On Saturday, as the Pittsburgh Penguins were getting shellacked by the Washington Capitals 8-3 on home ice, former NHL defenseman and current ESPN and ABC panelist P.K. Subban blasted the Penguins for the current state of the team.
Subban lamented the enormously tall order that is expecting Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan and players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang to produce results when the rest of the roster is way below par.
“Struggling is an understatement,” Subban said. “It’s not a slight at the players. There’s a lot of great, talented players in there. But this is a poorly built team, to me. They’re undersized, undermanned. They’re soft in every area. In the [defensive] zone. They’re soft in the corners, the front of the net.”
Subban compared the Penguins to the Capitals and called the way the team was built “inexcusable.”
“For me, it’s on Kyle Dubas,” Subban concluded. “You get paid seven million bucks, that’s what I expect. If it’s a rebuild, then rebuild. If it’s not, then we’ve got to see better results on the ice. This is inexcusable for me.”
Subban was correct in the Capitals section of his rant. The Penguins should have conducted business the way the Capitals have over the last few years. Washington, much like Pittsburgh, has not won a playoff series since 2018, the year of Washington’s first-ever Stanley Cup win. But the Capitals will definitely break that streak first.
Instead of trying to throw everything they had at one last run, the Capitals embarked on a partial teardown over the last few years. They stocked up on younger talent and took a step away from the playoff race while they did it.
The Penguins, who were then under the disastrous management of Ron Hextall, went in the other direction. They went all-in on the current core and roster, trying to keep that glorious playoff streak alive and give Crosby and the gang one last run at a Cup before it was all said and done.
History has proven that Washington’s approach was the better one. The Capitals now sit atop the Eastern Conference, having found a way to usher in the new generation in Washington while Alexander Ovechkin is still around. The Penguins are now forced to go about it the much harder and much uglier way. The one without as smooth of a transition from one era to the next.
But herein lies the problem with Subbans’ criticism of the Penguins. Subban called the Penguins a team that is “set up to fail.” What his argument fails to acknowledge is that the Penguins are failing by design.
No one seriously penned the Penguins as a playoff lock after the offseason they had — one where Dubas took on draft picks to take on multiple players and his best offensive signing was Anthony Beauvillier.
A push for the playoffs wasn’t entirely out of the question, but it would have required every single thing to go perfectly for the Penguins. It hasn’t, and as a result, they are near the bottom of their conference.
“Rebuild” has become a dirty word in sports. No one wants to say it. Teams don’t want to enter one and fans will largely resist one. Penguins general manager Dubas has danced around the phrase ever since taking the job in the summer of 2023.
But make no mistake, that’s what the Penguins are doing. They weren’t quite as explicit in saying it as when the New York Rangers sent their fans a letter preparing them for the impending hardship seven years ago. But rebuilding is exactly what Dubas has done since the moment the Penguins traded away Jake Guentzel.
During this season, Dubas moved Lars Eller, Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor in classic seller-type trades. With those deals, the Penguins now have 15 draft picks in the first three rounds of the next three drafts, including two first-round selections coming up this summer. The Penguins’ own first-round pick could potentially be in the top five.
That extra draft capital is twofold. Dubas and his scouting staff will benefit from a plethora of picks, allowing them to supplement the organization’s prospect pool. But the odds are that the Penguins won’t use all of those picks, especially considering they probably aren’t done adding picks as well.
Rentals like Beauvillier and Matt Grzelcyk will also provide some extra mid-round picks between now and March 7. And if the Penguins really want to, they can dangle Rickard Rakell out there, who is in the midst of a stellar year and has cost certainty moving forward.
Owning extra capital will allow the Penguins to target specific players they like, whether they are higher-rated prospects or NHL-ready talent.
Improving the prospect pool is something Dubas puts great emphasis on. When he took over the Penguins, the organization had one of the worst prospect pool rankings in the league. But less than two years later, those rankings shot up to near the middle of the league.
That improved outlook on Pittsburgh’s system was greatly helped by the Guentzel trade, which netted the Penguins four total assets. Ville Koivunen and Vasily Ponomarev, two prospects from that deal, are expected to push for full-time NHL jobs next season.
This rebuild looks a little bit different than many others you see across the league, mostly because the core of players is still here. But putting aside the emotional complexities that would come with trading any one of Crosby, Malkin or Letang, they all — along with Erik Karlsson — have full no-movement clauses. It’s their choice and theirs alone if and when they want to leave.
Subban is correct that Crosby deserves better. It’s disheartening to watch the final years of Crosby’s Penguins slowly fade into the background, because if there’s any player in this league who deserves an opportunity to hoist Lord Stanley one last time, it’s him.
But the only thing that is more detrimental to the long-term health of the Penguins is to continue to put off what is inevitable.
The rebuild in Pittsburgh has begun.
The post Column | PK Subban is wrong: The Penguins are already rebuilding appeared first on The Pitt News.