On Wednesday, Pittsburgh Penguins GM and POHO Kyle Dubas made a pretty drastic move to try and reverse the fortunes of his team, which has fallen further down the Eastern Conference standings since the holiday break.
By waiving starting goaltender Tristan Jarry – the same goaltender he extended to a five-year, $26.88 million contract in the summer of 2023 – Dubas both showed a sense of urgency to right the ship this season and a desire to move toward the future of the franchise at the goaltending position. By extension, he also took responsibility for his mistake in signing Jarry to that term and dollar figure in the first place.
He even said as much when he met with the media on Wednesday following the decision:
Dubas was asked if today is more difficult given it was his decision to extend Jarry in summer 2023. He took ownership; said part of the job is to try and rectify these situations instead of prolonging/forcing them, and cautioned against writing the obituary too quick. Quote ⬇️ https://t.co/GKEc5sujpb pic.twitter.com/efQY5lT6ww
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) January 15, 2025
Dubas’s decision to, in a sense, move on from Jarry and look to the future in rookie Joel Blomqvist isn’t just indicative of a direction for goaltending. It’s also an overt reminder of the direction he’s taking the franchise – as well as the pace of that direction – in all facets.
Let’s get one thing straight off the bat: Dubas’s moves in his first summer need to be looked at from a different lens than those since then. When he arrived in Pittsburgh during the summer of 2023, the team had just missed the playoffs for the first time since 2006. At the time, the Penguins still weren’t a team that was ready to fully pivot toward rebuilding.
That’s why folks saw moves like the Erik Karlsson and Reilly Smith trades that summer. Even the Jarry extension and the Ryan Graves signings were made with that mindset, even though neither ended up working out. At the time, Graves and Jarry were the best available options on the market. At the time, Dubas was trying to get back to the playoffs in 2023-24.
However, when it became apparent around the 2024 trade deadline that the playoffs were not likely to happen, it was a bit of a turning point. And that is the point where the shift went from trying to eke out a final Cinderella run to rebuilding for the future.
That turning point materialized when Dubas decided to trade the organization’s most prized valuable trade asset, Jake Guentzel, to the Carolina Hurricanes for Michael Bunting, prospects Vasily Ponomarev, Ville Koivunen, Cruz Lucius, and a conditional first-round pick that ended up being Harrison Brunicke. Although there didn’t end up being a 2024 first-rounder – since the condition wasn’t met – all of this ended up being a pretty good return for an unrestricted free agent who didn’t even end up signing with the team he was dealt to.
That Guentzel trade was the first sign that Dubas was ready to focus on the future and getting the team back to true contention as soon as possible. But “true contention” doesn’t mean that he intends for the team to be non-competitive for years.
No. Look at the writing on the wall. Dubas is stockpiling draft picks – he already has 10 picks in 2025 and figures to have even more once the 2025 trade deadline passes – and he has expressed the desire to acquire young talent, prospects, and draft picks in that order.
If he wants assets in that particular order, this is not indicative of a plan for the team to compete only in five-plus years, and not even in two to four years. Instead, this indicates that the rebuild on-the-fly he is attempting to execute should start to bear fruit as soon as next season.
It indicates that his first target window is in one to two years – not beyond two years.
What we’re seeing here from Dubas appears to be a “two-window” plan: a rebuild on-the-fly effort to make the team competitive enough to, possibly, make one more run while Sidney Crosby is still in Pittsburgh – which is just two more seasons at this point – and also an effort to ensure that, once Crosby hangs up the skates, the transitional period is as short as possible.
So, Dubas’s plan is actually a short- and long-term rebuild. Right now, they’re taking chances on younger talent that has fallen out of favor with their respective organizations – Cody Glass and Philip Tomasino, for example – while either giving up nothing of consequence or receiving more draft capital in the process.
And, yes, some of that draft capital is going to be used to draft talent – as it should be. But Dubas isn’t going to draft 10-15 players in 2025. He’s going to sell off some of that capital – perhaps even that mid-2025 first-round pick in a draft that isn’t very deep for one of those legitimate young talents in the league – in order to bolster the current NHL roster with legitimate young talent.
