Fenway Sports Group didn't wait very long after the Penguins' season ended to make their move.
The Penguins on Friday announced that they had parted ways with general manager Ron Hextall, president of hockey operations Brian Burke and assistant general manager Chris Pryor.
Fenway Sports Group principal owner John Henry and chairman Tom Werner released a joint statement on the firings.
"We are grateful to Brian, Ron, and Chris for their contributions to the organization over the past two seasons, but we feel that the team will benefit from new hockey operations leadership. While this season has been disappointing, we believe in our core group of players and the goal of contending for the Stanley Cup has not changed."
Burke released a statement of his own on his Twitter account following the move.
"I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked in this passionate sports town," Burke wrote. "Thank you to FSG, Mario Lemieux, David Morehouse, management and coaches, and especially to our great group of players. Best of luck to the Penguins and their incredible fan base in the future."
Hextall and Burke were hired by the Penguins on Feb. 9, 2021 under then-majority owners Lemieux and Ron Burkle. They succeeded general manager Jim Rutherford, who stepped down as general manager on Jan. 27, 2021. Pryor joined the Penguins as director of player personnel on Feb. 27, 2021, and was promoted to assistant general manager on June 14, 2022 following the departure of Patrik Allvin, who left to take the general manager job in Vancouver.
The Penguins went 118-67-24 in the regular season during Hextall's two and a half seasons as general manager. The Penguins were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in Hextall's first two seasons, in six games by the Islanders in 2021 and seven games by the Rangers in 2022.
The Penguins failing to make the playoffs for the first time in 17 years was the final nail in the coffin for Hextall and Burke's tenure in Pittsburgh.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin had exceptionally strong, full 82-game seasons, a gift to the Penguins at ages 35 and 36 respectively, as Danny Shirey detailed in his Drive to the Net feature this week. The failure to surround them with an adequate supporting cast falls on Hextall's shoulders.
The Penguins' bottom six -- notably the third line of Brock McGinn, Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen, was one of the Penguins' weak spots from the beginning of the season. Hextall waited too late to address it, waiving Kapanen on Feb. 24 and trading McGinn at the March 3 trade deadline.
Goaltending was another area of the Penguins roster that Hextall failed to address. It was another clear area of need entering this season, and that need was exacerbated by Casey DeSmith's struggles early on and Tristan Jarry's inability to stay healthy this season, which dated back to at least November.
Beyond this season, Hextall's brief tenure as Penguins general manager was full of mistakes and questionable decisions.
One of the first things on Hextall's agenda when he was hired in February 2021 was the upcoming Seattle expansion draft, held that July. The Penguins were in a difficult situation when it came to who to protect. Regardless of what they did, given the limitations with their possible options, it was clear that they were probably going to lose a valuable forward in the draft. In response, they ensured they lost two. The Penguins traded Jared McCann to the Maple Leafs for a seventh-round pick and forward prospect Filip Hallander. McCann went on to be claimed by Seattle and become a 40 goal-scorer this season. Brandon Tanev was the player Seattle claimed from the Penguins.
The extension given to Jeff Carter in January 2022 was one of the more baffling moves of Hextall's tenure, for no shortage of reasons. He was 37 years old at the time and given a two-year deal with a pretty significant salary at $3.125 million per year. He was inexplicably given a full no-movement clause, as well as a contract structure that was front-loaded ever so slightly, in order to give Carter the protection that comes with making his contract essentially buyout-proof. Even if Carter being re-signed was a must on Hextall's to-do list, he surely did not need to give Carter the amount of concessions that he did in the deal.
Hextall's 2023 trade deadline was an abject failure by any standards, beyond just the failure to address the goaltending position. Hextall can't be faulted for both Nick Bonino and Dmitry Kulikov getting injured almost immediately after joining the Penguins, but their acquisitions were underwhelming at best. The real head-scratcher was the acquisition of Mikael Granlund. The Penguins had opened up $5.5 million in usable cap space by waiving Kapanen and trading Teddy Blueger, and used that room in a befuddling way in sending a second-round pick to Nashville for Granlund, who has two years left on his contract that carries a $5 million cap hit.
Hextall's moves weren't all bad. The trade at the 2022 trade deadline that brought Rickard Rakell to Pittsburgh was a massive success, with the Penguins only needing to unload two bottom-six pending free agents in Dominik Simon and Zach Aston-Reese, one of their several goalie prospects in Calle Clang, and a second-round draft pick. To re-sign Rakell to a six-year deal at a very reasonable $5 million per year was another success.
The Penguins will begin their search for a new general manager immediately. Director of hockey operations Alec Schall, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton general manager/manager of hockey operations Erik Heasley, and hockey operations analyst Andy Saucier will handle managerial duties in the meantime, with assistance from Mike Sullivan through the transition process. The next significant events on the NHL's offseason calendar are the draft on June 28 and 29, and the start of free agency on July 1.
