Pittsburgh Penguins president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas will meet with the media on Tuesday. Those will be his first public comments since the playoffs ended April 29.
The elephant in the room will be what the franchise plans to do with 39-year-old unrestricted free agent Evgeni Malkin.
During this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of TribLive and 105.9 The X said he is expecting Dubas to address the organizational plan for Malkin, but he admits that he has no idea which way Dubas is leaning.
“I would expect we’ll hear Tuesday. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Madden said. “I don’t think there was any chance Kyle planned before this past season started that Malkin would be back for yet another year. But he played just well enough, and the team did just well enough that there’s no easy way to get rid of him now. There’s no easy way to let a club legend walk. The captain wants him back. The fans want him back. And I don’t think the new owners are going to want to be the bad guys — carpet bagging, coming in and losing Evgeni Malkin right off the get-go.”
Whatever decision is made, Madden would prefer that it be done quickly and publicly.
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“I don’t expect he would want to drag it out like the Steelers have with Aaron Rodgers now for a second consecutive offseason,” Madden said. “Malkin definitely wants to play. We don’t know for sure about Rogers. I would think it’s cut and dried. The Penguins either want him or don’t want him.”
Madden says, from a strict hockey perspective and an organizational-building point of view, the right thing to do is to move on from Malkin, given his advancing age, increased injury risk and only moderate productivity.
However, given the delicate ecosystem of the Penguins’ veteran roster, that may not be so easy.
“In a vacuum, I for sure let him go,” Madden insisted. “This team didn’t move ahead at all developmentally at the NHL level last year. That has to happen. If you bring Malkin back, then you’re trying to squeak into the playoffs yet again. But that’s what they did. That’s what they’ll probably expect to do again in that locker room.”
Should Malkin walk or be thrust into retirement earlier than he wants, Madden fears a season-long reaction to his absence that we witnessed after Jake Guentzel was traded in 2024.
“When they traded Jake Guentzel, the locker room basically went on strike,” Madden recalled. “They went one win and seven losses on either side of the Guentzel trade. They missed the playoffs by just three points. You do the math. I think it’ll be 10 times worse if Malkin walks. It’ll be something that’s felt in that locker room and talked about all year.”
Also during the podcast, Madden and I talk about the future of the Penguins’ goaltending, more fallout from the Rodgers saga, Pirates’ pitching rotation decisions, the prospect of an 18-game NFL regular season, Great Van Fleet and more.