender, but he spent much of the past season playing as similarly as he has in seasons past, which is to say not very well. The only consistent thing about his performance would the ignominious one where he would allow the first (or sometimes second!) shot his opponents take to get past him in basically every start he took until he was demoted to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton for the second time in February. When he returned he played much better, but so did the rest of the team, perhaps due to the somewhat-lifted burden of expectations.
So while Jarry may not be the best goaltender for a team trying to be successful and make a serious playoff run, in the longer-term context for Pittsburgh he may not be the worst choice for starting goaltender. Given that the team has at least two promising young goaltenders waiting in the wings in Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov, it may also behoove Dubas to retain Jarry as the starter and allow the young duo more time to mature and maybe help a rebuilding Penguins team a few years down the road. At least then Dubas doesn’t have to worry as much about moving Jarry: on the one hand, if he keeps playing well, maybe the Penguins will hang around in the playoff race; on the other hand, if Jarry returns to playing poorly, Pittsburgh will find itself in lottery position again and further building for the future.
Of course, few goaltenders will consistently defend against an excessive amount of shot attempts and shots-on-goal, and Pittsburgh was among the worst teams at shot suppression in 2024-25. It probably doesn’t help that the team traded their best defensive-defenseman Marcus Pettersson, but the whole team was abysmal at preventing their opponents from getting their way in the Penguins’ defensive end. Pick any shooting metric, and Pittsburgh was in or quite near the bottom ten of the League in that category. So, if you’re of the belief that the Penguins should be competing for a playoff spot and a run at the Stanley Cup, while the goaltending could probably stand to be upgraded, certainly the same could be said for the defense. But, after Pettersson, Pittsburgh did not have a solid defense-first blueliner. Maybe they have one coming up from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the likes of Owen Pickering? Or will Dubas go out into the market this summer and find a veteran solution? Or, maybe, he’ll largely stick with the status quo, and let the subpar goal prevention keep the team in lottery pick land.
The only thing that kinda worked for Pittsburgh last year was its offense, and that was simply mediocre. They ended the season tied with Ottawa for 18th in total goals scored, and they were right in the middle of the League in total shots on goal and shooting percentage. Once again the Penguins were let down by their inability to finish, as evidenced by their top-third expected goals for ranking but their bottom-third goals for above expected ranking. While they did have the sixth-best power play in the NHL this year, it did little to drag up their overall offensive numbers. Of course, this is what happens when you have only two lines doing the majority of the heavy lifting, and really you’re talking about one guy scoring a point-per-game (Crosby), a few guys near top-six productivity (Rakell, Rust, Malkin), and then eight other forwards who would be third liners at best on some of the top playoff teams. Again, a lack of scoring depth hampered Pittsburgh, but even the best offense wouldn’t have salvaged the Penguins’ season.
There are some things about the Penguins which will not change next season. Kyle Dubas is not going anywhere, as he continues working to bring Pittsburgh into its future. Mike Sullivan is sticking around as well. (Editor’s note: on Monday, the Penguins agreed to part ways with their ten-year head coach.). Sidney Crosby is under contract for another two years, Kris Letang for three. Evgeni Malkin is in the last year of his contract and I am 50/50 on whether or not he will hang around beyond that, but at least he’s still here next year. And I think part of the planning for next year will center around Malkin’s last rodeo, so to speak, and if it is his last season in the NHL there could be some motivation to try and make the playoffs again before he rides off into the sunset. One way or another, Geno is still going to be a Penguin next season, as will Bryan Rust. Those four players truly represent the core of this franchise right now, the veterans who have played in Pittsburgh the longest.
After them, there are a lot of question marks. Many of those questions can be resolved largely by deciding the direction of the team; that is, do they push themselves back into a playoff spot for what would likely be the last chance at glory for those veterans, or do they resume the path they have taken over the last couple of years and continue to rebuild for the future? One thing is for certain: they cannot have it both ways. The Penguins missed the playoffs several years in a row and only narrowly so, leaving them not only grasping for a postseason straw that likely would not have borne any fruit, but also with riskier first round picks in Brayden Yager and Owen Pickering that also have yet to bear much fruit. Thanks to Dubas’ wheeling and dealing and some shrewd drafting the likes of which we haven’t seen, Pittsburgh does have some prospects with modest or better outlooks, but there are no guarantees amongst them and you need some of those to really boost a rebuild.
I’m glad the Penguins have mostly dropped out of the mediocrity rut and are now truly a lottery team, as it has been a few years late to start down that path. (Looking at the Washington Capitals right now, I can only sit and wonder where Pittsburgh would have been if they had started this rebuild a few seasons ago.) But now I’m worried that there’s going to be this dichotomy between wanting to get those core four veterans another shot at the Cup at the expense of an arrested development of their prospects and a further pause of the inevitable rebuild that will have to come once those guys are done. Again, I think what we’ll probably see next season is a redux of this past season, putting their hopes in reclamation projects in free agency to fill most of the holes in the lineup while filling the rest with the few older prospects to keep salary low. Anything besides that, whether it is a full-blown teardown or a serious push to jump back into the Stanley Cup discussion, will come as a surprise to me.
So another Pittsburgh Penguins season comes to a close earlier than most of us would probably like. For me, this season coincided with many personal changes and, of course, that included not getting to write every Gameday and comment hardly at all. I felt like the Penguins and I went our separate ways this season, but not just that but all hockey in general. I simply haven’t had the time to think about hockey, let alone the Penguins, and in some ways that is a good thing. I mean, if Pittsburgh was a serious playoff team, I would have a hard time missing out on them being successful and I would absolutely feel like I have to focus on them, and that would be hard for me to manage. On the other hand, these Penguins are easier to dismiss because they are not successful. They need to have this period of decay before they can bloom again into a successful team, and it’s a good time for me personally to disinvest emotionally and let that process happen. It’s unfortunate that I’m also missing some of the last years of guys like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang, guys I have been following closely for going on twenty years, but they are not necessarily at the very end of their careers, and I feel comfort in knowing, like with Mario Lemieux, that I still have that chance to see them play one last time.
It’s also worth noting that this blog is entering its ninth year in existence. I started out in October of 2016, and so it’s interesting to observe that the Penguins have been to been to the highest point in the sport and are heading to a low all within this time. But I can tell you that, without more contributors, it’s going to be hard to keep this blog going for long. So now, more than in previous years, I am asking those of you who do love the Pittsburgh Penguins and have even some inkling to write, even if it is something brief, to step up and volunteer and keep our little community going. SouthSideGeno and Jovi can only do so much! And while I do hope to write a few of my typical summertime pieces, I don’t see myself getting back into the habit of writing Gamedays all the time. So, if you are interested in contributing, please reach out to the usual suspects!
For now, on behalf of Gene and Jovi, I want to thank you all for hanging with us through this transitional season, both for our blog and the team we love so much. I know there are good days ahead for all of us because that’s how things tend to work themselves out! I believe that, so long as we have faith and positivity (blog), we will all see those good days again. Thank you again for your support and for being there for us, and we plan to be with you again for the 2025-26 season!
LET’S GO PENS!
