The degree to which the Penguins' decorum has changed over the ongoing decade could probably be summarized by a single statement regarding the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs: "That's our main objective. We've set our minds to it. This is the objective for the regular season: Make it into the playoffs."
Lars Eller told me this. Opening day of a camp a month ago. Stressed every syllable, too.
And you know, that's it. That's really it. I'd never snark on anything Eller speaks, and I'm not doing so now, either. That really should be the goal. If only because it's no longer the empty-netter it once was. Not after six straight seasons without advancing a single round. Not after two terribly long summers without any playoffs at all as the aftermath to 17 straight seasons of qualifying.
Eller described a talk he and other team leaders had upon convening in Cranberry in mid-September, and that conversation's clearly continued.
"We have to fight for the playoffs," Kris Letang was telling me over the weekend. "We have to get there."
"You can't do anything in the playoffs if you don't make the playoffs," Rickard Rakell was telling me. "That's where we have to start. We have to get that job done. And we have to work hard. This won't be easy."
Nope, but finding a focal point sure will be. Or at least it should be, given that they fell one point shy two years ago and three points shy last year.
Think of it this way: Tonight at PPG Paints Arena, a little less than three hours after the Penguins' 57th season opener -- 7:42 p.m. against the Rangers -- they could already claim half of those missing four points. And then again the next night in Detroit. And then again in Toronto. And then again in Montreal.
A handful of ways I for-real believe they can get back there:
5. GET IT TOGETHER
It's not as if there'll be some mass infusion of youth at the outset.
Rutger McGroarty made the roster at age 20, and he'll make his NHL debut tonight, and that'll be cool in its own right. Been forever, it feels like, since the city's hockey faithful have had a bright young light to anticipate, and this kid's got the Pittsburgh-type personality to match.
"How'd I do?" he'd ask me after a preseason game, as if my opinion should matter. "Because I can do better, believe me. I can keep getting better."
People here will love him.
Beyond him, though, there'll be two 25-year-olds in Jack St. Ivany and Valtteri Puustinen, two 26-year-olds in Drew O'Connor and Jesse Puljujarvi and, if one cares to count the short-term backup goaltender, a 22-year-old in Joel Blomqvist. Others, notably 18-year-old defenseman Harrison Brunicke, the bubbly surprise of camp before being sent back to juniors, will wait until further into the future. And still others, notably 21-year-old Ville Koivunen and 22-year-old Vasily Ponomarev, could help later in the winter after starting out in Wilkes-Barre.
That's barely a reload, much less a rebuild, at least in the immediate context at the NHL level.
But I'll reiterate for maybe the millionth time: Kyle Dubas just had exactly the offseason he should've had in 2023. And as much as I panned his first, I'll praise his second. His top priority upon taking over should've been undoing some of Ron Hextall's extensive contractual damage, and the still-mindblowing Erik Karlsson trade admirably achieved much of that. And his next priority should've been, as I argued at the time, getting younger, fresher and faster at every other possible spot. Instead of rounding out the roster with a handful of overpaid, under-producing Noel Acciari types.
Hey, whatever. Live and learn.
The challenge now will be that the current older players, who were used to being surrounded by other older players, now have to invest extra energy in educating the youngsters with some of the less-fancy traits needed for NHL success: When to go where off a defensive-zone draw, for instance. Or, for a more pointed player-to-player example, where Karlsson prefers his one-timer passes to arrive.
"We have no choice," Letang told me. "It's great that they're here. We're happy to have them. But we've got to get everyone up to speed. In a hurry."
4. UM ... THE POWER PLAY?
Broke this down, and intensely so, for a Drive to the Net a week ago.
All I'll add: They can't do a whole lot worse than 15.3% and 30th out of 32 teams, as was the case in 2023-24. And there's zero cause to expect they will. The changes Mike Sullivan and David Quinn have already made -- more shots, more traffic through the box, more work down low, more usage of the greatest player of his generation -- have been so logical that their execution on ice has made them look nothing other than grossly overdue.
3. THE 'PITTSBURGH' ELEMENT
Dubas worded it this way in his wonderful 42-minute session with reporters Monday, highlighted by this observation of how, after a year in our city, he wants his Penguins to reflect that via "equal parts grit and equal parts innovation. There’s people who've lived here their whole lives perhaps who'll have a much deeper feeling of what it means to be from Pittsburgh or representing Pittsburgh. But to me, with regard to the Penguins, it means a team that’s built on grit and innovation in equal parts.”
Loved that. And not just over the civic sappiness.
Because Dubas, Jason Spezza and their burgeoning staff of brainiacs can handle the innovation aspect while Sullivan and the ice-level staff can strive toward bringing the Pittsburgh back to the Pittsburgh Penguins. As in, making "hard to play against" more than just four words Sullivan cites when he doesn't like what he sees. As in, rewinding the approach to one of the relentlessness that'd been brought by Patric Hornqvist, Brandon Tanev, Jason Zucker and even lesser lights along the way. It wasn't more than two years ago that opposing coaches around the league gushed about the Penguins' collective work ethic, combined with their poise to keep playing the same way regardless of the score.
I didn't hear that once last year. Not one damned time.
