LAS VEGAS – Penguins President of Hockey Operations and GM Kyle Dubas and Head Coach Mike Sullivan spoke about the state of the team heading into the NHL Draft on Friday and Saturday and free agency on Monday. Here are the biggest takeaways.
While contract talks with Sidney Crosby, who’s eligible to sign an extension starting July 1, remain private, Dubas did say he’s comfortable with where they stand. This is the full quote: “It predates my time here by a decade and a half or more. Sid’s an ultra-competitive person and wants the team to be a contender. As long as you have someone like Sid on the team and the players that we have, the process that we have to follow – as urgently as possible – is acquire younger, hungrier players that can help us to get back to that time. The real goal is to try to take where we’re at and the era that the team has just been through … and to be able to hand that over to the next era. But we have to build that era up. It started last year, it goes to the trade deadline. Not a popular decision (to trade Jake Guentzel) but something we felt we had to do. Then (Saturday) at the draft, and then again on July 1.”
The approach in free agency will pivot to focusing on shorter-term deals versus longer-term deals, so the Penguins have more flexibility and options to be younger and hungrier. Dubas acknowledged that people looking at what the Penguins have done say that there’s not a clear approach one way or the other, but it is to Dubas: “Last year in the summer, we tried to jump start it in free agency and in trade. We ended up missing on the next-to-last day of the season again, which is where the team was the year before.”
To ensure the Penguins aren’t just a team trying to squeak in, they have to put in the work and accrue the assets that will allow them to be successful. “It's not that we're going to go into free agency and do nothing – we're going to try to get established guys on shorter-term deals and come in and try to help. That'll be up to us to select the right players there,” Dubas said.
They’ll likely target players who don’t get what they want longer-term, “and want to play with good players and play for a good coaching staff in a great city.”
That mindset applies to all positions except for goaltending, as the Penguins recently re-signed Alex Nedeljkovic, who “took the ball and ran with it” at the end of last season. He partnered with Tristan Jarry for most of the year, and as Sullivan put it, that tandem was “pretty solid” for a significant amount of time. While they went with the hot hand down the stretch, Sullivan said it doesn’t mean they think less of Jarry, entering the second season of a five-year deal.
“He’s a high-quality goaltender who played a lot of good hockey for us last year,” Sullivan said. “At the end of the day, we’re in a business where performance dictates opportunity. Nobody’s entitled to the position that they’re in on any respective team in the league. That’s pro sports. Performance matters, and ultimately, performance will always be the dictator.”
With that being said, Dubas expects all five players they have signed at the goaltending position to push. Those players are Nedeljkovic, Jarry, Joel Blomqvist, Taylor Gauthier, and new addition Filip Larsson. Dubas said that with the goaltending market the way it is, and knowing that Alex wanted to come back, that gave the Penguins some breathing room to keep developing Blomqvist – Pittsburgh’s 2020 second-round pick who had an All-Star rookie season.
“That’s not to say that any of the competition is locked in because of where we’re at… nothing is going to be given to anybody. And that was the message to Ned when he signed,” Dubas said. “It was a good finish to the year, and obviously he brought a lot to our team. But now let’s continue to push here in the offseason.”
When it comes to younger players already in the organization, Sullivan said Penguins fans are already familiar with the ones competing for spots. They’re excited about the opportunity for Valtteri Puustinen, with Sullivan saying this will be an important offseason for the 24-year-old forward after signing a two-year deal. He also listed defenseman Jack St. Ivany and forward Vasily Ponomarov, who came over from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade.
“Ponomarov is a guy I’m excited about watching and getting to know his game a little bit more, but I know our hockey operations staff was really excited about acquiring him,” Sullivan said. “He’s another young player that could potentially challenge for a roster spot coming out of training camp. Sam Poulin is a guy we thought made good strides this past year. Jonathan Gruden was a guy that played solid games for us. So, we feel like we’ve got a stable of young players that are starting to put themselves in the conversation of being NHL players.”
When asked if the Penguins would try to unload salary via trades, Dubas said what’s most important right now is getting a good return for anyone moved out. They don’t necessarily want to do any deals that require attaching assets. In fact, it’s the opposite. “If there are draft picks, young players or prospects that would help us get back to contention sooner, it would be more in that realm than trying to move off our guys to create more space to get into free agency,” he said.
Both Dubas and Sullivan spoke about the process that led to the hiring of David Quinn, joining the coaching staff as an assistant after the team parted ways with Associate Coach Todd Reirden. “I thought the process we went through with Sully was great,” Dubas said. “Together, we built it out. We each had different questions that we had that we felt were important. We went through a list of names and coaches that were going to be available and we wanted to talk and who we needed permission from, then I got to know some of them throughout the process.”
Sullivan knows Quinn well, as they are good friends dating back to their college hockey days at Boston University. “Obviously, it's no secret that Quinny and I have had an established relationship. But I will tell you that that's not the reason why the Pittsburgh Penguins hired him. We hired Quinny to be part of our coaching staff because I know he's going to make us a better staff,” Sullivan said. “He's going to challenge our thinking as a coaching staff. He's a really good coach, and he's got an opportunity to have a positive impact on our group. That's why he was hired.”
In addition to his solid resume – which includes coaching Erik Karlsson during his Norris Trophy-winning season on San Jose and Adam Fox in New York – Dubas believes Quinn’s willingness to disagree and push back with Sullivan can be a positive. “It was very clear to me that he is very much his own person,” Dubas said with a laugh.
In addition to building on his relationship with Karlsson, Sullivan said that Quinn is going to establish one with Kris Letang. The core that includes those players, Crosby and Evgeni Malkin is still playing at an elite level, “and we feel like we're in a position where we're trying to surround that core group with what we can and trying to be as competitive as we can be, and challenge,” Sullivan said.
