LAS VEGAS – Penguins President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas and head coach Mike Sullivan spoke about the state of the team heading into the NHL Draft Friday and Saturday and the took office on Monday. Here are the key takeaways.
Although contract negotiations with Sidney Crosby, who is eligible to sign an extension starting July 1, remain private, Dubas said he is comfortable with the position they have taken. Here is the full quote: “This predates my arrival here by a decade and a half or more. Sid is 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 we have, the process we need to go through – as quickly as possible – is to acquire younger, hungrier players who can help us get back to that time. The real goal is to try to realize the times we’re in and the times the team has just been through… and to be able to carry that over to the next era. But we must build this era. It started last year, it’s going until the trade deadline. It’s not a popular decision (trading Jake Guentzel) but something we thought we should do. Then (Saturday) at the draft, then again on July 1st.
The approach to free agency will shift toward short-term deals rather than long-term, so the Penguins will have more flexibility and options to be younger and hungrier. Dubas acknowledged that people who look at what the Penguins have done say there’s no clear approach one way or the other, but for Dubas, there is: “Last summer we tried to restart the season through free agency and trade. We ended up missing the second-to-last day of the season, where the team was the year before.”
To ensure the Penguins aren’t just a team trying to sneak through, they need to work hard and build the assets that will allow them to succeed. “We’re not going to go into free agency and do nothing. We’re going to try to sign established players on short-term contracts and come in and help us. It’s going to be up to us to select the right players,” Dubas said.
They’ll likely target players who aren’t getting what they want long-term, “and who want to play with good players and play for a good coaching staff in a big city.”
That mindset applies to every position except goaltending, as the Penguins recently signed Alex Nedeljkovic, who “took the ball and ran with it” late last season. He partnered Tristan Jarry for most of the year and, as Sullivan says, that tandem was “pretty solid” for a considerable period of time. Although they kept the hot hand down the stretch, Sullivan said that didn’t mean they thought any less of Jarry, entering the second season of a five-year contract.
“He’s a high-quality goaltender who played a lot of good hockey for us last year,” Sullivan said. “Ultimately, we are in an industry where performance dictates opportunity. No one is entitled to the position they hold on a respective team in the league. It’s professional sport. Performance matters and, ultimately, performance will always be the dictator.
That being said, Dubas expects the five players he brought in at the goalie position to grow. These players are Nedeljkovic, Jarry, Joel Blomqvist, Taylor Gauthier and new addition Filip Larsson. Dubas said with the goalie market the way it is, and knowing Alex wanted to return, it gave the Penguins some wiggle room to continue developing Blomqvist — Pittsburgh’s second-round pick in 2020 who had an All-Star rookie season.
“That doesn’t mean the competition is blocked because of where we are…nothing will be given to anyone. And that was the message to Ned when he signed,” Dubas said. “It was a good end to the year, and obviously he brought a lot to our team. But now let’s keep pushing here in the offseason.
As for the young players already in the organization, Sullivan said Penguins fans already know who is competing for spots. They’re excited about the opportunity for Valtteri Puustinen, and Sullivan said it will be an important offseason for the 24-year-old forward after he signed a two-year deal. He also mentioned defenseman Jack St. Ivany and forward Vasily Ponomarov, who arrived from Carolina in the Jake Guentzel trade.
“Ponomarov is a player that I’m looking forward to seeing and getting to know his game a little bit more, but I know our hockey operations staff was very excited to acquire 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 player that we feel has made some good progress over the last year. Jonathan Gruden was a player that played some good games for us. So we feel like we have a group of young players that are starting to make their mark in the NHL.”
When asked if the Penguins would try to reduce salary through trades, Dubas said the most important thing right now is getting a good return for whoever leaves the team. They don’t necessarily want to make deals that require tying up assets. In fact, it’s the opposite. “If there are draft picks, young players or prospects that would help us get back in contention sooner, that would be more in that area than trying to get rid of our players to create more cap space to enter free agency,” he said.
Both Dubas and Sullivan spoke about the process that led to the hiring of David Quinn, who joined 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 excellent,” Dubas said. “Together we built the project. We each had different questions that we considered important. We went through a list of names and coaches that would be available and that we wanted to talk about and needed permission from, and then I got to know some of them through the process. »
Sullivan knows Quinn well, having been good friends since their college hockey days at Boston University. “Obviously, it’s no secret that Quinny and I have an established relationship. But I will tell you that’s not why the Pittsburgh Penguins hired him. We hired Quinny to be a part of our coaching staff because I know he’s going to make us a better team,” Sullivan said. “He’s going to challenge our thinking as a coaching staff. He’s a really good coach and he has the opportunity to make 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 in San Jose and Adam Fox in New York — Dubas believes Quinn’s willingness to disagree and push back against Sullivan can be a positive. “It was very clear to me that he was very much his own person,” Dubas said with a laugh.
In addition to strengthening his relationship with Karlsson, Sullivan said Quinn will build 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 be as competitive as we can be and rise to the challenge,” Sullivan said.