Where Do The Penguins Go From Here? It’s Simple, Trade Sidney Crosby.

1,000 Games. Three Stanley Cups. One Team.

Pittsburgh Penguins Captain, Sidney Crosby, has done everything there is to do in the sport of hockey, and he has done it all in one place. The Penguins hit the jackpot when they won the draft lottery in 2005 and drafted what would become one of the best hockey players of all time. From the moment the 18-year-old from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia arrived in the Steel City, he and the Penguins have had immense success both on and off the ice. However, there comes a time in every player's career where business decisions outweigh the importance of loyalty. If Crosby and Pittsburgh both want another Stanley Cup ring, it would be best for them to go in separate directions.

On January 27, shockwaves were sent through the NHL as longtime Penguins General Manager, Jim Rutherford, abruptly resigned. The storied hockey executive had guided the Penguins to two Stanley Cups in as many years and achieved consistent success in the regular and postseasons. Despite Rutherford being known as a wheeler and dealer in his pursuit to extend the Penguins’ championship window, it was clear that some perceived his moves to jeopardize the future of the franchise. 

Prior to the start of this truncated Covid-19 season, Rutherford made nine trades in 14 months, which is an unprecedented number of moves in such a short window. The Penguins have had a 1st round draft pick just twice in the past eight seasons, one of whom was Kasperi Kapanen who was traded for Phil Kessel and then reacquired this past year. The Kessel deal was a successful move, seeing that the American goal scorer helped the Penguins win back to back Stanley Cups. However, deals like those crippled the organization's prospect pool, which ranks last in the league according to ESPN. This upcoming offseason the Penguins have no first round pick, again, and four out of their six picks come in the 7th round. Unless they are banking on finding the reincarnation of Henrik Zetterberg at pick #210, I do not see those back end selections doing anything to improve their dire prospect pool.

Following Rutherford’s sudden abdication of duty, the future of the Pittsburgh organization was left to two men with vast NHL experience, Brian Burke and Ron Hextall. Burke, the new President of Hockey Operations, has worked for nearly half the league in his career and won a Stanley Cup with Anaheim in 2007. Burke is an old school operator who brings a vast knowledge of the game attained through his prior career stops. However, Burke has spent the past three years working from the broadcast booth for the Canadian network Sportsnet, and in those three years the game has changed a lot. Teams are more focused on building younger rosters with good skaters who can move the puck with speed and efficiency at both the forward and defense positions. Whether Burke can adapt to the new style of the NHL remains to be seen. 

As a broadcaster Burke made his living talking, and he sure did talk a lot about the Penguins. In November of 2020, Burke appeared on the widely popular NHL podcast, Spittin’ Chiclets, where he said the Penguins championship window had closed. “I don’t think Pittsburgh is good enough to win, I think that window has closed for me, I look in the East and I say, are they better than Tampa? Nope. Are they better than Washington? Nope. Are they better than Boston? Nope.” Now obviously when you are paid to talk, you will talk, but this was when he was a guest on a podcast, not while on camera for a national sports network that signs his checks. Those statements sounded truthful and honest, but now that he is behind the wheel of the car he said would crash, does he have the ability to correct course? 

Working alongside Burke is new General Manager, Ron Hextall, who last worked for instate rival Philadelphia. Hextall had mixed success on the other end of the PA Turnpike where he helped Philadelphia accumulate a lot of young talent, but the Flyers were never able to translate it into any sort of on ice success. Hextall brought his own coach into Philly, former college bench boss Dave Hakstol, whose coaching grew stale quickly. Yet Hextall was reluctant to admit his failure and only relieved Hakstol of his duties after several wasted years despite the fanbase's cries for a change in leadership far before the axe swung down. The Flyers’ failure to advance anywhere toward postseason success under Hextall eventually led to his own dismissal, but you cannot fault him for bringing in solid talent. Under Hextall the Flyers drafted Oskar Lindblom, Ivan Provorov, Joel Farrabee, Travis Sanheim, Travis Konecny, and goaltender Carter Hart. All of those players are still on the Flyers today and are currently contributing to a team that finished first in their division this past year. Hextall has a proven record of being a good drafter, but has never managed to build a team remotely close to contending for a championship. So why is he in Pittsburgh now?

Burke and Hextall were brought to Pittsburgh in tandem to extend the Penguins’ championship window under Crosby, yet both executives have failed to do just that in their last stops across the league. The Penguins have a wilted prospect pool and very little draft capital of any quality moving forward. Their team rests solely in the hands of its captain, Crosby, and his talented assistants Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. While those three players remain elite NHL contributors, they are also 33 years of age or older. Pittsburgh also boasts a pedestrian goaltending duo of Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith, neither of whom have played more than 75 career NHL games or have a career save percentage above .915. With experience and stats like that between the pipes, the Penguins simply do not have championship caliber goaltending, a common prerequisite of any Cup winning team. For the Penguins to extend their championship window they would need to bolster their roster with elite talent up front or in goal, but with no upcoming first round pick and no blue chip prospects, they have no way of doing that. They cannot afford to wait a year for free agency where even then they quite literally cannot afford to buy a gamebreaking player since, according to CapFriendly, they will only have 2.18 million dollars in cap space in 2021. Pittsburgh is in limbo, they have top tier veteran talent with massive contracts that are winding down, but are not quite good enough to win now, nor are they bad enough to secure lottery picks. If they have any desire to win another Cup again soon, they must do what its fanbase fears, trade Sidney Crosby, and trade him sooner rather than later.