Dubas got that going by scripting out the most competitive camp seen in these parts in several years, smartly signing a ton of similar-costing players in their mid-20s and locking them all up with each other to see who emerges.
"Great camp," Bryan Rust told me. "Just a great camp."
It can't stop in Cranberry. The days have to be gone where a Jansen Harkins can linger here for months because there's no one pushing up the depth chart. Every Cody Glass, every Anthony Beauvillier, every Blake Lizotte, every Matt Grzelcyk should have one eye on the ice, the other over his figurative shoulder, and that means all winter long.
This alone ... man, I can't accentuate this one enough. The past two editions of the Penguins were close to comatose at times, and that was an awful reflection on all concerned, all the way to the top. The requisite fire can make up those 2-4 points all by itself.
2. GOOD LORD, THE BOTTOM SIX?
See, here's how this works in college logic: A team misses the playoffs two years in a row, that team tries to make it back in the third, so that team needs to have something seismically different to make that happen.
I don't know that there's a ton more to squeeze from the stars, respectfully, at their age. I don't know that there's more consistency from Tristan Jarry. I don't know that there's a salvageable career in front of Ryan Graves. So what I try to find are areas that were really lousy that, ideally, wouldn't be lousy at all moving forward. Like the power play I've already listed.
But nothing's been an albatross about this franchise like the bottom six, and it was so bad that I won't bother ruining anyone's opening day by mentioning any of the many names who've soiled the local sweater over the past couple seasons. It was one wasted, time-killing shift after another after another after another.
In contrast, here are projected forward lines, based on practice yesterday but also presuming Rust's health:
Drew O'Connor-Sidney Crosby-Bryan Rust
Michael Bunting-Evgeni Malkin-Rickard Rakell
Rutger McGroarty-Lars Eller-Jesse Puljujarvi
Kevin Hayes-Cody Glass-Noel Acciari
That's ... not bad, people. And digging deeper than just how they were tic-tac-toe-ing against the Blue Jackets' rejects the other night ...
McGroarty ➡️ Puljujarvi ➡️ Eller 🚨 pic.twitter.com/uomm5qti6a
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 5, 2024
... that's a whole lot of faceoff-winning, penalty-killing and other facets coaches love far more than fans packed into those third and fourth lines.
Still, as Sullivan put it, "The expectation isn't that they produce as consistently as our top-six, but it's important that we generate offense through our lineup. If we want to be the team that we want to become, that we aspire to become, I think that balanced attack is so critically important. You look at the contending teams, the playoff-type teams, balance is an important aspect on both sides of the puck."
1. THE TIMELESS TALE
Sidney Crosby's back:
PENGUINS
Evgeni Malkin's back:
PENGUINS
Letang's back:
PENGUINS
And let all the monster-milestone infographics keep piling up for the next six-plus months.
It's not just the Core, per the decades-long definition. So historically deep are the Penguins in extraordinarily elite, albeit a lot older, talent that there's a fourth member outside that Core who'll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer in Karlsson, finally healthy after missing almost all of camp. Add to them other thirty-somethings of significant repute in Rust and Rakell, and elder twenty-somethings in Michael Bunting and Marcus Pettersson, and it's fair to suggest the top-six forwards and the top-four defensemen -- although I'll wait and see on Grzelcyk's fit to cement this -- are collectively of above-average NHL quality.
I know that stance won't be universally shared, so I'll try it another way: Our view of Geno is such that we still see him roofing that backhander over Cam Ward in the 2009 conference final:
And what we might not appreciate is that, like all the rest of us, Geno's now 15 years older but still ranked 30th among all NHL centers in scoring last season. Reminding that it's a 32-team league, that kinda means he's one of the best second-line centers in the world.
Think of all of them that way. I find that fair when doing it myself. Sid's a long way from being the Kid, but he's a bona fide top-five player at his position, a bona fide top-10 player at any position, and a slam dunk to put up a point a game until he's ... what, 50?
The Penguins' shortfall the past two seasons, counter to some completely miserable misperceptions by some, hasn't been because of any of Sid, Geno or Letang. All three have contributed more than their reasonable share, and all three remain the team's most important pieces on any given night, including tonight.
That's the problem.
And that's been the problem.
Not that anyone should've been lapping a living legend like Sid, but the roster never should've been allowed to age as it did, even after Jim Rutherford did the right thing in mortgaging the future for those past two Cups. There were always ways after those championships to push toward youth, even if that meant, as it did this summer, in adding players in their mid-20s. They're not prospects, but they've still got their legs. They're not rookies, but they've still got their hunger.
That's in play now.
“It's been really unique," Sid would say of the competitive camp. "Typically, there might be one or two spots open. This year's probably the most competitive, looking back at other years, that I've seen."
Follow the leader.
• Taylor Haase has McGroarty's reaction earlier today to making the team.
• She and I'll both cover the opener tonight, and I'll drive to Detroit tomorrow for the game against the Red Wings.
• Thanks for reading my hockey stuff. Today marks both my 58th birthday and the start of my 20th year of covering the Penguins.
• Thanks for listening to my Daily Shot of Penguins podcasts all offseason, as well:
