Kyle Dubas knows what is said about the club he is charged with crafting and steering.
After two seasons of being a spectator for the playoffs — and six springs without a postseason series victory — the external view of the Pittsburgh Penguins isn’t what it once was.
And it might be a long time before it reaches that level of the stratosphere again.
Dubas, who occupies the organization’s roles of president of hockey operations and general manager, is fully aware of the manuscript many already have begun to type on the 2024-25 Penguins.
And he would love to force a complete rewrite.
“If the expectation is that this chapter of the Penguins is going to go the same place as the previous two chapters, that it will lead to a story that will slowly draw this era of the Penguins to a close,” Dubas said. “The way I look at that is that this season and this chapter represents our chance to change this story.
“If we can simply channel our foundational principles of the Penguins, our competitive spirit, development and controlling games and controlling emotions, I think we’ll have an extremely successful season, and we’ll meet all the goals that we’ve set for ourselves this year.
Those goals are vague. But obvious.
“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. “But I think that everyone in the building knows the season is going to be hard. We don’t come in with any preconceived notions anymore that we’re going to walk in and be a favorite or we’re going to walk in and strike fear into anybody. We’re going to have to earn that.”
That process will begin when the Penguins host the New York Rangers in the season opener at PPG Paints Arena.
On Monday, Dubas staged his season-opening media availability and fielded queries on a variety of topics, including his team’s impending unrestricted free agents, the injection of youth into the organization and the highly scrutinized power play.
• Defenseman Marcus Pettersson, arguably the team’s best defensive entity on the blue line, is a pending unrestricted free agent in the 2025 offseason.
During the 2023-24 campaign, the Penguins dealt with the possibility of All-Star forward Jake Guentzel, then a pending unrestricted free agent, potentially being traded until he actually was dealt away in March.
Do the Penguins face any sort of similar dynamic with the 28-year-old Pettersson or the team’s other pending free agents this season, such as 26-year-old forward Drew O’Connor?
“Marcus, to me, represents everything that the Penguins want to be about,” Dubas said. “He’s extraordinarily competitive. He’s gotten the absolute most out of himself here and developed into an extraordinarily steady defenseman. He’s zero maintenance. He works his butt off every day. Great teammate that people love to be around. You never hear anything about him from my end other than you watch him on the ice. He makes stops, continues to evolve with his puck play. That’s Marcus the player.
“With regards to the contract situations of all of our unrestricted free agents, I think the best course for us with where we are at right now, we have to look at them all case-by-case and where we are at and where we are going. I think we will have, for us the key is to protect all of our options as we go through the year. See how our young guys are evolving and developing as some of you have seen here throughout camp and measure that as we go. Marcus is a key guy for us. I think we will treat him a little differently. He and Drew, I put in that case of treating a little bit differently as we go through it. It’s not the clearest answer that you wanted, but that’s really how we view it.”
Arguably, Dubas’s biggest transaction this past offseason was acquiring 20-year-old forward prospect Rutger McGroarty from the Winnipeg Jets in August. A first-round draft pick (No. 14 overall) in 2022, McGroarty, was included on the season-opening roster the team announced Tuesday.
“He’s earned that,” Dubas said. “There was nothing guaranteed to him whatsoever. I thought from (September’s Prospects Challenge event in Buffalo) all the way during camp and every practice, every single game, he continued to get better and better as the level raised. I think more so than his skill set, it’s his intelligence and his instincts and his strength and his ability to make reads and make plays, even defensively. It’s not always the highlight-reel stuff that you see in other markets on their prospects. It’s just solid hockey.
“He’s just a hockey player. I know that gets thrown around a lot, but that, to me, is what he is. He’s smart, he’s competitive, and that was why we wanted to make the trade for him.”
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Dubas also cited forwards Tristan Broz and Ville Koivunen as well defenseman Owen Pickering — all assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League — as impressing him throughout training camp and the preseason.
• Offensive contributions from the team’s bottom-six forwards has been an issue for several seasons, even going back to the tenures of previous general managers Ron Hextall and Jim Rutherford.
