When Kyle Dubas took the helm of the Pittsburgh Penguins two offseasons ago, he was inheriting a franchise that had been horrendously mismanaged for several years prior, arguably going back to 2017 when, in the wake of the Penguins winning their fifth Stanley Cup, then-general manager Jim Rutherford began to overthink the vast majority of his decisions.

While it had been customary for Rutherford to trade away Pittsburgh’s first round picks in an effort to bring in immediate and productive help and push the Penguins closer to a championship (see: the Phil Kessel trade in July 2015), that all started going wayward when Rutherford acquired noted enforcer Ryan Reaves and a 2017 second round pick from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for the Pittsburgh’s 2017 first round pick and depth forward Oskar Sundqvist. In an era of hockey where the NHL had been mostly steering away from having enforcers regularly appearing in lineups, Rutherford instead opted to acquire one of the few remaining in the League while shipping off a forward who had never caught on with the Penguins. (Since that trade, both players have bounced around the League, but Sundqvist has more minutes played in fewer games than Reaves and has naturally been more productive than Reaves as well.)

It was the first in a series of baffling and confused moves by Rutherford (including reacquiring the same inconsistently-productive Kasperi Kapanen he traded him to Toronto in the Kessel trade), and the confusion continued up to his abrupt departure from the team in January 2021. Enter Ron Hextall, and things did not go any better. Indeed, things might have been much worse and sooner for the Penguins if the rumored attempt to lowball Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang out of Pittsburgh worked in Hextall’s favor (as with all his decisions, it didn’t), but nevertheless Hextall did extraordinarily little to improve the team in his two-plus seasons as the Penguins’ GM. In fact he basically let the team rot, and so his dismissal last June was perhaps the most celebrated non-roster move Pittsburgh had seen since head coach Mike Johnston got the axe in favor of Mike Sullivan in December 2015.

Unfortunately for Kyle Dubas, his hiring as GM has coincided with the end of autumn and the beginning of winter of the Sidney Crosby era with the Penguins. What Ron Hextall likely tried to force in the contract extension negotiations for Malkin and Letang three offseasons ago was a hard crash to expedite the end of this era and hasten the rebuilding period. With those players signing extensions however, Pittsburgh has been set up for more of a soft landing, as those aging veterans (plus Crosby) see their productivity and performance dwindle. What Dubas has been proactive about (and what Hextall seemingly refused to do anything about) is trying to maintain a competent roster around those players while also preparing for the future without them. He has made first round picks two out of the last three seasons (which hadn’t happened since 2014). He has sought out lower-risk, younger reclamation projects (like Jesse Puljujarvi and John Ludvig last season, and Cody Glass and Blake Lizotte this offseason) to see if they would bring a boost to the lineup. He turned Jake Guentzel into Michael Bunting and a handful of modestly-promising prospects. The project has been a tightrope walk, and he’s done a fine job with it thus far.

However, the biggest problem for the Penguins is that nothing has been enough to push this team back into the playoffs for the first time since 2022, and despite this offseason’s well-intentioned refurbishment it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll get back to the postseason again this year either. Mind you, this has less to do with the quality of the roster and more to do with two things: the uncertainty of the roster’s performance, and the quality of Pittsburgh’s rivals. I’ll get to the latter in a minute, but the fact is that the Penguins been surpassed in quality by a few teams over the last several years and at least one and possibly more in the past offseason.

The New York Rangers have become the de facto leaders of the Metropolitan Division, likely followed by the Carolina Hurricanes and probably the New Jersey Devils (as long as they can stay healthy) in whatever order and by whatever distance you choose to measure them, and right there are the three automatic playoff spots for the top three in the division. Then you have the New York Islanders, whose third-place finish in the division was rightfully shown to be fraudulent in their five-game first-round exit at the hands of the Hurricanes last season, but they may still be good enough to make a playoff appearance again. The Washington Capitals were also dispensed of rapidly in last year’s playoffs by the Rangers, but had a surprisingly strong offseason and will make another case for the playoffs again this season. All this leaves Pittsburgh arguably being surpassed by their division rivals alone, and I haven’t even mentioned the Atlantic Division. The point is that the Penguins’ playoff hopes likely rely on being in the Wild Card race, and there is plenty of competition for those two spots.

From there, the other caveat to Pittsburgh’s success is playing up to expectations and consistently so. The top six is arguably the weakest it’s been since Malkin joined Crosby in 2006, and mostly because both players are aging to the point where they can’t be both be relied upon to be point-per-game producers. Per usual it is expected that Crosby will get the best wingers, who at the moment are Michael Bunting and Bryan Rust, both of whom will likely get close to a point-per-game by virtue of being on the wing of a guy shooting for a record twentieth-straight point-per-game season. Also per usual this means that Malkin will get the next-best wingers, who had been Rickard Rakell and Reilly Smith, but Smith was sent packing to the Rangers for a couple of draft picks, so Drew O’Connor moves up to his spot. Last season Malkin missed being a point-per-game player for the second time in the last four years, and neither Rakell nor O’Connor have been particularly productive themselves, so there’s some trepidation that the second line could be a disappointment.

