For the second season in a row, the Pittsburgh Penguins have played 82 regular season games, and that’s it. Despite a late-season push buoyed largely by the goaltending of Alex Nedeljkovic and the merely excellent efforts of captain Sidney Crosby, the Penguins missed the playoffs by that much. The last-ditch effort was too-little/too-late, and as a result we are all right back where we were at this time last year, wondering how and why things went wrong. Like usual, there are some answers to that question which are obvious, while there are some answers that are more nuanced. In any event, the goal from the outset of the season back in September was to make the playoffs, and they failed to do so. Moreover, the regular season results were worse than last year’s, incredibly raising the train wreck of Ron Hextall’s one full season above that of current general manager Kyle Dubas. In this light, not only was this season a failure, but it was also an embarrassment.
In Dubas’ defense, his predecessor left him with a hot mess. Dubas did the best he could in some regards, and in those cases he should be praised. I will go to the grave insisting that the Erik Karlsson trade was not only justified but positive, as Dubas acquired the reigning Norris trophy winner, shed the bloated contracts Hextall gave to Mikael Granlund, Jeff Petry, and Casey DeSmith, and retained all of Pittsburgh’s best prospects all in one move. He then replaced Jason Zucker with Reilly Smith, Brian Dumoulin with Ryan Graves, and DeSmith with Nedeljkovic; on paper, all of the additions should have been at worst a wash versus that of the players they replaced. They also added Lars Eller, Noel Acciari, and Matt Nieto, reinforcing the bottom six with guys who would ideally be better at helping keep the puck out of Pittsburgh’s goal.
Unfortunately, many of Dubas’ moves turned out to be duds. Reilly Smith was a half-point per game worse for the Penguins than he was for the Vegas Golden Knights last season. Ryan Graves turned into the defensive version of Mikael Granlund, e.g. he was useless and worse, and he’s under contract for another four years. While Eller and Acciari acquitted themselves well, they are substantially overpaid for the roles they were in (fourth liners masquerading as third liners) and they’ll continue to be under contract through next season. Matt Nieto played only 22 games and none from the end of November. In fairness, Eller, Acciari, and Nieto weren’t expected to play major roles, and they did fine. Graves and Smith however vastly underwhelmed, and these were two guys tasked with being key contributors.
No one can predict which players will work under a certain system and which won’t, but that’s the risk you take every time you look outside of your organization for a player to fill a hole in your roster. The higher on the depth chart, the more risky the move, and now we see quite well that Smith and Graves did not work with the Penguins this year. I do think Dubas made a good swap with Carolina in acquiring Michael Bunting for Jake Guentzel. Bunting added a different dimension to Pittsburgh in the stretch run, giving them a player who would go to the net and get dirty where Guentzel would not. Bunting was nearly a point-per-game player as well, so he acquitted himself nicely. One can only hope that he continues to be a key player for the Penguins next year, as well that the prospects Dubas also got from the Hurricanes will prove themselves valuable at some point in the next few seasons. Overall I would say that Dubas’ efforts this past offseason were more well-considered than his predecessor’s, and that alone would give him a a slightly-average grade, even though the results did not meet with anyone’s expectations.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Mike Sullivan’s job is safe. At least, that’s the way it sounds. By the time you read this, maybe there was a stunning reversal and he has indeed been fired, but there are more signs that he would be keeping his job despite a second straight year of missing the playoffs. The veterans seem to love him, the front office seems to love him, and the executives seem to love him. A contract extension he signed under Ron Hextall in August of 2022 begins with this coming season and goes through 2027. He is going to be their head coach heading into next season. Any other suggestion would fly in the face of the remaining evidence.
That being said, he should have been gone years ago, and he seems to be playing with house money. Ever since the 2017-18 season and his quibbles with Ian Cole and Jamie Oleksiak, he has been very particular with how he runs the roster, who he deploys when, etc., and many times he has shot himself and the team in the foot with his decisions. If the game is on the line, you would probably want Sidney Crosby on the ice for it, right? Probably not Lars Eller or Jeff Carter? You probably wouldn’t play your backup goaltender for twelve games in a row, unless you were trying to punish your starting goaltender? Sullivan’s pettiness is not a new problem, but starting with this coming season he will have a lot more accountability because he doesn’t have a contract extension to save himself from being canned.
You know who should be canned, should have been canned, should not even have been hired? Todd Reirden. I mean, he won’t be fired now…mainly because his contract is up, but god help us if he gets another extension. Reirden was infamously in charge of the power play and the defensemen, and if ending the season with the third-worst power play in the NHL isn’t damning enough on its own, how about the fact that Erik Karlsson was seemingly on a leash compared to last season, or that Ryan Graves was a complete disaster? A League-average power play for Pittsburgh would have seen them score ~15 more goals. Who knows where the Penguins would have ended up if they had that much more production from the man advantage? The top power play unit had Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Jake Guentzel…there’s no good reason why they should have done so poorly. Perhaps some of it was the players, but the coaching staff seemingly made no effort to adjust midstream and that is on Reirden. The best time to get rid of him was years ago; the next-best time is as soon as possible.