Dubas addressed that area with some low-risk signings of players such as Anthony Beauvillier, Cody Glass and a trade for Kevin Hayes.
He is optimistic about what that group can provide.
“What we want to do is get away from the pure, bottom-six, have-to-defend (types of players), Dubas said. “We need to score in that group. We need to defend our (butts) off with that group … but we want them to be guys who are able to produce, as well. That’s going to include when younger guys start to come up, you don’t just want to jam a skilled young guy into a fourth line, where it starts in the defensive zone, hunt the puck out, change. We want those guys to start to be able to use their skill and talent.
“Cody’s a great example. He’s been an offensive guy his entire life. He’s come in here and he’s done a lot of good things five-on-five, especially later in camp during exhibition games. He’s also been very good on the penalty kill and has sort of adapted to being a power-play guy your whole life. He’s got it quick. The push is that that group will provide us, obviously, with the same staunch defensive play but we tried to add guys that (have) deeper offensive history there, as well. We need the goals.”
Dubas is high on the potential of the power play, now under the watch of assistant coach David Quinn, who was hired in June.
“I know a lot will be written and watched and especially if the first power play on Wednesday night doesn’t go well and the fans get antsy,” Dubas quipped. “That’s just the nature psychologically with power plays and interaction with the fan base in every single city. In our case, because of the talent that’s there, I think it gets a little bit more pronounced and the narrative because how can these guys not find a way to put it together?
“It’s on the players, it’s on the coaching staff, it’s on us to continue to work our way around it. The guys, you see the way they’re practicing the power play. They’re upset with themselves. They’re upset with others. They know that it’s important to get it going. We can’t get too tense with it. … We had a number of good (power-play chances) in the preseason and we didn’t score. But the flow and the motion and what we were creating off of the power play was excellent. … Sometimes, you get hot at the beginning. Sometimes, it’s rough. But I think in the end, knowing the amount of focus they’re putting into it, they’ll find a way.”
• Another prospect who will open the season on the NHL roster is goaltender Joel Blomqvist. With incumbent backup Alex Nedeljkovic on injured reserve, Blomqvist, an AHL All-Star last season, will back up starter Tristan Jarry for a few weeks.
“Joel had a great year last year,” Dubas said. “His season last year earned him the right — if this situation were to occur — to be able to come in and start to go. The thing I like about Joel … obviously, the first preseason game in Buffalo (a 7-3 loss on June 21) was a struggle and then he was able to steady himself and then turn in very good performances throughout the rest of the preseason. So, that’s what I like about Joel, and I’m excited for him. It’s a great opportunity for him that he’s earned.
• Dubas’ first major free agent signing with the Penguins was defenseman Ryan Graves, who he inked to a six-year contract worth $4.5 million a season in the 2023 offseason.
After Graves’ disappointing 2023-24 campaign, Dubas had frank but optimistic words about him in April and called on him to have a “massive summer.”
How does Graves look after this summer?
“Well, number one, he came back into camp in excellent condition,” Dubas said. “That was apparent from his testing. So Ryan put in the time and work in the offseason. He’s a player that’s been in the league for a long time now, so I don’t put a ton into preseason or exhibition with him. I think the goal of the coaching staff was to get him and others up and running fast, get them a lot of action early on. I thought that was effective to get him up and running.
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“Today he’s paired with (defenseman Jack St. Ivany). It just gives us a really solid pair defensively that should be able to be very effective, kill penalties. In terms of the role, I expect him to play where he was at when he came in from New Jersey, which was in between 19 and 20 minutes a night at even strength and on the penalty kill. And my expectation is that he’s going to do that and have a good season for us here. He spent a lot of time with (Quinn) early in camp and on the ice. He’s very attentive to it.
“He’s a proud professional. He wants to come in and have a good season, and we’ll get going on Wednesday night and he’ll have more than enough opportunity to get moving in the right direction. He’s a wonderful kid, and he’s put the work in, so I’m optimistic that he will.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.