Kyle Dubas Is Perfect Fit For Pittsburgh's Big Three
Penguins hired the right man for the job at just the right time...
Of all the hugely significant decisions the Pittsburgh Penguins will have to pull the trigger on this offseason - and there are a bevy of them - getting the right man in to run the show was by far the most critical.
And that box can now be ticked.
While we won’t know for a few years at least - or seven to be more precise, with Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reporting it is a seven-year deal in Pittsburgh - if Kyle Dubas was a success in Pittsburgh, he was the right man for this franchise at just the right time.
And the Penguins’ new President of Hockey Operations - and Interim General Manager for now - is already making all the right noises.
We can spend all the time in the world trying to pick the bones out of Dubas’ messy divorce with the Toronto Maple Leafs. We can also trawl through the wreckage of his time in one of the biggest markets on the planet and attempt to figure out how much blame he deserves for the Leafs not winning a championship despite their vast array of talent.
None of that matters now.
What does matter is the weeks and months ahead for Dubas as he begins to shape his roster for the 2023-24 season. Some will argue that this is as crucial and defining an offseason as the Penguins have faced in over a decade.
That isn’t too much of a stretch at all.
After all, this has been a banner franchise for a substantial amount of time now. One that has set the blueprint for others in the National Hockey League to follow and to aspire to. They won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017 and were a playoff team year after year after year.
For 16 consecutive seasons, to be more precise.
In other words, the Penguins were a perfect picture of consistency.
Of course, it helps when you are able to roll out an iconic three-headed monster boasting not one, not two but three future Hall of Famers in Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
In my mind - and everyone else’s - Crosby is a slam dunk Hall of Famer, and Malkin should also probably get in too. We can probably have a deeper discussion about Letang’s Hall of Fame case, but that’s for another day.
Staying in the moment, it is clear the Fenway Sports Group - who own the Penguins - identified Dubas as their guy as soon as they decided to pull the plug on the unmitigated disaster that was the Ron Hextall / Brian Burke disaster.
Under the guidance of Hextall and Burke, the Penguins very quickly went from being a model franchise to an absolute dumpster fire. The ugly, gritty details of their reign of terror have been covered elsewhere, including within this deep dive from The Athletic, so there’s no need for me to sermonize about that and go over old ground.
However, just know it was bad in every single conceivable way on and off the ice. I mean, the Pens missed the postseason for the first time since the 2005-06 season, which is pretty damn significant in itself, the roster was fundamentally flawed, some stupidly batshit trades were made and, by the time the final nail was hammered into what was a hot mess of a season, the locker room was a breeding ground for toxicity.
The number one rule for running an organization should be to never piss off your franchise icon and captain. But that’s exactly what Hextall and Burke did. And early too. Hextall, almost as if he was trying to prove how big his cubes were, tried to publicly and privately humiliate a franchise icon and a loyal soldier in Malkin, pushing the veteran to the brink of NHL Free Agency. An agreement was eventually reached on a four-year, $24.4 million extension, but not before Crosby and long-serving Head Coach Mike Sullivan were left pissed off by the whole messy process.
Other clown show decisions pertaining to treatment of players also didn’t go down well with Crosby according to multiple reports, and it sure did seem like Hextall and Burke were trying their utmost to break up the band and commit to a full-blown rebuild. Heck, all the evidence is there to suggest that the myriad of reindeer games being played were designed to drive Sullivan, Crosby, Malkin and Letang out of town.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed, wiser heads stepped in and Burke and Hextall were dragged out by their asses before they could cause any further damage to a franchise that has largely done it the right way for a sustained period of time now.
And therein lies the rub. Going directly against the warped beliefs of Hextall and Burke, Dubas has already said and done all the right things when it comes to ensuring that franchise greats like Crosby, Malkin and Letang are looped in on key decisions pertaining to the team. The same goes for Sullivan, who after leading this team to back-to-back Stanley Cups, not to mention a plethora of postseason berths year after year after year, also deserves to be consulted and have his voice heard in the room.
Dubas, and whoever he eventually hires as General Manager, will strive to do what should always be done in this instance and what Hextall and Burke failed spectacularly to do and that is to give The Big Three every single opportunity to compete for another ring.
“The way I view it is that if people want to bet against Mike Sullivan, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and others, they can go ahead and do so, but I’m going to bet on them and go with them here. I do think it’s a group capable of contending to win a championship.”
- Kyle Dubas at his introductory press conference.
That is indeed the money quote. It sounds simple because it is. As long as you have Crosby, Malkin and Letang on your team, then competing for the Stanley Cup is the No. 1 goal and priority. No matter what.
The fact Dubas has come out swinging with that as his rallying cry already has made him more popular in Pittsburgh than Hextall and Burke ever were. You don’t go out of your way to disrespect and undermine a core group of players - and a Head Coach - who have done so much and who mean so much to not just an organization but to an entire city.
Dubas gets it and he did exactly the same thing in Toronto. He remained loyal to a core of players featuring Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly. He did everything he could to give that group a chance to compete every single year, making swing-for-the-fences type moves for game-changing talent in the ilk of John Tavares, and then gracefully dancing around the salary cap to add serviceable depth pieces to help support the team’s big hitters.
Now, it didn’t result in a championship in Toronto nor any tangible postseason success outside of finally advancing past the First Round this year, but Dubas’ approach was the right one and that same approach is the right one for this Penguins team.
