One Hard Truth Penguins Fans Need To Understand About Wanting A "Rebuild"
The Pens' window may already be closed, but retooling on the fly is way less risky than a full-on teardown.
The Penguins’ hiring of Ron Hextall as general manager is an easy one for the fans to talk themselves into. He’s a GM with a penchant for extreme patience and the ability to find and develop talent up and down the draft — an extremely welcome balm to an organization whose prospect depth consists of that gag when someone opens an empty wallet and a cartoon fly buzzes out. He also has a history of creatively clearing bad contracts and avoiding franchise-crippling unforced cap errors. In short, he’s exactly the type of executive you’d want to oversee a rebuild.
Given Hextall’s strengths and the fact that the Pens look so thoroughly mediocre right now, one might be tempted to just say, screw it: start the rebuild ASAP. The Pens are better off losing. Do the Pens really look like Cup contenders do you? What if their window is already shut? If it is, then what’s the point of fighting tooth and nail to finish in the middle? Worse still, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are both playing some of the worst hockey of their careers, and are approaching the final year in their contracts — what’s the point of trying to yet again retool this team on the fly when the stars are only gonna age in one direction?
While I don’t totally disagree with that hypothetical question-asker I was playing in the last paragraph, that mentality overlooks a hard truth that I don’t think a lot of Penguins fans clamoring for a sooner-than-later rebuild have fully grappled with. Here it is:
The Penguins are not any better at “rebuilding” than any other team in the NHL.
Brian Burke has enough ‘gruff hockey guy’ quotes to fill a page-a-day calendar, but he was dead on in 2012 when he made fun of “The Pittsburgh Model” of building a franchise:
"They got a lottery. They won a god damn lottery and they got the best player in the game. Is that available to me? Should we do that? Should we ask the League to have a lottery this year, and maybe we pick first?" he said.
"The Pittsburgh model? My ass."
Burke continued: "They got the best player in the game in a lottery. Ray Shero's done a good job. He's an excellent GM and he's a friend of mine. But I love when people talk about the Pittsburgh model. The simple fact is that they got the best player … we came in second that year in Anaheim. We got Bobby Ryan. Impact player, good player. They got Sidney Crosby in the lottery."
Burke sounds bitter and jealous, and probably is, but like all the bitter and jealous Flyers fans and Rangers fans who’ve yelled this exact thing at Pens fans celebrating their last three Cups, he’s also dead right. They didn’t become a three-Cup dynasty because the Penguins organization possesses some secret magical ability to craft a championship team that every other org besides Chicago and LA simply couldn’t replicate. They got generational players in the draft lottery, then built around them.
Yes, the Pens’ window is closing and may already be closed. Yes, Crosby and Malkin and Letang aren’t getting any younger. But if the Pens go scorched-earth and drop the R-bomb, they aren’t gonna get a “new” Crosby and Malkin in the next couple years and get to start over again. They’ll be in the same draft pool as everybody else, trying to elbow out the Kings and the Senators and the Red Wings for the Quinton Byfields and Trevor Zegrases of the world. The chances they build back up to championship-level success are no better than the chances that any other organization has of doing so. They might have a slight leg up because they have devoted fans and their owners are willing to spend to the cap, but a lot of other NHL teams spend to the cap already, plus if the Pens’ attendance drops during a rebuild (on top of the Covid losses), the payroll might not stay there forever.
It can feel foolish to say “the Pens need to retool the current roster on the fly,” especially because we’ve watched Jim Rutherford try to do that the last three years like a toddler frantically button-mashing Super Smash Bros. But getting a decent-but-aging team back to “great” has a far more plausible chance of success than prematurely starting an all-out rebuild.
The Bruins looked like they were cooked when they fired Claude Julien in 2017, following a three-year stretch where they missed the playoffs twice then had a first-round exit. Now Patrice Bergeron is 35, Brad Marchand is 32, David Krejci is 34, Tuukka Rask is 33, and the Bruins are the #2 favorites in the East. Yes, they also have David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy, but they also built back up impressive depth in a short amount of time, and they’re one of the best-coached teams in the league. Is it absolutely inconceivable that the Pens could make some shrewd moves in the next year or two during a time of unprecedented leaguewide uncertainty and return to contender status?
That doesn’t mean the Pens shouldn’t be open to big moves. Maybe they do trade Malkin and/or Letang this offseason (or sooner.) It might be tough to get a serious return for $7-9 mil guys while other teams are reeling from plummeting revenues, but maybe some owner really wants to re-open his stadium next year with Evgeni Malkin in his opening night lineup? Maybe the Pens luck into another P.O. Joseph or a Bryan Rust, and maybe their cap savings goes a lot farther in a stagnant free agent market? Maybe a new coach and suddenly-good goaltending and special teams make the team instantly feel fresher than they’ve felt in years?
All these things are entirely hypothetical and would require a ton of luck, but any rebuild would require ten times more. Look at the Sabres, or the Devils, or the Oilers. What if the Pens deliberately bottom out and end up with Nico Hischier and Pavel Zacha instead of Matthews and Marner? It could take the better part of a decade just to get the Pens back to being as competitive as they are now. “Well, those other organizations are terrible — the Pens aren’t that stupid.” Oh yeah? How would you categorize the majority of the trades and signings the Pens have made in the last three years? Did having the best player of all time in the owner’s box render the franchise incapable of making nuclear-level mistakes?
Ultimately, Pens fans shouldn’t take for granted how once-in-a-lifetime lucky we got with the last rebuild. Ron Hextall’s first task should be making this team as competitive as possible over the next couple years. It’ll take a lot more creativity than chucking away two more first round picks on decent veteran middle-6 wingers (aka, “Rutherford Plan A,”) but it’s a way more prudent course of action than rebuilding too prematurely. And if it fails, nature will take its course and the Pens will bottom-out anyway without having to try to, and can start the rebuild then. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen in the season where they already don’t have a 1st and a 3rd round pick.
Right as always, Dan