A look at the candidates for the Penguins' vacant general manager position

A few hours after former Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford abruptly turned in his resignation Jan. 27, team president and CEO David Morehouse laid out what the franchise was looking for in a potential successor.

The base requirements for the job really weren’t that complicated.

“The criteria is the same criteria we’ve had here for the last almost 15 years,” Morehouse said during a video conference with media that day. “It’s to win the Stanley Cup. We’re looking for someone that is going to be able to come in, take a very talented team with a very good coaching staff and take it as far as they can take it. I don’t think there’s much more of a criteria than that. It’s the criteria we had when we brought Jim in.”

Roughly a week and a half since that surprising day, a pool of candidates has emerged after initial interviews with Morehouse as well as owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle.

On Saturday, Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet identified the seven leading candidates to become the Penguins’ 11th full-time general manager.

In alphabetical order, here’s a look at each candidate as well as the arguments for and against their candidacy.

Patrik Allvin: Currently the interim general manager, Allvin has been with the organization since 2006 when he was hired as a European scout. Since then, the native of Sweden has climbed. In 2012, he was promoted to director of European scouting then became director of amateur scouting in 2017. This past November, Allvin was installed as assistant general manager. Less than three months later, he took over for Rutherford.

Roundly popular within the organization, few people are as familiar with every aspect of the Penguins’ hockey operations department than Allvin, who has an extensive background in assessing talent.

That said, Allvin is still very inexperienced with the managerial aspect of the position — meaning tasks such as trades, contract negotiations — and, by many accounts, he still is getting familiar with some of the granular details of the NHL’s intricate collective bargaining agreement with the NHLPA as well as the salary cap.

John Ferguson, Jr.: Currently the Boston Bruins’ executive director of player personnel, Ferguson has had an extensive role in helping that franchise remain one of the deepest and talented teams in the NHL since he joined that organization in 2016.

Part of his role includes serving as general manager of Boston’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Providence Bruins, while he also offers input on every transaction at the NHL level.

Ferguson had a four-year stint as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the mid-2000s. Failing to properly adjust that franchise for the “new” NHL as the league adopted a faster, more skilled approach, Ferguson’s time in Toronto is considered a low point for that storied franchise.

Michael Futa: A successful general manager at the junior level with the Owen Sound Attack of the Ontario Hockey League throughout the 2000s, Futa jumped to the NHL in 2007 as director of amateur scouting with the Los Angeles Kings.

A member of that franchise for 13 years, Futa played a major role in the Kings’ only Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and ‘14. Under his watch, the Kings drafted vital contributors to those titles such as defensemen Drew Doughty and Slava Voynov as well as forwards Tanner Pearson and Tyler Toffoli.

By 2018, Futa had worked his way up the ladder and was promoted to assistant general manager. By that time, the Kings had failed to maintain their depth, and the results showed. During his last six seasons with the Kings, they reached the postseason only twice. In May, the Kings opted to not renew his contract.

Since his name emerged as a candidate for the Penguins’ vacancy, Futa has been pretty open about his interest in the position. In addition to retweeting reports he is a candidate, Futa recently made a television appearance in Canada to talk about business around the NHL and offered a cheeky comment that he would not take advantage of his television time to campaign for a general manager job while holding stuffed toy penguin.

Ron Hextall: The notion of one of the most enduring villains (or heroes, depending on what side of Harrisburg you live on) in the history of the Penguins-Flyers rivalry becoming the general manager of the Penguins might seem ill-fitting on the surface, but Hextall’s history as a rambunctious nemesis to the Penguins should not detract from his credentials as a potential front office administrator.

Like Futa, Hextall played a role in the Kings’ success. Installed as assistant general manager and vice president of hockey operations in 2006, Hextall helped rebuild that franchise in the late 2000s then win in the early 2010s. In those roles, Hextall helped orchestrate complicated trades that landed valuable contributors such as forwards Jeff Carter and Mike Richards.

In 2013, Hextall — the son of former Penguins forward Bryan Hextall, Jr. — returned to Philadelphia as the Flyers’ general manager and started a slow rebuilding process to modernize that franchise. Hextall’s meticulous approach, particularly with goaltending prospect Carter Hart, led to a contentious relationship with impatient members of upper management. By November of 2018, Hextall was fired. While his tenure was brief, much of what the Flyers currently are — one of the NHL’s deepest teams — can be tied to his time as general manager.

