PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – The Penguins have their scapegoats, and not without merit, firing their top three involved with the on-ice product a day after the first non-playoff season in 17 years concluded.
President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke, General Manager Ron Hextall and Assistant GM Chris Pryor are out. Absolutely justified. What really seemed lacking was a clear plan for what they wanted to be and how they were going to accomplish it. Hextall was known as a rebuilder, a guy with a good sense of young players. Burke, 67, was an old school former GM with several stops, the highlight was the Anaheim Stanley Cup championship in 2007 when he was the general manager. He was the NHL Executive of the Year that season.
Burke and Hextall talked of many things that fans wanted to hear, and that they honestly tried to accomplish, but that ran in opposition.
· They would get tougher and bigger, even though their head coach wanted a speed game.
· They wanted to play for the future, yet win now. A very tough situation to navigate in a salary cap world
· They decided to keep the group together, yet wouldn’t go all-in trading top draft picks
There seemed to be a lack of a master plan. Who ultimately was calling the shots? What role did new ownership or Mike Sullivan play? How much could they go all-in.
While some of Burke and Hextall’s issues were their own doing, when GM Jim Rutherford suddenly left mid-season 2020-21, he had to know where this could be heading. He had mortgaged the future to win now, understandably. He had to know the bill was on its way.
Going into the 2023-24 season, the team already has over $49 million committed to salary and the cap was $63 million this year. NHL salary caps rarely show marked increase from one year to the next. They have several spots to fill and the critical choice of what to do with a starting goaltender. It is also a franchise barren of young prospects, that’s the penalty of trading so many draft picks, again understandable, and the cost of doing business.
With probably $16 million to spend, is that enough to fill some of the holes on this roster (goalie, top six forward & more grit on the bottom, partner for Letang)? The Jeff Petry, Jeff Carter and Mikael Granlund trades never produced what the team needed, now the new management team is saddled with those contracts. Can they squeeze anything out of their AHL roster? Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin played every game this season, what are the odds that happens at 36 and 37-years-old next year?
The new general manager faces a number of challenges, not all of them created by the failures of Brian Burke and Ron Hextall.