Kyle Dubas was ambiguous.

But hardly in denial.

During his season-opening press conference in Cranberry as training camp came to a conclusion in October, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ president of hockey operations was asked about the future of defenseman Marcus Pettersson, the team’s most prominent pending unrestricted free agent.

He didn’t really offer much substantive. But there was an open acknowledgment that the Penguins, two years removed from their most recent postseason appearance, had to manage assets correctly so that the franchise could get back to playing meaningful hockey in the spring.

“The key is to protect all of our options as we go through the (season),” Dubas said. “Marcus is a key guy for us. I think we will treat him a little differently. He and (forward Drew O’Connor), I put in that case of treating them a little bit differently as we go through it.”

Dubas and the Penguins didn’t even get through January before they opted to jettison Pettersson and O’Connor, another pending unrestricted free agent, via a trade.

In the late hours of Friday (the final day of January), the Penguins sent Pettersson and O’Connor to the Vancouver Canucks.

In exchange, they got back a pair of assets aimed at boosting the franchise’s future as well as a pair of mundane NHL veterans simply to balance out the numbers from Vancouver’s end.

Most prominently, the Penguins acquired a conditional first-round pick in the trade. The selection was originally property of the New York Rangers until Friday evening when it was sent to the Canucks as part of a blockbuster trade that saw forward J.T. Miller, a native of Coraopolis, land in Manhattan.

However, conditions of that trade call for protection in the event it is a top-13 selection in this year’s draft. If that condition is triggered, the pick slides to 2026 with no protection.

Currently, the Rangers sit in 22nd place of the NHL’s overall standings, a position that could potentially translate to the 11th overall selection in this year’s draft.

The other future asset the Penguins acquired was forward prospect Melvin Fernstrom.

The 18-year-old was a third-round selection (No. 93 overall) of the Canucks in last year’s draft. A native of Sweden, Fernstrom (6-foot-1, 185 pounds) is currently a member of Orebro of the Swedish Hockey League. In 35 games with that club, the right-hander has eight points (three goals, five assists).

He has yet to sign an NHL contract. The Penguins are scheduled to retain Fernstrom’s NHL rights until June 1, 2028.

Also coming to Pittsburgh are veteran forward Danton Heinen, previously a member of the club, and defenseman Vincent Desharnais. The Penguins likely took them on in order to facilitate the trade from the Canucks’ end with regards to contract and salary cap limitations.

Heinen returns to the Penguins after spending the past two seasons with the Boston Bruins and Canucks. This season, Heinen has played in 50 games and scored 17 points (six goals, 11 assists) while averaging 13:58 of ice time.

Before the trade, Heinen was in the lineup for the Canucks on Friday during a 5-3 road loss to the Dallas Stars, recording an assist.

The left-handed Heinen, 29, spent the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns with the Penguins. His career-high for goals (18) came in 76 games with the Penguins during the 2021-22 season.

He is in the first year of a two-year contract with a salary cap hit of $2.25 million.

On the blue line, the massive Desharnais (6-foot-7, 226 pounds) has appeared in 34 games this season and has three assists while averaging 15:58 of ice time per contest. And as evidenced by his 34 penalty minutes, Desharnais offers a physical element.

He has been a healthy scratch for 17 games this season, including the Canucks’ three most recent contests.

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The 28-year-old is in his third NHL season. A seventh-round pick (No. 183 overall) of the Edmonton Oilers in 2016, Desharnais was a member of the Oilers team that reached the Stanley Cup Final last season, appearing in 16 of a possible 25 postseason contests.

A right-handed shot, Desharnais is in the first year of a two-year contract with a salary cap hit of $2 million.

Pettersson and O’Connor were each brought to the Penguins under former general manager Jim Rutherford, currently the Canucks’ president of hockey operations.

The 28-year-old Pettersson (6-foot-5, 174 pounds) was in his seventh season with the Penguins having initially joined the club via a trade with the Anaheim Ducks in December of 2018. Appearing in 47 games this season, Pettersson had 18 points (three goals, 15 assists) while averaging 22:03 of ice time.

He was typically deployed on a pairing with defenseman Erik Karlsson while also a key component of the penalty kill.

Pettersson is in the final year of five year contract with a salary cap hit of $4,025,175.

An undrafted free agent signing out of Dartmouth in 2020, O’Connor, 27, is in his fifth NHL season, all with the Penguins until this point. In 53 games this season, he has scored 16 points (six goals, 10 assists) while averaging 14:27 of ice time per contest.

Due in part to inconsistency, O’Connor’s role had varied this season as he found ice time on all four lines as well as the penalty kill.

The left-handed O’Connor (6-foot-4, 209 pounds) is in the second year of a two-year contract with a salary cap hit of $925,000.

According to Puckpedia, the Penguins now have $6,000,524 of salary cap space following this transaction. They have 49 active contracts for the ongoing season, one short of the NHL limit of 50.

The Penguins enter February with a 21-24-8 record and 50 points, figures that have them sitting in ninth place (next to last) of the Eastern Conference Wild Card standings. And with the NHL’s trade deadline just over a month away on March 7, they no longer have their two most prominent pending unrestricted free agents on the payroll.

Even before Friday’s transaction, a third consecutive season without playoff hockey was likely for the Penguins.

However, Friday’s trade does potentially create opportunities on the NHL roster for some of the organization’s better prospects currently with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League such as forwards Vasily Ponomarev and Ville Koivunen as well as defenseman Owen Pickering.

If any of them were promoted, that would be congruent with how Dubas wanted to approach his stated goal in October.

“What we’re going to try to accomplish this season and what our goal is to be playing very meaningful hockey in March, April and beyond,” Dubas said. “If our group can come together, if we can always channel back and protect those core foundational principles of the Penguins - develop everybody internally, have our younger players start to push from (Wilkes-Barre/Scranton) up and get the most out of everybody that’s in our building - we can accomplish that this season.”

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