Again, without trying to sound like a broken record here, the absolute priority should be to compete and to win another cup for Crosby, Malkin and Letang. That’s the very least that trio deserves as long as they are still playing and pulling on a Penguins jersey.
And it’s not like Pittsburgh sucked last year because of The Big Three. Crosby has seemingly drank from the fountain of youth and discovered another gear dating back to the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs where he put his team on his back at times. He recorded 10 points (two goals, eight assists) in six games and followed that up by tallying 93 points (33 goals, 60 assists) in 82 games this season - his best points total since the 2018-19 season.
I don’t know about you, but that certainly doesn’t seem like a player regressing and struggling while on the back-nine of his career. That seems like a crucial cog who can still play at the highest level, who can still elevate the play of those around him and who can still do what it takes and provide all the intangibles needed to survive a gruelling war of attrition on the way to winning another cup.
Likewise for Malkin. The forward and three-time All-Star put up 27 goals and 56 assists for 83 points in 2022-23, his highest points total since 2017-18, while Letang recovered from a stroke to prove he’s still a vital ingredient in the magic sauce the Penguins are trying to cook up moving forwards.
Crosby, Malkin and Letang have proved time and time again that they are still highly-driven competitors with access to nearly their full tank of powers, and they are more than good enough to lead another team to the promised land of a Stanley Cup.
Granted, they are going to need help. And a lot of it. One of the many perils of being a consistent contender in the Salary Cap era is being able to build a capable supporting cast around a core of stars and top-end talent. Being able to build through the draft, develop prospects, execute trades and exploit the free agency market are all key components of carefully constructing a winner.
The Penguins haven’t always done a good job of giving their Big Three the weapons and help they need - especially last year - and Dubas’ immediate job will be to use the 2023 NHL Draft and free agency to restock the cupboard and help this team rediscover its identity.
One of the hallmarks of the 2016 and 2017 Stanley Cup champions was speed, and that is an attribute that has been severely lacking from Penguins teams of recent past. Speed and skill is the name of the game in the modern-day NHL and, rather than keep going against the grain in the hope of catching everyone else off guard, Dubas must now follow the blueprint set by the rest of the league and attempt to win that way.
Sometimes it pays to not be too clever. It is okay to play the same game as everyone else and avoid getting too cute.
That’s the mission statement for Dubas this offseason. Keep it simple and give his lethal three-headed monster the speed and the quality depth they need to make another run.
Again, it won’t be easy but nothing worth doing ever is. The Penguins currently reside in the NHL’s murky middle - otherwise known as the deep depths of hell - in that they are too good to suck but not yet good enough to win a Stanley Cup. They have the oldest rosters in the league, there’s a slew of bad, ugly and downright difficult to shift contracts - here’s looking at you Jeff Carter and Mikael Granlund - and a farm system that is staggeringly weak on decent talent, let alone blue chip prospects who could help to forge the next generation in Pittsburgh.
It seems like a near impossible job when you lay it all down on paper like that.
However, there’s a few positives to chew on here. Dubas is one of the brightest and forward thinking minds in the game and he has made a habit of manipulating the salary cap and making it dance for him, no matter how tight the constraints. He’s also proved to be a master of building around a core of stars with productive and cost-effective depth and role players. You wouldn’t bet against him doing the same in Pittsburgh.
Plus, there are some nice forward pieces already on the roster in Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell. Dubas will have around $20 million in cap space to play with this offseason, and he also currently owns the No. 14 overall pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft. In a draft class that is considered incredibly deep with rich, high-end talent, Dubas and the Penguins have a real opportunity to select a prospect that could make an immediate impact in the NHL.
Again, there’s a hellish laundry list of things for Dubas to do and he’s got a lot of needs to address, including working out the goaltending situation with Tristan Jarry far from a lock to be the team’s No. 1 option between the pipes in 2023-24. There’s a slew of holes to be filled, a bevy of fatal flaws to correct and not a lot of wriggle room with which to work with, but Dubas should be able to make some shrewd additions that will help bridge the gap.
After all, the Penguins missed the postseason by a single point in 2022-23 and Dubas’ excellent hockey mind should be enough to make up that difference and help engineer a return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a team that made it to the dance 16 straight years before the Ron Hextall & Brian Burke circus rode into town and torched that streak.
Most importantly, however, the Pittsburgh Penguins needed to find a perfect fit in the front office for their Big Three, someone who was going to make winning and competing for another cup the No. 1 priority while squeezing every ounce of good hockey left from Crosby, Malkin and Letang.
They have found that guy in Kyle Dubas, who is just what that trio, along with Sullivan, need right now.
Now it’s time to get to work and repair the ugly wreckage that was left from before. It won’t be easy and it may take a little time but if there’s one guy who can help lead the Penguins back to the glory days of yesteryear, it is Dubas. After all, there’s a reason why he was one one of the most in-demand hockey executives this offseason. And you can’t argue with his track record in the regular season, even if success in the Playoffs didn’t follow.
And, if he’s going to be successful and win in Pittsburgh, then he’s going to do it with The Big Three leading the charge as they have done for well over a decade now.
Ask any Penguins fan, or indeed any Pittsburgh sports fan, and they will passionately tell you that’s exactly how it should be.
Crosby, Malkin and Letang are the heartbeat of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and they are woven into the very fabric and DNA of this team. Keeping them happy, keeping them hungry, keeping them motivated and giving them as many kicks at the can when it comes to winning one more ring was always going to be a non-negotiable. That box has now been ticked and it is now up to Dubas to follow through on his promises and give them all the shiny tools they need to succeed.
