Ryan Graves will be the first to tell you that he just has not been good enough through his first two seasons as a Penguin.

Graves, 29, was the first big "get" in free agency under Kyle Dubas, inking a big six-year contract worth $4.5 million a year, a contract he's yet to live up to.

In Graves' first season in Pittsburgh in 2023-24, he was frequently with Kris Letang on the top pairing, though his role decreased over the course of the season as he struggled. He spent almost all of this season on the third pairing, between stints as a healthy scratch.

While Graves acknowledges that his play left room to be desired, he thinks he started to turn his game around.

"There's some things that you would change," he told me in a one-on-one conversation during the Penguins' locker room cleanout day. "I guess there's been improvements. It may seem like my numbers are way down this year compared to last year, but I think that there's been improvements on some subtleties of the game in defending and things like that."

When Graves mentions his "numbers," he's talking about the basics -- he went from a plus-10 last year to a minus-15 this year, and 14 points last year and four this year. But in a season like this one, just about everyone on the team saw a drop in "numbers" some way or another. But when you look at Graves' results within the context of the Penguins' blue line this season, he was pretty OK.

Of the five defensemen to play the full season in Pittsburgh (Kris Letang, Erik Karlsson, Matt Grzelcyk, Ryan Shea and Graves), the Penguins' share of unblocked shots for vs. against at five-on-five was second-best with Graves on the ice, controlling 49.24% of the unblocked attempts. That was second to only Karlsson, who edged him out at 50.55%. When you look at the expected goals share, which is just a measure that takes into account the quantity and quality of attempts, Graves led the Penguins' defensemen at 51.07%. Looking at high-danger attempts alone, the on-ice share with Graves was second-best at 49.26%, behind only Karlsson's 49.3%. 

That all comes despite the Penguins' third defense pairing seeing the highest share of their shifts start in the defensive zone, with only 36.14% of Graves' shifts coming in the offensive zone. Given that role, for Graves to finish as well as he did in some of those categories is pretty good (and something he wasn't aware of, he said). 

Still, he knows that being a defenseman reduced to a limited role like he was and healthy scratched at times isn't even close to where he needs to be.

"I think that you're just trying to build," he said. "You're trying to find the way you can help the group succeed. And I think there's things to build off of, and I'll continue to try to do that and continue to work on my own game, looking at myself in the mirror. I want to be better, and I'll continue to work at that."

Graves did seem to benefit this season from his reduced role ... or at least wasn't noticeably as much of a liability in his limited ice time. I asked Graves if he thinks being moved to the third pairing helped him in any way, and he said he didn't think it did.

"I know that my minutes are down," Graves said. "But it's not like we're not playing against other teams' top lines. We're not only playing against fourth lines. I think that I've defended better this year. I think that there's times last year where I struggled, whereas this year, I think it's been more sound and defended harder."

Mike Sullivan agreed, telling me that there have been "some improvements" in Graves' play this season compared to last year. But Sullivan also said that their "expectations are higher" when it comes to Graves.

"We're asking him to use his physical stature to be hard to play against and help us defend," Sullivan said. "And to take it a step further, he has the capability of defending the rushes aggressively with his reach and his size and his mobility and his physicality. We want him to kill plays, end plays in the corners. Don't let teams play out of the corners on us and out of the quadrant. We want him to kill plays."

Sullivan said that in those areas, there was improvement, but it was "sporadic." They're looking for consistency in that regard.

That inconsistency in Graves' ability to use those things over the course of the season is also able to be measured in a small way. Looking at his individual takeaways, there was a brief time this season where he was among the best in the league at racking those up. Through the first month of the season, he was No. 2 among the league's defensemen in his rate of takeaways with 3.3 per 60 minutes. Through November, he was still No. 10 at 2.16. By the end of the season, among defensemen with at least 500 minutes played, he had fallen to 59th at 1.18. 

Regardless, it doesn't take underlying numbers to just see that Graves' play took a dive when he arrived in Pittsburgh. He was a reliable top-4 defenseman before coming here, and he did have better "numbers" in both of his previous stops, including a year being a plus-40 in Colorado, and even plus-34 in New Jersey in his final season before signing with the Penguins. He picked up some points too, including 26-point seasons in both Colorado and New Jersey and a career-high 28-point year in New Jersey, too.

Graves didn't want to take too much credit for the offense in those years, saying "those are years playing with Cale Makar, playing every shift with Nathan MacKinnon, or playing on a team like New Jersey that was top-three in goals in the league. ... I'm never going to put up 30 points on my own." But I asked him just what happened with him when he made the move to Pittsburgh, and he said that it was trying to make the transition from New Jersey.

"The way we played when Lindy (Ruff) was the coach there was so different than your typical NHL scheme," he explained. "I was there for two full seasons and you get to a point where it's instinctual. Things like your breakout scheme, the way you play in general. We were a very possession-heavy team. We didn't dump the puck, we didn't really stretch the ice. We were very close, very compact the way we played. We defended in numbers."

Coming to the Penguins, Graves said that the play is more "traditional."

"We play fast," he said. "Like, sometimes, your outs are 30-40, feet away, whereas in Jersey, they were like five, six, seven, feet away. Everything was tight. I struggled in the difference in systems. And then once you lose your confidence, it can spiral. So it's been a process to get it back, and I'll keep working on it."

That being said, Graves is hoping that he gets to keep working on rebuilding his confidence and being a better player here. He's not looking for a fresh start. He has a young family, and they recently bought a house in the area. He likes the team, his teammates, and he's hoping to still be here when the Penguins return to contention.

"I'd love to be back, I love Pittsburgh," Graves told me. "There's a reason I signed here in the first place. I think it suits where I'm at in life. I still believe this team can compete. Going into the off season, the feeling for me is not uncertainty and like where I'll be. It's more focused inward and what I can improve on, and to come in and be at the form that I know I can play at."