The Kings brought back Hextall in 2019 as an advisor.

Given how Hextall butted heads with upper management in Philadelphia, it’s fair to wonder how he would coexist with those in the same positions in Pittsburgh, especially since the last two full-time general managers, Rutherford and Ray Shero, did not leave under ideal circumstances.

Mark Hunter: A member of the renown Hunter hockey family — which includes former Penguins forward Dave Hunter — Mark Hunter has become one of the most successful executives in junior hockey as owner, general manager and vice president of hockey operations with the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.

Since Hunter and his brother, Dale Hunter, purchased that once-struggling franchise in 2000, the Knights are one of only two teams to win the Memorial Cup as champions of all of Canadian junior hockey’s top level of competition.

Additionally, the Knights have become a factory for NHL players, producing elite players such as Bo Horvat, Patrick Kane, Corey Perry, John Tavares and others over the past two decades. Off the ice, the Knights are reported to be one of the more profitable franchises in the OHL.

That success led to Mark Hunter having a brief-but-unremarkable run in the Maple Leafs’ front office from 2014-18 as director of player personnel and assistant general manager. For reasons that never have been made clear, at least publicly, Hunter and the Maple Leafs mutually parted ways after former general manager Lou Lamoriello stepped away. Hunter returned to his previous managerial roles with the Knights after leaving the Maple Leafs.

Jason Karmanos: This is the real surprising name on the list considering he was fired as the Penguins’ assistant general manager Oct. 26. None of the relevant parties has offered any insight as to what led to that departure. But something clearly went wrong for Karmanos this past fall.

A long-time associate of Rutherford’s dating to their days with the Carolina Hurricanes (and probably well before that given Rutherford’s history with Karmanos’ father, former Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos), Jason Karmanos was Rutherford’s first hire after taking over as general manager in 2014 when he was installed as vice president of hockey operations.

During his time with Carolina, Kamanos was one of the NHL’s earliest advocates for examining analytics and sold their merits to Rutherford. Upon joining the Penguins, Karmanos oversaw an overhaul of the Penguins’ usage of those metrics, including the full-time hiring of Sam Ventura, the team’s current director of hockey operations and hockey research.

Eventually, rising to assistant general manager during his final three seasons with the Penguins, Kamanos oversaw much of the granular details of the team’s dealings with the salary cap and collective bargaining agreement at a time when the franchise’s success on the ice waned significantly following the Stanley Cup championships in 2016 and ‘17.

A candidate for the Arizona Coyotes’ vacant general manager position this past offseason, Karmanos’ departure from the Penguins was just as abrupt and mysterious as Rutherford’s.

Chris MacFarland: Currently the assistant general manager of the Colorado Avalanche, MacFarland has had a vital role in building that franchise into one of the deepest and talented in all of the NHL.

While franchise icon Joe Sakic serves as a general manager and has final decisions on all matters, MacFarland does most of the heavy lifting with regard to the finer details regarding the collective bargaining agreement.

In 2017, MacFarland was directly involved in piecing together a complicated three-team trade that moved disgruntled star forward Matt Duchene to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for prized defensive prospect Samuel Girard from the Nashville Predators and the fourth-overall selection in the 2019 draft from the Senators, a pick used on another star defensive prospect, Bowen Byram.

Before joining Colorado in 2015, MacFarland spent 14 seasons with the Columbus Blue Jackets early in the life of that expansion franchise as director of hockey operations and assistant general manager. During that time, the Blue Jackets reached the postseason only twice.

In 2020, MacFarland interviewed for the New Jersey Devils’ vacant general manager position that eventually went to former Penguins executive Tom Fitzgerald.

Kevin Weekes: A goaltender who spent 11 seasons in the NHL throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Weekes is one of the faces of the NHL Network as a charismatic analyst.

By all accounts, Weekes has a relentless worth ethic in that vocation, and that is evident in his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of everything in the NHL. And as one of the relatively few Black players in NHL history, he has been a leading voice in the discussion over racial issues in the sport.

But he has almost no experience in a front office or coaching capacity at any level. While Weekes has a seemingly endless list of contacts throughout the hockey world, it’s difficult to see how those relationships can be practically applied to tasks such as negotiating a contract or remaining compliant with the salary cap.