Things have been quiet since the Pittsburgh Penguins players and Dan Muse spoke to the media following their 4-2 series loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. Since then, those same Flyers lost four straight games to the Carolina Hurricanes and now find themselves out of the playoffs. Both teams are going to have to regroup and make changes in order to keep up with a team like the Hurricanes.
Yesterday, we finally heard from Kyle Dubas as he addressed the media for the first time since Pittsburgh’s elimination. He sounded like a man who knows there is still plenty of work to be done. I can’t say I disagree with the sentiment. They aren’t all that close to knocking off a team like Carolina. They are currently the standard in the Eastern Conference.
Let’s go through what Dubas had to say in his end of the season presser
Evgeni Malkin situation
Let’s kick things off with what I am most interested in, Evgeni Malkin’s status with the team moving forward. I think he should be given a one-year deal to return to the team. It would be based on the merits of his play in 2025-26. Him being a team legend and able to call his own shot is also valid, but I don’t even think that needs to come into play. He earned another season by being over a point per game and finding success on the wing.
On the surface, this is exactly what I’ve wanted to hear from Kyle Dubas on the situation. I don’t know why this couldn’t have been said during the season instead of feeding the speculation of a departure. Now, there is a chance this is the team getting ahead on the PR front. By saying that they wanted to bring him back they can then publicly shift blame to the player if things don’t work themselves out.
I think the important part of the statement is Dubas being clear about Malkin not taking a roster spot from a young and upcoming player, because he isn’t. They don’t have enough of those players.
I still think this gets done and I don’t think it had to be this hard. I think if Dubas came out and said this a couple of months ago it would have diffused the situation. It may not seem like a big deal, but I think how the last contract negotiation played out (Hextall not Dubas) was unnecessary and disrespectful to an all-time great. He has deserved more respect than he has gotten from around the league. To not get the proper respect from his own team is pretty egregious. I think there has been some disrespect during this negotiation, as well.
So I’m glad to see Dubas addressing this directly and I think we will see Evgeni Malkin on the Penguins in 2026-27, which is what should happen.
The need to improve
This past Penguins season was pretty great. There were no expectations of success and the team outperformed all the prognosticator’s preseason predictions. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin showed they had more left in the tank and Erik Karlsson was spectacular. The team added an exciting winger in Egor Chinakhov and Ben Kindel accelerated his career path by making and staying on the big club all year.
That said, the team wasn’t good enough to win a playoff round against a very meh opponent. They certainly aren’t good enough to take on the league’s elite teams. The goal for Kyle Dubas is to be one of those teams.
The Penguins are in a much better spot than they were a calendar year ago. They still have a long way to go. Dubas is going to need to have another highly successful season making decisions for the roster. He needs to build upon his splendid work from the past season. The problem with being where the Penguins are in their arc is that you need your GM to keep stacking productive roster building seasons over and over again. It can’t just be a one off. It is a high standard with not a lot of wiggle room.
The good news is that I believe Kyle Dubas understands what the task is and he has used all of the methods available to him to keep the team building towards future sustainable success. He has weaponized cap space to build up their futures, he has made good trades using some of those futures, he has a great deal of cap flexibility moving forward, and he has made prudent free agency signings with short term and lower cap hits. This is exactly what needed to be done.
So what is the next step?
Big game hunting
With the Penguins having a tremendous amount of cap space (~45M) they have the opportunity to try and add big ticket items. This will not happen through unrestricted free agency. It also will probably not happen via offer sheet. The likeliest route is through trading and it sure sounds like Dubas will be trying to make that happen.
This is what the Penguins should be doing. However,I do have tempered expectations on just how big of a fish he can land.
I’m going to say some things that might not be popular to hear in Pittsburgh, but the Penguins still don’t have upper tier futures and prospects to offer other teams for someone like Jason Robertson or Robert Thomas.
The Penguins best two prospects at the moment are Ben Kindel and Sergei Murashov and while I am bullish on both of them they aren’t going to carry the trade value a lot of Penguins fans think. And yes, you will have to give up players like Kindel and Murashov to land these upper end established players in their mid-twenties.
Kindel had a really successful rookie season. He is someone who I think does the hard things correctly. He still looked his age for most of the season and his offensive impact did not match his actual skill. Some of that might be strength related and the fatigue of a much longer season than he is used to. I think he will become a solid top six center. He is definitely going to grow into the role. I really like him as a player.
He obviously isn’t there quite yet and as a result his actual value is going to tick a little lower than the perceived value he has in Pittsburgh. Keep in mind, we haven’t seen any good prospects in Pittsburgh in forever so when someone like Kindel comes around it is jarring in a good way. We are going to be predisposed to overvaluing his trade value because of the long term scarcity the team has had on the prospect front.
Other teams have better prospects and the Penguins will be competing with 30 other teams for these highly sought after RFA aged players. The Penguins could combine any offer with this year’s first round pick and I do think that is very much on the table, but that pick isn’t going to be near the top of the draft in what sounds like a meh crop. So the trade value on the 2026 1st round pick might be a little neutered, as well.
I think where the Penguins will find the most success on the trade market is targeting undervalued players in the vein of Egor Chinakhov. It isn’t easy to do, but neither is landing the biggest trade fish, either.
I would look to use someone like Will Horcoff as a trade piece. He had 25 goals and 39 points in 40 games with the Michigan Wolverines this past year. It was a really good year for him. My concern with him is that his skating and playmaking are not trending towards being at an NHL level. I think he will be one-dimensional. He will have a very specific niche. He will have to be a third wheel with two guys who can pass and skate. It will be like how Patric Hornqvist was very limited, but Horcoff’s success will be higher up in the slot. At least that is how I see it playing out.
There is potential for another team to be enamored with his goal output in college. Combine that with him being a first round selection and there is a chance his trade value could be slightly higher than what I have it as.
I look forward to see what Dubas has cooking on the trade front. He has done a nice job recently with his trades and I think he is going to try and get creative. Eventually, I am going to scan through every team’s PuckPedia page to see what names stick out to me as targets.
Goaltending situation
One of the best things Kyle Dubas did this season was offload Tristan Jarry to the inept Oilers front office for a second round pick, Brett Kulak, and Stuart Skinner. Jarry was a self-inflicted problem for Dubas. He is the one who gave him the five-year extension that aged like milk. He solved that problem.
Skinner came in and gave the Penguins up and down goaltending because that is what he does. He has an expiring contract and will be an unrestricted free agent. Arturs Silovs also had an up and down regular season. His contract is also expiring, but he is a restricted free agent, two years younger, and took over the playoff net and played well in his starts.
Barring any big trades Sergei Murashov seems destined to be on the Penguins NHL roster next season. This means there isn’t enough room for Silovs and Skinner.
Dubas went out of his way to praise Silovs’ ability to rise to the occasion and didn’t elaborate on Skinner all that much. I believe Skinner will be testing the free agency market and moving on from the Penguins, which I believe is the right call. He is who he is. He isn’t going to get better and he lost the playoff net to a guy slated to be the Penguins backup moving forward.
Murashov is tearing it up in the AHL at the moment. In 38 regular season games he had a .919 save percentage with the WB/S Penguins. In the playoffs he has cranked it up another level. So far in his five starts he has a .947 save percentage after a shutout last night. He is trending in the right direction and will be a regular on the Penguins next season, perhaps even the starter.
A big offseason awaits Kyle Dubas and the Penguins. Can they keep building towards the future while balancing the roster with aging veterans and new faces? We are going to find out.
