Jason Karmanos' title is new.
His challenge is not.
Karmanos was named general manager of the Penguins' farm team in Wilkes-Barre earlier this month after Mike Vellucci, who had been GM and coach in Wilkes-Barre for about a year, was added to Mike Sullivan's coaching staff here.
His mandate is the same as Vellucci's -- and just about everyone else who serves as GM of an American Hockey League club: Win enough to keep fans coming to the games, but not at the expense of developing young talent for the parent club.
"That's always the case in running an AHL team," said Karmanos, who remains Jim Rutherford's assistant GM. "There's a balance there. It can't strictly be one way or the other, obviously. Ideally, you're able to strike that balance so that your team is competitive so that you have a good winning environment for your players to develop in.
"You don't want it to go too far down the other way, where maybe older, veteran players are taking too much of the ice time available. You need time for your young players to learn on the job, as they go. Sometimes, that includes making mistakes. Young players, in particular, are going to make them. There are some growing pains that players need to go through."
Meeting both objectives can be especially difficult for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, given the "win-now" approach its parent club adopted more than a decade ago. The Penguins have routinely traded early-round draft choices, which inevitably shrinks the pool of young talent in their developmental pipeline.
"In the short term, obviously, we're not a team that's been flush with draft picks or young players coming into our organization," Karmanos said.
The Penguins try to counter that by aggressively pursuing young free agents from college and Europe -- "I think, successfully," Karmanos said -- and rely on input from people throughout the organization when determining which AHL veterans should be brought in to not only fill on-ice roles, but to serve as mentors for the prospects.
"We'd have the best success when lots of voices have chipped in, different perspectives," he said. "And I plan on continuing that. ... We expect to be a competitive team. We expect to use the resources within our group to find the right players to make that happen."
Of course, thanks to the pandemic, there's no way of knowing when Wilkes-Barre/Scranton will begin playing games under Karmanos' leadership. The AHL is even more of a gate-driven operation than the NHL and if fans aren't able to attend games, a lot of owners probably aren't going to be interested in staging them.
"My honest opinion is that it seems unlikely that we could start an AHL season without fans in the building," he said. "Is there a possibility of a scenario where you'd start with no fans in the building and build toward a larger available capacity? That's a decision that's out of my hands, obviously.
"We have to plan as if we're having a season. Plan as we normally would to provide the depth for the big team, should there be injuries. We're in the midst of that planning, but it is difficult when there's so much uncertainty. But everyone is facing the same issue these days. Uncertainty is just a part of life."
MORE PENGUINS
• The Penguins' run of qualifying for the postseason every year since 2007 is eye-catching -- no surprise there, considering that it is the longest active streak in the NHL -- but the franchise owns an even more impressive one: 609 consecutive sellouts at Mellon Arena and PPG Paints Arena. How much longer it will last is a legitimate question, though, for a variety of reasons. It's possible that when the 2020-21 season begins, the number of fans allowed to attend games (if any are) might be severely restricted, because of the pandemic. What's more, the financial repercussions of the coronavirus might have taken away disposable income on which some season-ticket holders relied to finance their purchase. And then there is what might be the biggest factor of all: The Penguins have had back-to-back flameouts in the postseason, and it seems likely that the on-ice trajectory of the team is headed downward, barring some dramatic personnel upgrades during what remains of the offseason. Convincing people to spend big money to watch a team that might finally be losing its place among the league's elite could be a real challenge for the Penguins' marketing department. -- Molinari
• Almost nothing about hockey is "normal" these days -- seriously, did anyone ever expect to be watching teams compete for the Stanley Cup at a neutral site in late September? -- so almost any deviation from how things typically play out or are handled can be expected. One event that has become a fixture on the pre-training camp calendar is the informal workouts players organize in the days or weeks leading up to the official opening of camps. Penguins players have gotten in the habit of doing that every year at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, but at last check, neither the league office nor the facility had said whether such workouts will be permitted in 2020. Then again, there's no rush to settle on the policy when it comes to those sessions, since the starting date for camps still hasn't been settled. -- Molinari
STEELERS
