The Penguins general manager wants to see more offense from the bottom-six forward lines.
Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas met with the media on Monday in advance of the 2024-25 regular season opener, and one of his most intriguing comments related to the bottom-six and what sort of expectations they should have as a group.
Dubas said they need to get past the idea of the bottom-six just being there for defense. While he added that they “need to defend their ass off,” he also made it clear they need to score and produce some offense.
It was an encouraging statement. It was also an accurate statement. Especially as it relates to the team’s third line, which needs to be a bigger driver of offense than it has been over the past couple of years.
Every Penguins Stanley Cup team in the Sidney Crosby era has had several things in common between them, and one of them has always been a third-line that could produce offense.
The 2009 team had Jordan Staal, Tyler Kennedy and Matt Cooke.
the 2016 and 2017 teams had Phil Kessel, Nick Bonino and Carl Hagelin.
In each case the Penguins could roll three, and often times four, lines that could put goals on the scoreboard and run teams out of the building. The superstars are a necessity for winning. But no matter how good your superstars are they are never going to score every single game and always be providing the offense. There is going to come a point during an 82-game regular season, and certainly during a playoff run, where their production is going to run cold and they are going to get shut down. It happens. It is unavoidable. And when it does happen you better have somebody else in your lineup that is capable of scoring goals.
What was so fascinating about Dubas’ comment is that it might have been him making a big adjustment in terms of what he is looking for in players. Or at least the realization that he needs to make an adjustment.
One of my biggest criticisms (or at least observations) of Dubas, both in Toronto and in Pittsburgh, is that the bottom-six of his lineups has always looked the same — defensive grinders that are hopefully there to shut down opponents and basically skate to a 0-0 tie when they are on the ice.
That was pretty much the exact blueprint for the bottom-six a year ago with players like Noel Acciari, Matt Nieto, Lars Eller and Jansen Harkins being brought in. Everybody was defense first, offense last. The entire game plan seemed to be built around the idea of the top-six and power play carrying the offense, and the bottom-six just not losing the game.
It did not exactly work
The second line struggled to find consistency, the power play was awful, and the Penguins were left as primarily a one-line team that did not score enough goals.
Even worse, the defensive-minded bottom-six was not as good as it was expected to be defensively.
But will this year’s bottom-six end up being any different? There are certainly a lot of potential new faces in that group with the offseason additions of Kevin Hayes, Blake Lizotte, Cody Glass, Rutger McGroarty and perhaps a full season of either Jesse Puljujarvi or Valterri Puustinen.
I will say this — the POTENTIAL of that group certainly seems to be higher than last year’s bottom-six.
It was an admittedly small sample size, and it was also only preseason hockey where the results can be a little noisy and misleading, but I liked what I saw from the McGroarty-Eller-Puljujarvi line when it was used together, and I would not hate seeing that group get a little bit of a run to open the season. Especially with Lizotte starting the year on IR.
I know there is a feeling that McGroarty needs to play top-six minutes in either Pittsburgh or Wilkes-Barre, but I do not buy into that idea at all. Your third line should, in theory, still play a lot of meaningful 5-on-5 minutes, and as Dubas said on Monday there needs to be an expectation for offense there. Your third-line can — and perhaps should — still be viewed as something as a scoring line, and I don’t see any reason why a talented rookie can not play there in the hopes of providing some of that. Especially when his game has some physicality to it.
I don’t expect Puljujarvi to score at the same pace he did in the preseason, but he has always been a good possession-driver.
While I am not overly crazy about Hayes and Glass as additions, they should offer at least a little more offensive potential on the fourth line than what last year’s group had. Hayes’ 13 goals last year would have been more than every other bottom-six player on the roster outside of Eller’s 15. I don’t think Glass is going to be a big-time producer, but he is just one year removed from scoring 14 goals in 72 games.
Overall there are still more questions and “ifs” here than solid answers. But I do like and appreciate the idea that Dubas seems to have maybe adjusted his approach realized the need to get more out of those lines.
I am not sure it will work out that well this season, but the potential is there for it to be better. And if you have the right mindset going forward that creates a more promising long-term outlook for when the team is back closer to contention.