CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins had a great finish to the season, going 8-1-3 before they were eliminated the night before their regular-season finale.
That turnaround had them looking like a team that could seriously make a run in the postseason, if they were only able to make it there. But Kyle Dubas isn't letting those few weeks cloud his judgment when it comes to this summer. There is still a lot of work to be done, as he acknowledged in his season-ending media availability at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex on Friday.
"You're going to have ups and downs in a year," Dubas said. "To go like so starkly between a very, very much a playoff team and a non-playoff team, we kind of touched it all throughout the year. And in the end that gets you exactly where we are today. When you have a very poor start, a really strong stretch, a really bad stretch, a strong ending, you're going to be on the bubble, which is not a place to be."
Dubas called it a "roller coaster" of a season with the ebbs and flows, with the team looking more like a "high lottery" team from about mid-January to mid-March, a two-month span in which the Penguins went 9-15-3 and dug themselves into a hole that was ultimately too deep to crawl out of.
Changes need to be made.
The Penguins aren't going into "rebuild" mode just yet. By that, Dubas means a full-on "scorched earth" rebuild, where the team is completely torn down, bottoms out for a few years and collects first overall draft picks, then works their way back into being a contender.
The word Dubas used a couple of times was a "pivot" -- more akin to a retool. And he pushed back on the idea that something like that can't be done successfully with a quick turnaround, pointing to a pair of teams in the playoffs today.
"When this (Penguins) team started contending, L.A. wasn't contending yet," Dubas said. "Then (the Kings) won twice, then they missed the playoffs and acquired some high picks. Now they're a contender again, they're a very good team. The Rangers were contending when the Penguins were contending. The Rangers went through their own pivot, and now they just won the Presidents' Trophy."
Those teams kept most of their core players, but built around them with younger assets. That's what Dubas is aiming to do, and he think they've already taken some of those steps. He named P.O Joseph and Drew O'Connor as two young "bubble" players who stepped into increased roles this year and did well. He named forwards Sam Poulin, Vasily Ponomarev and defenseman Jack St. Ivany as skaters who spent most of this season in the AHL who could push for a regular NHL role next season. He also named the Penguins' top two junior prospects -- defenseman Owen Pickering and forward Brayden Yager -- as players who could have a good offseason and come in and "assert" themselves as NHL players.
The Penguins might just get younger in goal, too.
With Jeff Carter retiring, the only unrestricted free agent of any real consequence is Alex Nedeljkovic, whose one-year deal that carried a $1.5 million cap hit is set to expire. Nedeljkovic expressed a desire to return to the Penguins, and Dubas said Nedeljkovic has been "very vocal" about those views internally. But the upcoming AHL playoffs could be a major deciding factor in what happens in net next season. Don't count out Wilkes-Barre/Scranton's All-Star rookie goaltender Joel Blomqvist, who has a .921 save percentage and a 2.14 goals-against average in 44 appearances this season.
"As I said to (Nedeljkovic) yesterday, we have a situation where we have a young goaltender that's also pushing in Joel Blomqvist," Dubas said. "We're going to use this next stretch of weeks -- he'll play one (regular-season) game this weekend, then really the playoffs with Wilkes. How does Joel play? Can he assert himself at that level? Then we'll have more information of how we want to go ahead with our goaltending."
Dubas spoke about the major acquisitions he made in his first offseason last summer. He had the highest praise for Lars Eller, saying that "everything we've signed and asked for, he brought." He had praise for Noel Acciari in what he described as a "less sexier" role -- heavy penalty-killing, playing with a lot of different linemates, putting his body on the line by blocking shots and playing a defensive role.
"I think he might have started more shifts in the defensive zone than almost anybody," Dubas said of Acciari. "So I get a little defensive when people get on him about his offense, because it's hard. ... If we gave him more offensive opportunity, he would produce more and he's shown that in his career, he probably could get up to 10 (goals), he had 20 goals one year with Florida."
Dubas said that Reilly Smith acknowledged himself in exit interviews that he had a down year, especially compared to the prior season in Las Vegas. Dubas thought that Smith looked better late in the season when he joined Eller and Valtteri Puustinen on the third line, and is looking for a "big bounceback" out of him next season.
On defense, Dubas said that there's "no dancing around it" -- Ryan Graves didn't live up to expectations.
"It's on us as an organization," Dubas said of Graves' struggles. "It's as much on Ryan to push and find his way through the summer. It's a massive summer for him. His strength, which will allow him to be more physical and make stops in the defensive zone. His mobility, as he gets to be 29 to start next year, he's going to have to really push and work on that. But we have to arm him with the path to get there. Then he has to execute it relentlessly."
On the Erik Karlsson trade, Dubas said that he "wouldn't change anything with him at all," but also acknowledged that Karlsson wasn't at his best the entire season.
"I thought at the end of the year, he showed exactly why you acquire Erik Karlsson," Duba said. "He skated, took charge and shot the puck rather than try to slap pass it through five people every time, which he and I've had many discussions about. He became awfully effective ,because he kept the defense off balance, defended harder. ... I think he got on his way like the rest of the group overall, but at the same time a little bit too late."
One personnel change that definitely won't be coming will be adding a separate general manager to work under Dubas, he shot that idea down quickly. One, because Dubas said a separate general manager would likely be deferring to himself anyway. Second, because Dubas did add or promote a number of people under him in hockey operations. He named assistant general manager Jason Spezza, director of hockey operations Vukie Mpofu, director of professional personnel Andy Saucier, director of minor-league operations Erik Heasley, senior advisor Doug Wilson, special assistant Amanda Kessel and director of player development Tom Kostopoulos as members of the staff who have been particularly helpful and have potential to grow within their roles.
When asked directly about how much responsibility the coaching staff holds for missing the playoffs, Dubas first and foremost blamed himself for the failures of the season. But he said it's his job to evaluate the personnel and systems they have in place, and he and Mike Sullivan will meet "continually" over the summer to discuss whether they have the right people in place. That sure sounds like Sullivan's job is safe, and Dubas was non-committal about the rest of the staff.
Dubas called this a "pivotal" time of year, as he and the players and staff all have exit meetings that will be used to inform his decisions about what needs to change this offseason. The only thing that's really certain at this point is that there does need to be change.
"We need to reposition where the team has been," Dubas said. "Justifiably, the team for a long time has been pushing to move assets and attempt to win. The team has won here three times and been in contention for far longer than that many other times. But we need to reposition."
