Pittsburgh Penguins will hire both President of Hockey Ops and GM

The Pittsburgh Penguins ended the longest postseason streak in the NHL when they missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since captain Sidney Crosby was a rookie.

Pittsburgh’s ownership did away with Brian Burke and Ron Hextall due to their inability to continue the team’s winning culture, but the Penguins will still employ a general manager and president of hockey operations next season. Those two people, whoever they are, will make or break the immediate future of the NHL’s oldest, most desperate roster. On Wednesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, Daily Faceoff hockey insider Frank Seravalli intimated some new details about Pittsburgh’s leadership search.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s head over to Pittsburgh. There’s some talk that maybe they will structure this front office in a non-traditional way, and there has been some debate over what they could do. What are you hearing on the Penguins?

Frank Seravalli: I’m told that the Penguins will go with the same exact structure they had previously. That was the debate: do you just go with one overarching person after having both Brian Burke and Ron Hextall as president of hockey ops and general manager? It appears that they’re going to stick with that formula moving forward.

The Penguins will hire a president and a general manager; they’re going to be two separate positions. On top of that, I believe the Penguins, who have been very quiet throughout this process, are nearing the end of their first round of interviews. 

I’m going to throw a list of some of the names that have been in the mix. Some of these candidates are for GM, others are for president of hockey operations, so they are speaking to quite a long list of people. Those include: Marc Bergevin, former GM of the Montreal Canadiens, Jason Botterill, current assistant GM for the Seattle Kraken, John Chayka who is also in the Flyers’ search, Mathieu Darche from the Tampa Bay Lightning, and one other name in the mix is Ryan Martin, assistant GM for the New York Rangers. 

Those are some of the people I have heard are in the mix. That’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but just gives some insight into what they’re thinking and some of the names that have popped up.

You can watch the entire episode here…