The Penguins are thriving – do they buy at the NHL Trade Deadline?
After the Eastern Conference had been clustered together in an amorphous blob for months, teams are finally beginning to seperate themselves into contenders and also-rans. One of those contenders, surpisingly enough, seems to be the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sidney Crosby and company have not qualified for the playoffs since 2022, but they currently sit second in the Metropolitan Division with 63 points in 51 games.
The question then becomes, how aggressive should Pittsburgh be at the trade deadline? While they’ve been playing well of late, with a 5-0-1 record in their last six games, they are still in danger of falling out of the playoff picture with a bad stretch of play. Do the Penguins mortgage some of their future for one last ride with Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and the gang? Or do they stand pat and let their current roster go as far as it can?
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by the The Sheet‘s Jeff Marek to discuss how the Penguins will approach March 6th’s trade deadline.
Carter Hutton: Where do they go now in Pittsburgh? There’s been ties to Jason Robertson and some different communication as (Penguins general manager Kyle) Dubas starts to build for the future.
Jeff Marek: Dubas has had a fantastic season. I thought that Josh Yohe wrote a great piece on Saturday going through all the different players on the roster, and how now we’re really seeing the fingerprints of Kyle Dubas now that he’s got two hands on the wheel here. He’s trending towards general manager of the year territory.
I think if you’re the Pittsburgh Penguins you’re in an interesting spot with Malkin, for one. I think you do look to add, but nothing major, when trade deadline comes around if they’re still in this position. The Pittsburgh Penguins have a million second-round picks, I think six second-round picks in the next three seasons. This is a team where the pipeline is developing, we got some players on the horizon. You hope that (Rutger) McGroarty stays healthy enough to get into the big lineup, (Ville) Koivunen’s another one. They have some Ben Kindels already there. Have a look at those second-round picks that they have. This is a team that in the top three rounds in the next four drafts are flush with picks. At a certain point, as Dubas well knows, you’re going to get into a position where you need to start to turn some of those prospects and picks into actual players.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Tuesday’s episode here…