Time for Penguins to stop fighting the inevitable and accept that it’s over

Credit: Nov 2, 2024; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby (87) talks with linesman Andrew Smith (51) against the Montreal Canadiens during the third period at PPG Paints Arena. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

No one will ever confuse Sidney Crosby with a dishonest man. He’s an all-time ambassador of the sport for a reason, as earnest and genuine an athlete as you’ll ever meet.

But his belief in his own words had to be, at the very least, pushed to its limit when, speaking to a small group of us reporters in September, he expressed optimism over his Pittsburgh Penguins making the playoffs in 2024-25.

“Obviously we were pretty close the last couple of years, a point or two, two years in a row, which stings,” he said. “If you get that extra two points and you get in the playoffs, you’re feeling way different about it than if you come up short… Personally, the way I look at it is, if we can find some way to get over that hump and get into the playoffs where we haven’t, trying to use some of the momentum that we finished with last year would be great. We finished really strong.”

He was right in the sense that, every year, a tiny moment here and there can separate a team from a Wildcard berth and the golf course. But he also wasn’t factoring in that, he, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson played 82 games apiece last season, an astonishing feat for a quartet of thirtysomething future Hall of Famers known to miss noteworthy chunks of games for maintenance most years.

The Pens’ greybeard veterans were their best players last season, and they all performed at or near the peak of their abilities relative to their ages. Power-play woes aside, one could argue everything went as well as it possibly could have for the 2023-24 Pens, and it wasn’t enough to yield a playoff berth. A 16-year playoff streak gave way to two consecutive playoff misses. As a response, the team’s biggest editions were center Kevin Hayes, defenseman Matt Grzelcyk and prospect Rutger McGroarty, so it was difficult to envision a different fate this time around, as much as Crosby wanted to believe otherwise.

We’re now 14 games into Pittsburgh’s season, and where do things stand? Crosby is still Crosby, on pace to pass Wayne Gretzky and set a standalone NHL record with a 20^th consecutive point-per-game season. Malkin is scoring at a 94-point pace. They along with Karlsson and Letang have played every game. And it has resulted in…a 5-7-2 record. Déjà vu of last season. The Pens continue to receive age-defying contributions from their veteran players and very little help from the rest of the roster. The Pens are paying, of course, for years of punting first-round picks and prospects in the name of Stanley Cup pursuit – which, for the record, was an absolutely worthwhile endeavor for then-GM Jim Rutherford. It certainly doesn’t help that $5.375 million goaltender Tristan Jarry is utterly broken, currently trying to repair his game in the AHL. The Pens have elite special teams so far this season, but they bleed goals and at 5-on-5, ranking among bottom dwellers such as the San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks and Montreal Canadiens when it comes to scoring chance suppression and expected goals against.

The Pens haven’t had banged-up right winger Bryan Rust for every game, which hurts, but this edition of the Penguins is pretty close to a finished product. Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis ranked Pittsburgh’s farm crop as the league’s 24^th-best over the summer. McGroarty projects to be an impactful player in their top six given his two-way smarts, energy and scoring touch, but he’s no franchise savior. Defenseman Owen Pickering is just cutting his teeth as a pro in the AHL and could still be a year or two away from full-time NHL readiness. Goaltender Joel Blomqvist was a revelation to open the year but dropped his three most recent starts, surrendering 12 goals. He’s a fine prospect but isn’t going to move the needle enough this season.

So there’s no significant help coming from within in the short term. What we see is what we get, and there’s likely no saving it for GM Kyle Dubas or head coach Mike Sullivan. The Penguins are the second-oldest and fourth-smallest team in the NHL and have very little upside given their best players are already playing well and staying healthy.

The saddest element to the team’s downfall: so many people saw this coming. I’m a broken record this point; in the past half decade, I repeatedly suggested the Penguins would’ve been better off admitting defeat and tanking for a couple years. Had they been realistic, they might have been rising back up around now, building a dangerous team blending youthful talent and veteran support while Crosby and Co. still had good years left.

But what’s done is done. Rutherford didn’t want to rebuild, nor did his successor Ron Hextall, nor did the Penguins’ core players.

So the question is: where do the Penguins go from here?

They do have some nice draft capital for once, already equipped with 10 picks for 2025, including three third-rounders. That’s a start. But if they really want to bring about meaningful change, Dubas has to consider serious decisions. For one: defenseman Marcus Pettersson is a pending 2025 UFA. As a big minute-muncher who can play a shutdown role, he’d attract significant interest if the Pens were willing to trade him rather than extend him; if Sean Walker fetched a first-round pick for the Philadelphia Flyers last year, Pettersson would do the same. Third-line, ahem, second-line center Lars Eller is an easy sell, a pending UFA with a Stanley Cup ring.

Beyond them: it’s a matter of how bold Dubas is willing to be. Maybe it’s too sacrilegious to entertain anything involving franchise legend Malkin, who has one year left on his deal after this one, but there could be a market for a two-year rental of left winger Michael Bunting.

Moving names like those would at least place the Pens on the path to acceptance. But much of their current roster construction hamstrings them. Rght winger Rickard Rakell is 31 and has three years remaining on his deal beyond this season at a $5 million AAV; the Pens are saddled with four more seasons of disappointing 2023 signee Ryan Graves at $4.5 million per. A Karlsson selloff doesn’t feel overly realistic during the season; he has two years left with the Pens carrying $10 million of his cap hit.

The truth: Dubas can net a few useful assets this season, but this franchise and its iconic captain need to understand that they’re entering dark days. It feels like the Penguins have been swimming against the current since they last won a playoff series in 2018. Instead of thrashing to stay afloat, it’s time to surrender, sink to the bottom and start thinking about the 2025 NHL Draft lottery.

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Time for Penguins to stop fighting the inevitable and accept that it’s over

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