CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Amid the awesome, awestruck reaction a lot of the Penguins' players appeared to have regarding Erik Karlsson's formal arrival into the fold Thursday at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, there also was an appreciation expressed among a few for how that exchange with the Sharks came to be.
And, maybe more important, what it signified.
"The way everything happened over the summer," Marcus Pettersson brought up with me on his own Thursday, "you see a guy like Kyle Dubas coming in and setting a tone, showing that he believes in us and stuff like that. We see that in here. We see what management expects from us, and we know what we expect from ourselves."
Pettersson wasn't alone in sharing thoughts on the new front office, with others essentially echoing that general sentiment or even going further and, in their first access point since the catastrophic close of the 2022-23 season -- think Rockford IceHogs -- sharing, without attribution, their feelings on the front office that was fired immediately afterward. Meaning, of course, Ron Hextall and Brian Burke.
A sampling:
• There was a legit, lingering resentment over how some components of the third and fourth forward lines were constructed. The emphasis was from the roster standpoint. With no real identity. With precious little production. With even less energy. That left the top-six types feeling as if they needed to do almost everything to compensate.
• Somewhat within that, there also was a common view that not enough was done to address the killer blown leads, bad goals at bad times, etc. This emphasis was from the roster standpoint, as well. The players just weren't there, they insisted, for Mike Sullivan to send over the boards in such situations. Not in sufficient numbers, anyway.
• There was a chasm in communication between the front office and ... well, everyone. Not that players ever expect to be consulted -- even Sidney Crosby's never pushed for that -- but it was easy to tell Dubas has spent a ton of time this summer talking to players up and down his depth chart, trying to learn as much as possible about what makes them tick and, in turn, how the Penguins can improve as a collective.
As one player worded it, "Kyle's all-in. He's all-in with us. He's all-in with what we want to achieve."
MORE PENGUINS
• What's above showed in one other way: Throughout both practices Thursday, Dubas not only never left his perch above ice level for his adjacent office ... but he also never sat down. I've never seen a GM do that in this rink. Even for a brief spell. Dubas stood while almost everyone else in that row -- about a dozen team officials -- sat. And from there, he never peeled his eyes away from so much as a millisecond of the action.
• Extremely early buzz of ... not camp, really, but the pre-camp sessions the players had been conducting on their own up here for a couple weeks ... is Matt Nieto. They love him. See him as a heady type who can slide up and down the forward lines and help out in a number of ways, someone who might not be as well known in these parts because he's spent his NHL career in the West.
• Sullivan wasn't stretching it upon saying, "We're going to have a lot of challenging decisions" in this camp. Unlike in previous years, even under Jim Rutherford, the roster battles are delving as deep as hypothetical fifth or sixth lines up front, fourth and fifth pairings in the back. I'm told the reason for that is two-fold: One is the obvious. The other's that all concerned are determined to push as many of these players who don't make it through to Wilkes-Barre as possible and, thus, create greater certainty for when injuries inevitably occur.
• No one's saying anything yet, but there's an underlying awareness, I sense, that the top two defense pairings will be Kris Letang and Ryan Graves -- nicest kid in the world, by the way -- and Karlsson with Pettersson. And there's much more than that as related to Reilly Smith playing on Evgeni Malkin's left. He'll be there.
• Terrific to see most of the restructured broadcasting team on hand, all with big smiles, all back in their natural element. Still hate Bob Errey being tossed out after a lifetime of commitment to the franchise, something Mario Lemieux never would've allowed, but happy for those who survived.
• I sure hope nobody reading this portion of Insider misses my column from Day 1 of camp, for which I conducted one-on-one interviews with Karlsson, Letang and Pettersson.
STEELERS
• Joey Porter Jr.'s snap counts have increased from 7 to 14 through the first two games, and it's shaping up that it'll rise that much more Sunday night in Las Vegas. He's impressed the coaching staff with his hands-on coverage -- though it's been a little too handsy at times, risking a flag -- and his poise for a rookie in game settings. Also and related, all concerned saw Levi Wallace being picked on Monday by the Browns, and those stories seldom end well.
• Jaylen Warren's touches will increase, too. Not to the extent he's surpassing Najee Harris, but closer to equal.
• Broderick Jones ... not just yet. But Dan Moore's got to pick it up, and he's aware of that.
• Mike Tomlin doesn't fire coaches mid-season? Eh, that's not entirely true, but it's mostly true. For anyone wondering what fate might await Matt Canada with further failure -- and I've heard it's a subject of some interest to the public -- what Tomlin will most commonly do when he's dissatisfied is to apply workarounds. I cited, for example, in Insider a month ago how Tomlin and Omar Khan felt that Frisman Jackson, the wide receivers coach, wasn't doing enough to control his room. (I was never told specifics of what that meant.) And this contributed to the signing of Allen Robinson, who'd provide a veteran presence alongside Diontae Johnson. Jackson wasn't fired or demoted, but a workaround was applied. Same goes for Tomlin taking over as de facto defensive coordinator late in Keith Butler's tenure.
• My goodness, I'm not even mentioning the 2013 season in which Maurkice Pouncey and other veterans basically took over the offensive line room and coached themselves. And were empowered to do so. While the dead-man-walking coach, Jack Bicknell Jr., was still employed. He was then fired at season's end.
• The offensive linemen are mad. Isaac Seumalo's mad. Mason Cole's really mad. All I'll say right now. Other than to expect a marked change Sunday.
PIRATES
• Josh Palacios, author of yet another monster hit Thursday night in Chicago, is having a September to remember -- .320/.333/.600 with four home runs and 12 RBIs in 50 at-bats -- after an awful .143 August. Now, September ball's easily dismissed in baseball circles, and not without cause. Pressure's off, pitchers are worn down, and all that. But what'll keep Palacios on this team in 2024 has nothing to do with that and everything to do with a season-long penchant for being able to keep up with back-end flamethrowers. Get this: He bats .176 against starters, .302 against relievers. And in 20 at-bats in late/close situations, he's got 11 hits, including four of his 10 home runs. ... And yet, he told me before this current road trip that management's never once steered him toward a bench mentality: "All I hear is that the door's wide open. I see myself as a guy who can be an everyday player at this level, and I'm glad they do, too."
• As strongly as I was stating at this time a year ago that the Pirates' plan for 2023 was to punt on yet another year, that's how strongly I'll state now that the plan for 2024 is the polar opposite. And though it was Ben Cherington who appeared to deliberately lay that out on his weekly radio show this past Sunday, that's coming from above. Trust me on that.
• The internal outlook on Paul Skenes is very much that he'll pitch in Pittsburgh next summer. But the next trace of a hint I get from anyone that it could be from the season's outset will be the first, so I'd fully expect to see a Vince Velasquez/Rich Hill type of signing -- not those pitchers, necessarily -- to buy time for the kid to spend a couple months in the minors and/or save the franchise a few bucks by avoiding Super-2 arbitration.
• No extension talks with anyone yet.
• I'll be better equipped with baseball stuff in the next Insider after I spend part of next week covering the team in Philadelphia.
• Thanks for reading Insider, as always!
