What Is Next For The Pittsburgh Penguins?

New front office could be forced into some decisions.

The Penguins have changed their front office, hiring Brian Burke to be President of Hockey Operations and Ron Hextall as their new General Manager.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not entirely anti-Brian Burke. I wrote quite a few pieces about his fairly ironic appearances at the Sloan Sports Athletic Conference. I have some concern about how much a Burke-run organization is going to listen to Penguins analyst Sam Ventura but they should. Sam is a smart guy and if you look at Pittsburgh’s moves under Jim Rutherford, there are some instances where they clearly would have veered away from what the analyst would tell them *cough* Jack Johnson *cough*.

Now, Burke is a blowhard at times, a bigger-than-life personality, and that’s why TV networks trip over themselves to hire him when he is not with a team.

But, Burke isn’t afraid to wheel and deal and he has been able to trade on the reputation earned by making the deals to acquire the Sedin Twins for Vancouver at the 1999 Draft and trading for Chris Pronger for the Anaheim Ducks in the summer of 2006.

He traded Luke Schenn for James van Riemsdyk.

He acquired Dion Phaneuf. Matt Stajan went the other way but Phaneuf was more of an impact player.

He traded for Phil Kessel though it famously cost the Maple Leafs the draft picks that Boston used to select Dougie Hamilton and Tyler Seguin.

So, they weren’t all hits but Burke is not afraid to take the big swings.

Hextall was fired as GM of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2018, in part because he was committed to a long-term rebuild and the Flyers executives didn’t have the stomach to wait longer.

What kind of moves did Hextall make?

He traded Brayden Schenn to St. Louis with Jori Lehtera coming back to Philadelphia. That doesn’t sound so good until you consider that they also got a pair of first-round picks that turned into Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost. That helps to level out the deal.

He moved up in the 2015 Draft so that the Flyers could select Travis Konecny, dealing first and second-round pick to Toronto to move up five spots from 29 to 24 so that they could take a Toronto kid. It worked out as the Leafs flipped the 29th pick to Columbus, who took Gabriel Carlsson and the Leafs drafted Jeremy Bracco with the second rounder. Konecny has clearly been the best of those players.

In his first deal as Flyers GM, Hextall traded fan favorite Scott Hartnell to Columbus for R.J. Umberger, saved the Flyers a little money but not a great return because Umberger had 26 points in 106 games for the Flyers before he was finished. Hartnell had three solid seasons in Columbus before finishing his career in Nashville.

The takeaway here is that, as Hextall said at his introductory press conference, the Penguins are going to try to compete this season. They are reeling right now, with an injured defense and subpar goaltending but they still have some firepower up front, at least enough to be interesting if those other pieces get sorted out.

But if the Penguins don’t advance in the playoffs and since winning the Cup in 2017 they lost in the second round, lost in the first round then, last season, lost in the qualifying round, so the trend is not positive. If they keep on that trend either by missing the playoffs or getting bounced in the first round, then maybe the Penguins will be prepared to embark on a rebuild in some fashion, with Hextall prepared to handle that kind of long-term process.

I don’t imagine the Penguins are up for dealing Sidney Crosby but who knows how it plays if the Penguins miss the playoffs this season and are prepared to go into a full rebuild. Does Crosby want to spend the last four years on his current contract swimming upstream with a rebuilding team in the hopes that they might have turned the corner again when he’s 37 years old?

Evgeni Malkin has one year left on his deal. If the Penguins miss the playoffs or lose in the first round, it would make sense for the Penguins to see what kind of deal could be had. Malkin has no-move protection, so he could call his shot, but if the Penguins could get some quality rebuilding pieces in return, it would be worth exploring. Trouble is, when players with no-move deals are traded, the return often ends up being underwhelming because the acquiring team knows that they have the dealing team over a barrel.

Kris Letang is in a similar spot, one year left on his deal after this season.

The challenge for the Penguins is that, if they are pressed to rebuild as soon as this offseason, they have two picks in the first six rounds of the 2021 Draft. They have deal first, third, fourth and sixth-round picks, leaving Pittsburgh with a second, fifth and three seventh-round picks.

They do have their full complement of picks for the next two drafts so they would be poised for a real rebuilding process beyond this summer but Burke and Hextall are moving into a challenging situation, one in which they might want to contend and go for it now but it also might not be long before they have to swallow hard and start making serious moves for the future. Maybe that’s a couple years down the road, maybe it’s six months from now.

BEWARE HIGH PERCENTAGES

Players do not have a great deal of control over how other players on the ice shoot the puck so the players that are benefitting from an unusually high on-ice shooting percentage during 5-on-5 play are more likely to see regression coming.

Some of these players are not fantasy relevant but the ones that are could be hard-pressed to maintain a hot start. From the looks of this list, beware the Flyers.

Here are the players with the highest 5-on-5 shooting percentage this season:

Kasperi Kapanen, RW, Pittsburgh (21.1 OiSH%)

2 G, 4 A in 8 GP

Scott Laughton, C, Philadelphia (19.6 OiSH%)

4 G, 5 A in 13 GP

James van Riemsdyk, LW, Philadelphia (19.1 OiSH%)

7 G, 11 A in 13 GP

Justin Schultz, D, Washington (19.1 OiSH%)

2 G, 4 A in 8 GP

Tom Wilson, RW, Washington (18.8 OiSH%)

5 G, 7 A in 10 GP

Robert Thomas, C, St. Louis (18.3 OiSH%)

1 G, 5 A in 12 GP

Alexander Radulov, RW, Dallas (17.8 OiSH%)

3 G, 8 A in 8 GP

Matt Tennyson, D, New Jersey (17.5 OiSH%)

0 G, 1 A in 9 GP

Joel Farabee, RW, Philadelphia (17.1 OiSH%)

6 G, 6 A in 13 GP

Shayne Gostisbehere, D, Philadelphia (17.0 OiSH%)

0 G, 1 A in 7 GP

Jakub Voracek, RW, Philadelphia (16.9 OiSH%)

3 G, 9 A in 13 GP

Chandler Stephenson, C, Vegas (16.3 OisH%)

4 G, 3 A in 10 GP

Michael Raffl, LW, Philadelphia (15.7 OiSH%)

2 G, 3 A in 13 GP

Justin Braun D, Philadelphia (15.4 OiSH%)

0 G, 1 A in 13 GP

Zach Hyman, LW, Toronto (15.1 OiSH%)

3 G, 4 A in 13 GP

Erik Gustafsson, D, Philadelphia (15.0 OiSH%)

0 G, 7 A in 11 GP

TUESDAY STARS

TB RW Steven Stamkos 2 G, 1 A in a 6-1 win at Nashville

LA RW Dustin Brown 2 G, 1 A in a 4-3 SO loss to San Jose

WPG LW Nikolaj Ehlers 2 G in a 3-2 loss at Calgary

TB RW Mathieu Joseph 2 G in a 6-1 win at Nashville

TUESDAY GAMES

Detroit 1 Florida 2

FLA RW Patric Hornqvist 1 G, 1 A (6 G, 4 A in 10 GP)

FLA LW Jonathan Huberdeau 2 A (3 G, 7 A in past 6 GP)

FLA G Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 31 of 32 shots for the victory. (.899 SV% in 5 GP)

Tampa Bay 6 Nashville 1

TB RW Steven Stamkos 2 G, 1 A (5 G, 3 A in past 6 GP)

TB RW Mathieu Joseph 2 G

TB C Brayden Point 3 A (2 G, 7 A during a 6-game point streak)

TB D Mikhail Sergachev 3 A (8 A in past 6 GP)

TB D Victor Hedman 2 A (2 G, 5 A in past 6 G)

TB D Mikhail Sergachev was on the ice for three goals for and none against during 5-on-5 play.

Edmonton 3 Ottawa 2

EDM LW Jujhar Khaira 2 A (1 G, 3 A in past 4 GP)

EDM G MIkko Koskinen stopped 40 of 42 shots for the win.(.895 SV% in 13 starts.)

Despite positive shot differentials, OTT C Josh Norris and OTT LW Tim Stutzle were on the ice for all three goals against.

Winnipeg 2 Calgary 3

WPG LW Nikolaj Ehlers 2 G (8 G, 6 A in 12 GP)

WPG RW Andrew Copp 2 A (4 G, 8 A in 12 GP)

CGY G Jacob Markstrom stopped 25 of 27 shots in the win. (.916 SV% in 10 GP)

Chicago 2 Dallas 1 (OT)

CHI G Kevin Lankinen stopped 34 of 35 shots for the win. (.933 SV% in nine starts.)

San Jose 4 Los Angeles 3 (SO)

LA RW Dustin Brown 2 G, 1 A (4 G, 3 A in past 5 GP)

LA LW Alex Iafallo 2 A (2 G, 5 A in past 9 GP)

SJ C Logan Couture 1 G, 1 A plus the shootout winner for the Sharks. (4 G, 2 A in past 5 GP)

Anaheim 4 Vegas 5

VGK C Chandler Stephenson 1 G, 1 A (3 G, 1 A in past 2 GP)

VGK C Cody Glass 2 A (2 G, 4 A in past 6 GP)

ANA RW Troy Terry 1 G, 1 A (2 G, 2 A in past 3 GP)

ANA D Kevin Shattenkirk 2 A (3 A in past 2 GP)

VGK D Alec Martinez was on the ice for four goals for and none against.

ANA D Cam Fowler was on the ice for three goals against.

TUESDAY SHOTS/EXPECTED GOALS (Via Natural Stat Trick)

WEDNESDAY GAME PROBABILITIES

WEDNESDAY DFS VALUE PLAYS

Skaters Under $5000 on DraftKings

BOS C David Krejci $4100 at NYR

MTL C Jesperi Kotkaniemi $3600 vs. TOR

TOR RW William Nylander $4900 at MTL

BOS LW Nick Ritchie $4200 at NYR

BOS D Charlie McAvoy $4600 at NYR

TOR D Jake Muzzin $4000 at MTL

BOS G Jaroslav Halak or Tuukka Rask, both $8200 at NYR