NHL Off-Season Rankings: No. 11, Pittsburgh Penguins
In this series from TheHockeyNews.com, we're rating the off-seasons of each NHL team. Today we focus on team No. 11, the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Penguins have a great core of old stars, but do they have enough young talent to remain a Stanley Cup playoff team?
Video Transcript
I'm not ruling out another move from Kyle Dubas.
He does famously like to make trades in August.
So, we'll see.
We still have a little bit of August runway in front of us.
But also too, I mean, Kyle Dubas said this, during the draft, they tried to make a few moves, they tried to dabble in the market, they tried to go big game hunting as, as was suggested, but it just didn't work out.
The prices were too high.
They weren't willing to pay what was necessary to get some of these guys.
And we saw Washington add guys like Alex Tuch, Jordan Kyrou.
So there's teams around them improving in the division.
They've made minimal improvements to their roster, I think.
I think Nick Robertson, Andrei Kuzmenko are both upside guys.
Kuzmenko might be able to replicate Mantas' production, if put in a position to succeed and if he's healthy.
So I mean, they've done enough to replace some of what they lost last year.
But we also have to remember that last season, Kyle Dubas, I don't know how he wasn't in the GM of the Year conversation last year because all of the moves he made last season panned out.
You talk about Parker Wotherspoon moving to the Vegas Golden Knights for Kaiden Korczak.
Parker Wotherspoon was a chance signing that he took, worked out.
They traded for Artur Shelevs.
That ended up working out for them pretty well, he signed another deal to remain with the team this year.
So I think a lot of the same kinds of moves were made this summer to kind of take, take a chance on a guy kind of moves.
We saw the Ville Koivunen contract.
We saw the Igor Kochetkov contract.
So they have some pieces, but they still need that guy.
They still need a superstar.
They're going to have young players pushing.
That's another thing I don't think Dubas has necessarily gotten enough credit for, is how he's built out this prospect pool for the Penguins.
They have a lot of NHL-type talent, not necessarily superstar talent, but there are a lot of guys that should be on the NHL roster, starting this season.
So they're gonna have to have a combination of a youth push, some of these guys panning out, but also they still need to make that big splash.
They have the assets to do it.
So I do expect something at some point this season, whether that's before the deadline, sometime on a random day in November, who knows?
But I, I do think something else is coming, especially if, they start off the season pretty well here.
