Hextall and Burke Share United Vision for the Penguins

July 22, 2005 is a day that Brian Burke will never forget.

On that summer night, all 30 clubs had a chance at the first overall pick - and with it, the franchise-altering right to select Sidney Crosby - in the NHL Draft Lottery.
The ping-pong balls were picked in inverse order until just two teams remained: Pittsburgh and Anaheim, where Burke was general manager of the time. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman went to the podium with a card to unveil the winning team's logo.
And much to Burke's chagrin...it was the Penguins.
"You remember back in the lottery in '05, I just missed on Sidney Crosby," Burke said. "Whenever I see Sid in the rink, I hold my finger and my thumb about that far apart and I say, 'We almost had you, Sid.'

Well, it may have taken over 16 years, but the next time Burke sees Crosby at the rink, it will finally be as members of the same organization. The Penguins named Burke as their president of hockey operations and Ron Hextall as their general manager on Tuesday, Feb. 9.
"Now I've got Sidney Crosby," Burke said with a grin during a video conference with the media. "It's good to be here."
Burke has worked with many NHL greats during his 31 years as a league executive, which started in 1987 as director of hockey operations for Vancouver and continued with stops as general manager or president of hockey operations of the Canucks, Hartford, Toronto and Calgary in addition to Anaheim. He also served as general manager of Team USA for the 2010 Olympics.
And through it all, No. 87 is No. 1 to Burke.
"You look at some of the great players I've had - and I've had guys that were in the Hall of Fame - I think Sid's the best player that I've ever had," Burke said. "When you've got pieces like the Pittsburgh Penguins have, you've got to think that as long as we have those pieces, we've got to try to win."
Hextall, who will oversee the Penguins' day-to-day hockey operations and report to Burke as his primary advisor, said they are on the same page when it comes to their philosophy and vision for a team that has Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
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"We will keep an eye on the future, obviously, and try and grab some assets here and there," Hextall said. "But we've also got to put the best team on the ice. You've got Crosby, Malkin and Letang, and we want to be as good as we can be right now with three of the top players in the world."
After the Penguins were eliminated from playoff contention last August, the message from the organization to the fans was that 'We're not re-building, we're re-tooling.'
That's a pretty apt description for what Hextall did during his time in Philadelphia, where he served as general manager from 2014-18 and added lots of young talent to complement their core leadership of Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier and Jakub Voracek.
"It was a little bit of a retool, for sure, but we kept good players and we made the playoffs two out of four years," Hextall said. "So my philosophy has always been we want to be as good as we can be. We have to keep the future in mind, but we've got to keep today in mind, too."
Hextall said he is aware that he's gotten a bit of a reputation as a rebuilder in his previous management positions in both Philadelphia and Los Angeles, where he served as assistant GM of the Kings from 2006-13 and helped them win the Stanley Cup in 2012.
But that doesn't mean he's going to sit back and take a passive approach. A big reason that the Penguins hired Hextall is because he's a fierce competitor, and he's going to do everything in his power to help the team win another Stanley Cup.
"This situation I'm coming into now is certainly different than the one that we took over in LA or in Philadelphia," Hextall said. "I'm not a one-trick pony. I'll work with Burkie to become the best team we can become today. If we can get better this year, we'll try and get better. And if we feel like we're good enough, then we're good enough and we'll go on."
The two men talked yesterday, and while they both like how the Penguins currently look, Hextall made it clear that there is a lot of evaluation ahead - especially since this all came together so quickly. He said they plan on talking with the players, coaches and other people around the organization to get a grip on where the team is at and make decisions accordingly.
"Are there a couple areas we'd like to improve? Of course," Hextall said. "Every team has areas where you're like, we'd like to be a little better here, a little deeper here. But our job is to analyze as we go along. And I can't tell you what's coming our way. I can't tell you how good our team is going to be the rest of the year, and therefore, to be definitive in a direction."
Hextall said that they certainly have different ideas, and in his two interviews with the Penguins, they talked about all kinds of scenarios. All of them have one goal in mind.
"The focus is on making the Penguins the best team we can this year," Hextall said. "We'll see where it goes. We'll see how good we are. We'll see how our players respond. And we'll address things as we go along."