Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang’s future with the Penguins is unclear
The Pittsburgh Penguins introduced their new front office on Tuesday.
Ron Hextall, unsurprisingly, was named as the team’s general manager, while Brian Burke, out of the blue, was named president of hockey operations.
It’s an interesting mix for the Penguins. Hextall, based on his time with the Philadelphia Flyers, is known as a very conservative manager, prioritizing building talent through the draft. On the other hand, Burke is known for his tendency to make aggressive moves and big splashes, both via trade and free agency.
Hextall and Bruke have themselves a challenging situation ahead of them.
The Penguins’ core of @Sidney Crosby, @Evgeni Malkin, and @Kris Letang are now in their mid-30s and team ownership is pushing to win another Stanley Cup with them while they still can.
As of right now, though, the Penguins don’t look like a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. They lost in the play-in round to the Montreal Canadiens last season and currently sit on the outside of the playoffs looking in with a 5-5-1 record. The Penguins are also stuck in a loaded division behind the Bruins, Capitals, and Flyers.
At their introductory press conference, Burke and Hextall indicated that they’ll avoid a rebuild, at least for now.
“We like our team…” Hextall said. “…Our job is to analyze our team. I can’t tell you what’s coming our way. I can’t. I can’t tell you how good our team is going to be the rest of the year, therefore — to be definitive in a direction, obviously, we have different ideas. In my interviews, we talked about all kinds of different scenarios. We went through them all…
We’ve got to keep an eye on the future, and we’ll grab some assets here and there, but we’ve also got to put the best team — You’ve got players Malkin, Crosby, and Letang. We want to be as good as we can right now with three of the top players in the world.”
It’s clear that the Penguins’ new front office will give this trio a kick at the can together this season, but, after that, it’s unclear. Crosby is signed through the 2024-25 season, but Malkin and Letang each have only one year left on their respective contracts.
Darren Dreger of TSN mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Penguins’ new front office will have to sit down and have conversations with their core trio this off-season in order to determine the right path moving forward.
If the Penguins miss the playoffs and decide they need to rebuild their roster, trading Malkin and/or Letang might become the play.
Well I think we have to see how the rest of the season goes. If the Penguins don’t qualify for the playoffs or they don’t do well in the playoffs, I think there is the potential for a seismic shift.
If new management comes on board and says look we have to embrace a renovation here, the Penguins as an organization owe it to @Sidney Crosby, @Evgeni Malkin and to some degree, @Kris Letang, to have a conversation and say this is the direction that we’re going in.
Now, Malkin has one more year after this season remaining on his contract, but do those players, especially Sidney Crosby, want to chase a Stanley Cup elsewhere, or is retiring as a Pittsburgh Penguin equally important? The direction of the club of the next two years is going to determine how that discussion goes as early as this summer. But, imagine if those names were in play at some point in the near future?