Switching gears a little bit, it’s no secret that the Penguins’ power play was abysmal last year. Just 0.18% separated Pittsburgh from second-worst in the League, and that performance led to the departure of assistant coach Todd Reirden this summer. In his place comes David Quinn, late of the San Jose Sharks and former Mike Sullivan colleague who would seemingly have great familiarity with defenseman Erik Karlsson, particularly in light of Karlsson’s Norris trophy win with the Sharks in 2023. Across the board the usual suspects on the power play suffered, but few more than Malkin who had a career-low in power play points per 60 minutes last season. If the power play improves substantially this year (as it should), it stands to reason that Malkin could return to his typical productivity and lessen concerns that his age would naturally lead to diminished production.

Then we get to talk about the rest of the forwards, and there is definitely some more hope for more offensive production from that group. The biggest question mark is with the most recent acquisition, Rutger McGroarty. The 20-year-old was traded from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for Brayden Yager primarily because he is roughly a year older than Yager and (as opposed to Yager, who would be stuck in junior hockey for another season) is eligible to begin playing professionally now, a fact further cemented by his signing an entry-level contract immediately after his acquisition by Pittsburgh. It seems like the planets are aligning for McGroarty to eventually have a top-six role in the Steel City, but knowing Mike Sullivan’s track record with younger players, it’s probable that he will start the season in Scranton. Then again, considering the track record of productivity of the players on the third line (currently penciled in as newly-signed free agents Kevin Hayes and Anthony Beauvillier along with Valtteri Puustinen), McGroarty could make a strong argument to be with Pittsburgh from the start.

In any event, there is a lot of potential competition for roles in the bottom six, especially after how poorly they produced last season. Puustinen and Puljujarvi are holdovers along with Lars Eller, Noel Acciari, Matt Nieto, and Emil Bemstrom, while the newcomers include Hayes, Beauvillier, Lizotte, and Glass. Several maturing rookies, besides McGroarty, also stand to make their case at training camp for promotion as well: Vasily Ponomarev, and Ville Koivunen were two of the prospects acquired from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade, while 2019 first round pick Sam Poulin may finally find a regular spot in Pittsburgh, and Tristan Broz looks to begin his professional career proper after winning the NCAA national championship with the University of Denver last year. It is hoped that these and any of the other training camp attendees might make a big impact and help bolster the depth chart, because there are too many tepid forwards outside of the top six.

As much as there seems to be flexibility amongst the forwards, there isn’t as much to be had amongst the defensemen. The only departure from the group from last season is Pierre-Olivier Joseph, who was allowed to leave in free agency and will look to start over with the middling St. Louis Blues. In his place comes Matt Grzelcyk, most recently of the Boston Bruins and himself looking for a fresh start after being Charlie McAvoy’s pair-mate for the last few years. How Grzelcyk looks at training camp could be consequential: if he looks like he can hang with Letang or Karlsson, that would give Sullivan the opportunity to shelter Ryan Graves some more while they try to figure out if he’ll rebound from his bad year. Otherwise, joining the returning Marcus Pettersson, Jack St. Ivany, Ryan Shea, and John Ludvig are free agent signing Sebastian Aho (not the Hurricanes forward) and maturing 2022 first round pick Owen Pickering. As much as I have hope that the power play will improve quite a bit this season, I likewise have to hope that we’ll see more from this largely veteran group of defensemen as well with David Quinn also replacing Todd Reirden as defenseman coach.

Finally we come to the goaltending, another sore spot for last year’s Penguins. It was the same old story for Tristan Jarry last season, as he spent much of the first part of the season in the discussion of the top ten goaltenders in the League, only for the ground give out underneath him again in the second half to the point where he started none of the last thirteen games of the season, yielding to Alex Nedeljkovic as Pittsburgh was desperate to stay in the Wild Card race. The pressure will definitely be on Jarry to cement his status as a bona fide starting goaltender, because there will be a promising tandem of prospects in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov, either of whom will be watched closely to supplant Jarry should he fail to live up to expectations. Since 2017 the Penguins have had rotten luck with their goaltending, so for any of those three to distinguish themselves as being able to perform consistently and well would be a boon for Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes.

As with the past few seasons, the Penguins need a lot of things to go right in order for them to have a serious shot at being the championship contenders they aspire to be. Even though their aging veterans have largely managed somehow to avoid the kinds of major health issues each of them have dealt with over the years, that still hasn’t been enough. Either the supporting cast hasn’t been strong enough, or the goaltending, or the special teams. For the last few years simply making the playoffs seemed like a tall order and that continues to be the case heading into this season. While there is no giving up so long as Crosby, Malkin, and Letang are still able to perform, the fact is that the end of this era is coming soon. There has been a more concerted effort by Kyle Dubas to prepare for that end, while still trying to make the best of what’s currently in front of him. While making a playoff berth may not be enough for some, that may be the most reasonable goal to achieve from the start of the season. As I said, a lot of things will have to go their way for Pittsburgh to go beyond that point, so much so that it doesn’t seem likely to happen. But, with some promising young players coming into the picture, there could be room for more optimism than in recent years. All we can do is think positive!