• The Steelers had 47 players active for Monday night's opener against the Giants and didn't use either of their two call ups from the practice squad. Turns out, they screwed up with that. The Giants had 48 players with five inactives, while the Steelers had six players inactive. "There was some indecision on my part about the rule," Mike Tomlin said. "We didn’t get clarity on it until extremely late in the process. From an overall preparedness standpoint, we decided to put the helmets on the guys who were prepared to play and had an understanding that they were going to play. I take responsibility for that miscommunication and it’s a learning process for us. There’s a lot of memos coming out of New York these days, so it is tough to keep up with them." Here's the thing, Tomlin sits on the NFL Competition Committee, which had a hand in drawing up the rules for the season. And if he was still unsure of how many players to make inactive, why didn't the Steelers contact someone at the league office earlier? After all, they played Monday night after 14 other games had already been played. Are you telling me GM Kevin Colbert, Vice President of Football & Business Administration Omar Khan or Cole Marcoux, the team's Football Administration Coordinator, couldn't have contacted someone in the league office earlier? They had all day in a hotel Monday before they played. Heck, Marcoux came to the Steelers this year to replace Samir Suleiman, after working in the league office. It's the kind of mistake that shouldn't have happened. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• According to the NFLPA website, the Steelers have $14.574 million available in salary cap space. That's actually way more than they usually have available, with the team saving some cap space with some of the veterans cut at the end of camp and Cam Heyward's new deal. They're also now $27 million or so over the $175 million cap floor -- if it comes in at that number -- for 2021. But remember, whatever cap space they don't use this season can be rolled over into next year. So, the team obviously is hopeful not to be hit by a rash of injuries that require the signing of veteran players. Obviously, that idea took a hit immediately with Zach Banner going on injured reserve this week and Jerald Hawkins signed to replace him, but the less money the team uses up this year, the better. In fact, all but a handful of teams have less than $10 million available to them according to the NFLPA site. It seems everyone is prepping for 2021. -- Lolley
• The Steelers protected safety Curtis Riley among the four players that could not be signed off their practice squad before Week 1. The others protected were defensive tackle Henry Mondeaux, running back Wendell Smallwood and linebacker Jayrone Elliott as each team could protect four each week. But those change from week to week. Teams don't have to announce who the protected players are -- though other teams are certainly made aware. But with their offensive line injuries this week, you can bet at least one of the three offensive linemen on the team's practice squad, Derwin Gray, Anthony Coyle and Jarron Jones, might have been among those protected this week. -- Lolley
PIRATES
• The Pirates are putting the international draft pool space they got from the White Sox in exchange for Jarrod Dyson to use, signing lanky 17-year-old right-handed pitcher Eduardo Zapata. An amount isn’t known, but the Pirates acquired $243,300 from the White Sox in the Dyson deal. In a normal year the league would have rolled over to the 2020-2021 signing period, but that was delayed until Jan. 15 as a way to lower club spending for this year. While there was no guarantee the Pirates would sign anyone, Ben Cherington and the Pirates’ international scouting team had an idea on how to use the extra space in mind when they made the swap. “Generally we would not pursue or acquire that space unless we had some reason to believe that we had a chance to use it effectively,” Cherington said after the Aug. 31 trade deadline had passed. “But we believe there’s still talent out there.” -- Alex Stumpf
• While on the subject of international signings, Jose Osuna is back in the majors again after Cole Tucker was placed on the 10-day injured list. He was essentially passed on the depth chart by Phil Evans, Erik Gonzalez and Ke’Bryan Hayes this year, so he hasn’t gotten as much playing time as expected. More importantly, the Pirates have used his last option year this season, meaning they must keep him in the majors in 2021 or put him on waivers. If the designated hitter rule sticks around in the NL in 2021, that would take away one of his most marketable skills: Pinch-hitting. -- Stumpf
• While the fall instructional leagues were in serious jeopardy, the Pirates are moving ahead with them, and 2020 first-round draft pick Nick Gonzales is expected to take part. Getting Gonzales more reps in 2020 is important because he is closer to being major-league ready than most of the other members from this past draft class. He is projected to reach the majors by 2022, and a late-season 2021 call up is not totally out of the question. He was a part of the Pirates’ alternate training camp in Altoona, Pa., so while he hasn’t been able to play in full games and they were all intrasquad, between this and the instructional league, it will be as close to the normal draft pick season as they could do. -- Stumpf