More of the moves over the summer are indicative of this “two-window” approach as well. He took on salary to trade for Kevin Hayes – as well as Glass – and got picks in the process. He signed guys on one-year contracts such as Matt Grzelcyk and Anthony Beauvillier – both players he should be able to flip for picks at the deadline because of their net-positive performances this season.
In hindsight, even the move to re-sign goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic – a head-scratcher at the time – made some degree of sense, especially when looking through the lens of Jarry. If the organization was unsure about Jarry heading into the season, signing Nedeljkovic as insurance – and as a veteran to be able to mentor a young goaltender in Blomqvist, who was primed to get the call if Jarry didn’t work out – definitely tracks. His two-year term also tracks from that perspective.
Finally, the top prospect swap to acquire forward Rutger McGroarty from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for forward Brayden Yager also backs up this “two-window” approach. If Dubas did not care about building a winner in the short-term, this trade doesn’t really make all that much sense. He traded for a more NHL-ready prospect who should be primed to help the Penguins win games an entire year or two sooner than Yager could have.
The short-term, rebuild on-the-fly window is one to two years. The longer-term window is three to five years. Stockpiling draft capital both to draft and to acquire young talent is paramount to both windows.
Using some of that excess 2025 draft capital will help them acquire more NHL-ready young talent now, while keeping higher-value capital for a deep 2026 NHL Draft will – presumably – help them draft potentially elite talent.
And, in addition to all of that, they already have short- and long-term help on the brink of full-time arrival.
Blomqvist and defensive prospect Owen Pickering have already arrived and have made some degree of impact on the NHL club. Here are some other prospects who may be on track to get a long look at the NHL level within the next year or two:
– McGroarty
– Koivunen
– Ponomarev
– Brunicke
– Forward Tristan Broz
– Defenseman Emil Pieniniemi
– Goaltender Filip Larsson
– Goaltender Sergei Murashov
In combination with the mix of veterans in Crosby, Nedeljkovic, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, and Kris Letang, this is a decent crop of young players who could, conceivably, help the NHL team win games next season. There are four forwards, two defensemen, and two goaltenders just within this group, and there are still other wild cards – such forward Avery Hayes and defenseman Isaac Belliveau – who could also find themselves in the mix.
And when the Penguins’ veterans are ready to move on, either in trades or in retirement, there will already be a decent young core of forwards, goaltenders, and defensemen – and, perhaps, another young talent acquired via trade – in place when the Penguins are drafting high for an elite center or two. This, in turn, should help minimize the long-term window.
Of course, not all prospects pan out. The Washington Capitals drafted well and also got lucky on that front, at least so far. And a team like that also has the benefit of two veteran, cap-eating players in T.J. Oshie and Nicklas Backstrom being stashed on long-term injured reserve so they were able to acquire players like Jakob Chychrun and Andrew Mangiapane to accelerate their rebuild on-the-fly.
The Penguins need at least two-thirds of those on-the-brink prospects to turn out, and they will need to navigate their way around mistake contracts like Jarry’s and Graves’s, which won’t be an easy task.
But the cap is going up next season. They’ll have a crop of cheap young talent. They’ll have picks galore to both draft with and leverage. And they’ll have one more shot with the entire veteran core still around, as Malkin’s contract is set to expire at the end of the 2025-26 season.
If Dubas can get the 2025 summer right – as well as the 2025 trade deadline – these Penguins could be a competitive team next season, and their window of tanking could be minimized to one or two seasons when Crosby finally decides to call it a career.
The Penguins’ GM – just a year and a half into his tenure – isn’t beyond mistakes, and he’s made some. But, he’s done more good than bad, and he has a tangible, “two-window” plan to smoothly transition this team into the future.
Therefore, it’s only fair to wait and see if he is able to follow through on that plan, and – when the time comes a year or two from now – exercise judgment on his body of work when the plan comes to a head.
For now, we wait to see what else he has up his sleeve.
