PITTSBURGH — Kyle Dubas has been in control of the Pittsburgh Penguins franchise for 20 months to the day and, when analyzing his job performance, that first month can’t be ignored.
The Tristan Jarry and Ryan Graves contracts are the elephants in the room, unless you can conceive of an even larger animal. Those contracts are a problem and illustrate Dubas’ misguided ambition when he took this job. He thought he could ride the fence that wrecked Ron Hextall, trying to simultaneously build the Penguins’ system while giving the roster a puncher’s chance. Dubas is smart. Really smart. But his eyes were bigger than his stomach in the beginning. It was time to rebuild.
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Dubas didn’t need much longer to come to the realization that it was indeed time to build for the future.
And now, he’s on a heater.
It all started almost a year ago, when Dubas made the decision to trade Jake Guentzel. That he made this decision was almost more crucial than the return he received. It signaled to the fan base, to Mike Sullivan and to The Big Three that a youth movement was being triggered. I don’t have any information that would confirm that Sidney Crosby and Sullivan were against a youth movement, but I do know that they both possess substantial power and that they’re both utterly invested in winning now. For Crosby, the clock is ticking. Sullivan, like other successful head coaches, isn’t the patient type. He wants results and he wants them immediately. I believe Dubas struggled with this balance when he took over.
Hi Sid, we might stink for a couple of years. Great to be working with you, though.
That’s tough, but Dubas knew what he had to do a few months after the Graves and Jarry signings. So, he traded Guentzel, a wildly unpopular move in the locker room. He did it anyway because it’s his team and his vision moving forward is what counts.
Guentzel is great and will continue to be so, but the haul was impressive. The Penguins took Harrison Brunicke, a defenseman, with the second-round pick they received from Carolina for Guentzel and, it took all of one day at training camp to leave all onlookers convinced that Brunicke should have been taken in the first round. He looks like, at the very least, a player who is going to be very impactful on the blue line sooner rather than later. Prospects Ville Koivunen and Vasily Ponomarev are close to being NHL-ready. Michael Bunting, also involved in that trade, has scored 20 goals in 72 games with the Penguins. The Penguins also received prospect Cruz Lucius in that deal. It was a very, very good trade for the Penguins.
Dubas was just getting started.
Let’s take a look at his trades since he dealt Guentzel last season.
• Chad Ruhwedel to the Rangers for a fourth-round pick in 2027. Dubas later flipped that pick to Nashville for Philip Tomasino, who is 23, a former first-round pick and who has scored five goals in 24 games for the Penguins. Ruhwedel is great, but he’s 34 and has been in the AHL most of the season. Big series of wins here for Dubas.
• Dubas acquired Kevin Hayes from St. Louis at the NHL Draft, which seemed odd since Hayes is on the back nine of his career. But the Blues gave the Penguins a second-round pick just to take him. Hayes has been fine, but more importantly, the Penguins received a 2025 second-round pick. Dubas then wisely flipped that pick and a fifth-round pick back to the Blues for their second-round pick in the talent-rich 2026 NHL Draft, and a third-round pick in 2025. As the young kids like to say, Dubas fleeced the Blues pretty thoroughly there.
• On July 1, 2024, Dubas shipped malcontent Reilly Smith to the Rangers for a 2027 second-round pick and a conditional fifth-round pick. Bravo. Smith was a source of mediocre play and negative energy in the Penguins locker room all season. It was a smart move to ditch him and pick up a second-round pick at a time when the Rangers might be on the decline.
• On August 13, 2024, Dubas took full advantage of the Nashville Predators being over the salary cap. He was given Cody Glass (who has been a bit disappointing but was and perhaps still is worth taking a gamble on), a third-round pick in 2025 and a 2026 sixth-round pick for Jordan Frasca, a prospect who is very unlikely to make the NHL. We don’t talk about this trade enough. He totally took advantage of the Predators, as a good manager should.
• Later in the summer, Dubas traded his best prospect, Brayden Yager, for a prospect most believe to be better and closer to being NHL-ready, Rutger McGroarty. We’ll see how this one unfolds, but on the surface, it was a good trade and was another illustration of Dubas taking advantage of a vulnerable team, as McGroarty wanted out of Winnipeg. Smart business, again.
• In November, Dubas traded Lars Eller to Washington for a fifth-round pick in 2025 and a third-round pick in 2027. Eller had his own reasons for wanting to return to Washington. He turns 36 in May. Smart move for Dubas.
• In December, Dubas picked up P.O Joseph for future conditions. He’s a competent NHL defenseman and nothing went in return.
Then came last night. I have nothing but respect for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor. Quality human beings and good, but not great, NHL players. Both are scheduled to become unrestricted free agents this summer, which hurts a player’s value. Somehow, Dubas was able to get a first-round pick — and maybe a fairly high one — out of the Canucks. He took on a couple of contracts, but they’re totally reasonable. He even added yet another prospect in Melvin Fernstrom (Jesse Marshall tells me he has a wicked shot, and I trust Jesse).
It was Dubas’ best deal yet.
Thank you for everything, Petey and OC! pic.twitter.com/x4efiz3cGb
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) February 1, 2025
More trades are coming, I assure you. While I don’t anticipate that Dubas will produce a fire sale, I suspect a few more veterans will be sent away for more future assets. Look at what Dubas has done in the past 12 months:
• Legitimate prospects like Brunicke and Tanner Howe have been drafted (Dubas’ third-round pick in 2023, Emil Pieniniemi, is tearing it up in Kingston (OHL) and his stock is going through the roof at the moment, and seventh-round pick Finn Harding, who plays for Brampton (OHL), looks like a steal also)
• A potentially foundational prospect such as McGroarty was acquired
• Young players Glass, Tomasino and Jesse Puljujarvi have been acquired at little or no cost
• More than anything, there is this: The Penguins now own 30 draft picks in the next three years. To put that in perspective, the Penguins have made only 27 draft picks in the past five seasons. They have an average of 10 per draft in the next three seasons, and you can bet that number will rise shortly, likely by the March 7 NHL trade deadline. The Penguins have two first-round picks (assuming the Rangers don’t get a top-13 pick) and three third-round picks in this June’s draft. They own two second-round picks in 2026 and 2027. They still have tradable assets who could land significant returns in players such as Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust and perhaps a couple of others.
Dubas’ rebuilding should thrive even more when considering the NHL salary cap is going to skyrocket over the next three seasons. This might mean a team will be more willing to take on Erik Karlsson’s deal. While unlikely, maybe there will be a team out there willing to take a chance on Jarry or Graves. Even if one of them will ultimately be bought out, the rising cap helps Dubas on all levels.
Things didn’t go so well during Dubas’ first season on the job. Some of it was his fault, some was rotten luck, some was just circumstance. It wasn’t an easy time to take control of the Penguins. They had gotten old, and the prospect pool was barren, to say the least.
Dubas traded Guentzel, and it made everyone mad. The locker room sulked. The fan base groaned.
Sid’s final years are being wasted, they said.
No, they’re not. Dubas is trying to make Crosby’s final years something special and wants this franchise to be prepared to thrive after the captain is gone. The Penguins aren’t there yet, and it will take considerable time until that happens. Another year or two, realistically, maybe longer.
But now they’re on their way. The path is clear. Dubas stopped trying to please everyone and started doing what he had to do.
And you know what? His recent transactions suggest that he knows exactly what he’s doing. Question his NHL talent evaluation if you want. He needs to prove himself in that department.
But this is a manager who knows how to acquire and identify young talent. Thus, he’s exactly what these Penguins need.
(Photo of Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor: Joe Sargent / NHLI via Getty Images)