One thing I want to remind everyone of is that the Penguins have not lost their first round pick for the upcoming Entry Draft yet. Right now the odds are most favorable that the pick would be 14th overall, but that is not set in stone until the lottery happens (on or about May 7). Pittsburgh still has slight odds (3.2%) to end up with the fourth overall pick and non-zero odds to end up with the fifth or sixth pick overall. I’m not planning any watch parties for the draft lottery, but if the Penguins were to land a pick that high up I think it would do them a lot more good to keep that pick and give San Jose next year’s first rounder instead.
Once it is determined if Pittsburgh will keep its first round pick this June, then the real work of free agency begins. The Penguins will start with ~$12.75M is cap space with four UFAs and two RFAs (both arbitration-eligible) on the NHL roster, and as many as 22 contracts organizationally to add. The RFAs are Emil Bemstrom, brought in from Columbus in exchange for Alex Nylander, and Pierre-Olivier Joseph. Bemstrom wasn’t given a lot of ice time (as is typical from Mike Sullivan in his handling of fourth liners) and it would surprise me if Dubas retained his services for next year with a bunch of guys coming up internally. Joseph was fortunate to get more responsibility as Kris Letang’s pair-mate when Ryan Graves got injured in late March, and he did well in that spot. As the most visible remaining piece of the Phil Kessel trade, Joseph hasn’t been impressive but he hasn’t been a straight-out disappointment either, and it appears that he is maturing and capable of playing tough minutes. I would expect him to get an extension and hopefully continue to grow into a regular top-four defenseman.
One of the UFAs is guaranteed to be gone (Jeff Carter is retiring, cue the crocodile tears), and one should be gone by virtue of being a disappointing fourth liner (Jansen Harkins). That leaves Ryan Shea and Alex Nedeljkovic as the other two UFAs. Shea performed pretty well in a third-pairing capacity with Jack St. Ivany down the stretch, and perhaps he’ll hang around unless someone from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton makes a better impression. Nedeljkovic’s future looks pretty good, even if it’s not with Pittsburgh. He took over from Tristan Jarry in mid-March and went on a healthy run to help the Penguins stay in the playoff race until the penultimate game. Overall he played just as well as Jarry, which is probably more an indictment of the starter than it is praise of Nedeljkovic. With Jarry’s future with Pittsburgh now in question, and the impending ascendancy of Joel Blomqvist from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, it stands to wonder if maybe Nedeljkovic will get another year with the Penguins as a backup again.
The story of the 2023-24 Pittsburgh Penguins is one of surprising health but a lot of self-inflicted wounds. Six players played the full 82 game season, which stands as the most for Pittsburgh since the 2004-05 lockout. And it’s not like it was the depth players surviving all 82 games, no; it was Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, Lars Eller, and Marcus Pettersson who played the full season. Pettersson is not so much a surprise as he has been very healthy in his career, but for two of the top six forwards and three of the top four defensemen to be at full health is amazing, especially when they are five of the six oldest players on the roster. Even more incredible is to hear after the fact that Letang was playing with what the team called “significant” health issues. I’m never thrilled to learn that any player was playing hurt, but he didn’t let it affect his play in a substantial way.
The self-inflicted wounds I refer to include the blown leads and missed opportunities. The Penguins are in the playoffs today if they score a goal or prevent a goal here or there. It’s the same story as last season, and the postseason before, and so on. It’s okay to make those mistakes once in a while, but this is becoming a recurring theme and I’m afraid that this will be the story of the late-stage Crosby/Malkin/Letang era. The window to win the Stanley Cup again before that trio are all retired is becoming narrower and narrower. A lot of what has been ailing the Penguins since the won the Stanley Cup in 2017 continued through this past season. A lack of scoring depth. A surprisingly bad power play. Inconsistent goaltending. Poor situational awareness from both players and coaches. All of that becomes easier when you have the right people in place, and Kyle Dubas will go back to work this summer trying to make Pittsburgh back into a playoff team for next season.
Well, we’ve arrived again at the conclusion of another season for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and once again we are left having to watch the playoffs without our flightless birds in it. Unfortunately the result is mediocrity again, and only by the grace of some lottery balls and/or some adroit personnel and roster management will Pittsburgh break out of their funk and back into the postseason next year. Before that, we have another long summer ahead of us.
As usual I want to thank you all for following along with us this season. As disappointing as the results have been recently, I keep coming back for more because I love the Penguins, and I love to write, but I would feel really foolish doing this if no one bothered to read my drivel, so thank you again for hanging around with us and giving me another reason to keep on writing. I am grateful for you.
I also want to thank my teammates SouthSideGeno and Jovi for their contributions during the season. Naturally I have other obligations sometimes so it really helps to have people I can call on to pinch-hit for me. They help keep our machine running, and I couldn’t do this without them.
Finally for my annual reminder that you too can contribute to our fan-run blog! Whether it’s writing, Photoshopping, anything you can imagine. Whether you are a budding writer or artist or anything else, it’s never a bad time to hone your skills where literally dozens of people come to read and talk about the Pittsburgh Penguins. We can always use more content and ideas, especially in the offseason, but do not be afraid to offer to write Gamedays or Recaps or anything else during the season as well! If you are interested, shoot us an e-mail at penshockeyblog[at]gmail.com.
Of course there will be a few things to write and talk about between now and the beginning of next season, but for the most part we’ll be going into offseason mode. Until we see you again, enjoy the rest of your spring, enjoy your summer, and…
LET’S GO PENS!
