The hard work begins for Kyle Dubas to craft the Penguins
Kyle Dubas has been on the job as the Pittsburgh Penguins president of hockey operations for approximately three weeks.
He’s still getting familiar with his new surroundings, but he likes what he has seen so far.
Pittsburgh reminds Dubas — previously the general manager of the Maple Leafs in hockey-mad Toronto — of his hometown, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, another city with industrial roots.
“I think the thing that’s really impressed me has just been the quality of the people here and … how comfortable it’s been in the city already, not just for me, but for my family,” Dubas said during a news conference Friday at the team’s facility in Cranberry. “I’m from Sault Ste. Marie. Toronto, the city is much larger. It’s a great city, but here it just feels a little bit more like home and what it was like growing up.”
Dubas did offer one caveat regarding his idyllic existence in Pittsburgh thus far.
“We haven’t lost any games yet.”
Dubas’ Penguins won’t play any games of consequence until October, but in the meantime, he has the task of composing the roster that will take the ice three-plus months from now.
The most intense portion of that task will take place in the coming week as the NHL gathers for its draft in Nashville on Wednesday and Thursday, then opens the floodgates on the free-agent signing period July 1.
Dubas has the two-pronged task of retrofitting the Penguins into being a playoff-caliber squad after they failed to reach the postseason this spring while also refurbishing a pool of prospects that is barely ankle deep.
He acknowledges he will have his hands full. With the salary cap expected to rise by $1 million to $83.5 million for the 2023-24 season, the Penguins are projected to have approximately $20 million of cap space.
“The roster, it has a lot of experience,” said Dubas, who is filling the duties of general manager until — or if — that position is filled. “But there’s lots of cap space. Without depleting where we’re going in the future, how are we going to best utilize the opportunity we have in terms of cap space — with other teams kind of crunched — to best support this group and have it move ahead?
“And so, you know, it’s starting to kind of work its way towards a conclusion here as we get towards the draft. But until you actually execute on those moves, you always have that doubt that it’s not going to go perfectly according to plan.”
It remains to be seen if Penguins’ plans will involve any of their pending unrestricted free agents. Goaltender Tristan Jarry, forward Jason Zucker and defenseman Brian Dumoulin are the most prominent members of that group. Dubas offered limited insight into the status of negotiations to any of the team’s free agents to be, unrestricted or restricted.
“We’ve had varying degrees of conversation with them,” Dubas said. “I’ve never kind of viewed it as being optimistic or pessimistic. It’s trying to figure out what the market is going to be for them. And then whether our view of it aligns with the players and their agents. We’re having deeper conversations with each of their respective representatives and probably have a decision about whether it’s going to work or not here on all fronts, by the time we get to next Wednesday, Thursday.
“So that will allow us to plan going into Friday, Saturday (to open free agency) and allow them to kind of set their course. If it’s going to be here, that’s great. If it’s going to be moving on, we know we’re going have the cap space and be able to roll along. But I would say that the dance is ongoing right now with all them.”
The team’s most pressing area of concern is in net where Jarry, the team’s starting goaltender the past two seasons, is coming off an injury-filled 2022-23 campaign.
“In the past years, whether it’s been Tristan or Matt Murray or (Marc-Andre Fleury), there’s always been guys coming … young guys sort of there,” Dubas said. “We don’t have that yet. We have young goaltenders that we like, but nobody that’s pushing. So there’s going to have to either be a solution with Tristan or we’re going to have to through trade or free agency to address that.”
Zucker, coming off a 27-goal season while primarily playing on the second line, could command an ample contract on the free-agent market.
If he leaves, don’t expect the Penguins to pursue an expensive replacement.
“I don’t think they’re going to be the big, splashy type of (unrestricted free agents),” Dubas said. “If that’s where we go into, they’ll probably be more subtle bets. And we’ll need to hit on them in order to have success. But I don’t think you’ll see us in the market for the long-term, highly expensive forwards, especially in free agency.
The team’s other pending unrestricted free agents are forwards Josh Archibald, Nick Bonino, Drake Caggiula and Danton Heinen; defenseman Dmitry Kulikov; and goaltender Dustin Tokarski.
Improving the group of bottom-six forwards appears to be an area of focus for Dubas.
“We need to add talent, I think, to the forward group,” Dubas said. “(Last season) the group here got great performances out of its core players and still missed (the playoffs). So we need to have players at the bottom of the lineup or in the third and fourth lines that can add certain utilities, talent being some, penalty killing being others, competitiveness, speed.
“Youth would be a wonderful thing for us to add with where we’re at. That’s a little bit harder in free agency because the younger guys tend to draw more in terms of term and dollars than we’re probably willing to do. But there’ll be players that will kind of fit that need that are maybe reclamation projects to an extent.”
Forwards Jonathan Gruden, Filip Hallander, Drew O’Connor and Ryan Poehling; defensemen Peter DiLiberatore, Josh Mansicalco, Ty Smith and Colin Swoyer; and goaltender Filip Lindberg are pending restricted free agents. Per NHL rules, the Penguins must extend qualifying offers to them by Thursday or they will yield their NHL rights.
Dubas touched base on a number of subjects Friday:
• He is not eager to use a buyout to create any salary cap space. Forward Mikael Granlund, who has two years remaining on a contract with a salary cap hit of $5 million, has been the subject of rampant speculation for a potential buyout.
“I’m not a big buyout fan,” Dubas said. “I just think that there are more creative ways and better ways, especially in this environment where if you have contracts that you view as problematic or you’re not getting great value from that you can move them on. … The one thing I don’t want to do is get into … you know you see some of the buyouts whether they go for eight years down the road. We had that situation Toronto on a retention trade to Pittsburgh (in 2015) with (forward) Phil Kessel where you’re looking at it seven years on down the road and you still have that space and in a hard salary cap environment as limiting you. So, I think with regard to buyouts, I’ve always believed that you try to find a more creative solution, and it’s a last resort. And I don’t feel that we’re at that point right now.”
The Penguins still have a cap hit of $916,667 for former defenseman Jack Johnson from a 2020 buyout. That hit will remain in place until the 2026 offseason.
• The potential to take on a bad contract from another team in order to facilitate a trade to fill out other portions of the roster isn’t out of the question.
“The cap space that the club has built up certainly affords us the chance to do that,” Dubas said. “So yes, we’d be the answer on that front in terms of looking at players who may be available that kind of fit that exact criteria. Or it could be taking on a contract another team has to move in rather than accepting draft picks back or what the usual return would be on shorter-term deals, we could take back one of their players that they might have in surplus at a position of our own needs.
• Dubas’ first addition to the organization came in the front office when he hired former NHL forward Jason Spezza as assistant general manager June 14. Previously, Spezza served as an assistant to Dubas with the Maple Leafs. Spezza finished his playing career with the Maple Leafs in 2022 before moving to the front office.
“The amount of work that he put in on all fronts to try to learn as much as he could and advance himself as quickly as he could through the year was very impressive,” Dubas said. “He has a certain way about him that he’s close enough in terms of his playing experience that he can help and relate to the players, but provides sort of that conduit between management and the players where he can hold them accountable, push them. Then also provide us some feedback of where we can help them without crossing any lines of confidentiality or conflict of interest. And he’s able to sort of thread the needle perfectly.
“And I think with our group here … we want to go to his affinity for the development side, the minor league system, I just think he had so much. And so to be able to have him come in here, I think it’s a massive benefit. For me personally coming into this role together, but also just for the whole group for the coaching staff, the players for everybody in the building, just his demeanor and the way he goes about every day, his intelligence, his work ethic, and how much he’s willing to learn from everybody involved, it’ll be a great, great boost for us as we start to build out our staff this summer.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.