DK's 21 Takes: With Mario, Sid, winning's always first ... Appreciating Reynolds ... Football vs. fútbol
I believe in Mario Lemieux.
I believe in Sidney Crosby.
Couple of bold stances there, huh?
But no, I've been blessed to know both for decades now, and I believe in both as iconic performers, as incredible people and, of course, as perpetual winners in all walks of life. It's what pushes them. It's the underpinning of everything they do.
In the coming week, in all likelihood, we're about to be reminded of both.
Tuesday in New York, the NHL's Board of Governors will meet, presenting the first opportunity for the league to confirm the sale of the Penguins to the Hoffman Family of Companies. And that, as I've been reporting for months, is expected to bring Mario back more fully into the franchise fold for the first time in far too long.
I've yet to hear details on that arrangement, but a source confirmed over the weekend that this is something Mario's wanted for a while, and that he'd never enter into any agreement without being extra-cautious that the principal buyer would arrive with the means -- that's come into question, fair or not, through this process -- and the proper intentions.
All of which sounds super-encouraging, to say the least.
Then, Friday, the Penguins will have the 22nd overall pick in the NHL Draft. And it'll be in that setting that Kyle Dubas will yet again be faced with one of those figurative forks in the road between the present, always best represented by Sid's enduring excellence, and the future. All the usual fodder: Trade up for a higher slot, as Dubas tried to do a year ago? Give up the pick as part of some bigger pursuit? Keep on this more cautious course of building up assets?
No one's about to ask, but here's what I say: When you've got winners like these ... win.
I can't know what all opportunities Dubas might see or anticipate, who's available from other teams, who might be a realistic target to be offer-sheeted through restricted free agency, who might be a star type who'd want out of their current settings, who might have no-movement clauses to be able to choose a destination the way Erik Karlsson chose Pittsburgh ... all that fun fare. But a GM knows. And this one's got to make calls based on all those circumstances and then some.
Within that ... yeah, win.
Now.
That doesn't mean dumping off all the picks and prospects who've been piled up. And it definitely doesn't mean doing something flat-out dumb like moving a Ben Kindel, Harrison Brunicke or Sergei Murashov. There's no cause for a second coming of the Jim Rutherford approach. That worked then. It'd make no sense now.
But building up further on a Stanley Cup playoff berth just now? On finishing second in the Metro only to the team that'd wind up winning it all? On having the league's third-highest scoring operation?
Backward doesn't make sense, either.
Sid's 38, but he's still a point-a-game guarantee at a bargain rate. Same with Evgeni Malkin in what'll presumably be his farewell season. And that's to say nothing of the riveting revival of the Norris Trophy version of Karlsson. Those are gifts from the hockey gods, and there's no good that comes from disregarding them as such.
Go put out those offer sheets. Get someone else in the Egor Chinakhov age range. That'd be optimal, as it benefits both causes. There's still $37,858,750 in cap space, per Spotrac, which spells extraordinary flexibility to be aggressive, even in a market that'll be bone-dry in unrestricted free agency.
But yeah, get after the Auston Matthews or Dylan Larkin or Elias Pettersson types who, for various reasons, might want out from where they are. Because they're all in their 20s, too, and they'd fit with any program Dubas has in mind, beyond bolstering the present.
Makes sense with Sid.
But also with Mario, who's never had much appetite for rebuilding of any scale or within any scenario, never mind one in which both he and the Hoffmans will want to arrive as good-guy owners, not the ones who show up as buzzkills.
These two were twice-in-a-lifetime. We're still there. Don't let it lapse.
• With gusto, once and for all: Good riddance to the Fenway Sports Group, if only for their classless, clueless conduct in dealing with Mario. Imagine the collective business acumen involved in coming into this market and thinking that's a good idea.
Mario and the Penguins aren't just inseparable. They're synonymous.
• Mario once spoke that Sid could play at a high level till he's 50. Think about that.
• And on the subject of treasured Penguins: Welcome back to Ron Francis, a wonderful addition by Dubas to his staff. And welcome back to Eddie Johnston and Craig Patrick being up and around, gradually but surely. The rink's never the same without them.
• There's one unrestricted free agent the Penguins ought to pursue ... or, to word that more aptly, to prevent from becoming one: Ryan Shea, 29, put up 35 points and a plus-30 rating in 80 games this past regular season, he's a terrific teammate, he just happens to play a position that's the greatest need in the organization, he told me he'd love to stay, and he'd be eminently affordable.
It's nuts to imagine allowing him to walk, but he can do precisely that July 1.
• It's not so much the reunification of the Tkachuk brothers in Sunrise that represents a seismic shock to the Eastern Conference, as it is to see the Panthers' new top three lines:
Carter Verhaeghe-Sasha Barkov-Sam Reinhart Matthew Tkachuk-Sam Bennett-Brady Tkachuk Brad Marchand-Anton Lundell-Eetu Luostarinen
Carolina who?
• It could be just as much a shock in the other direction in Ottawa, of course. The Senators added three first-round picks, plus a second, but that'll be scant consolation to Tim Stutzle and everyone else who'd been seen as an up-and-comer in the conference.
• Buckle up. There's about to be a bunch more. That extra $8.5 million everyone's getting in cap space will make everyone feel like a contender in the summertime. And with such a bad free-agent class, it'll all turn into trades, trades, trades.
GETTY
Bryan Reynolds gets welcomed after his three-run home run Sunday in Denver.
• Few baseball things can make anyone look dumber than doubting Bryan Reynolds. Which way too many in our small corner of the world tend to do.
It's not just that he's been the Pirates' plain-as-day MVP to date with an .884 OPS that's 42 points higher than the next-best in the lineup, that's 16th-highest of everyone across Major League Baseball, and that's No. 1 among all left fielders not named Juan Soto.
It's not just that he's been on an outrageous tear of late, underscored by a 27-game on-base streak that was extended yesterday in the 8-6 victory over the Rockies in Denver with a three-run home run and a double. Within that streak, he's batting .367 with seven home runs and 19 RBIs.
It's not just that he's back in line for a third career All-Star selection with season slashes of .287/.400/.484, 11 home runs and 51 RBIs.
Rather, it's ... I mean, come on. He's been here a while. This is what he does. And he does it in the most professional manner while also out-performing the eight-year, $106.75 million contract extension that so many worried would get wasted.
Very good player. Great value. One of the greatest humans. Give it up for the guy already.
• My All-Stars: Reynolds, Brandon Lowe and Paul Skenes. And no, I couldn't care less that there would be three picks from a .500 team. It's about individual performance.
• It is, in fact, a .500 team. The record's 39-39.
It's also Year 7 for this front office. A long, long, long, long, long, long, long time to reach .500.
• Anyone who ever wants to fathom how frustrating it is for a pitcher to fight back from an elbow surgery only needed to witness Jared Jones' reaction upon being hit by a liner on that same elbow yesterday in Denver:
Jared Jones takes a line drive off the back of his right elbow and is clearly frustrated right away...
Early word's upbeat on this. Initial imaging showed no fractures. Jones himself called it a "best-case scenario" and went so far as to laugh off his "overdramatic” reaction.
Yeah, no. These athletes who endure long-term rehabs, they'll all attest that they go through far more mentally than physically.
• Henry Davis has eight hits in his past 83 plate appearances. He hasn't had more than one hit in the same game since May 1. He's batting .136 with a .238 on-base.
Ben Cherington, taking questions yesterday on the team-produced radio show by a team employee, tried to explain trading Joey Bart to the Braves this past week by saying that "the best balance of offense and defense" would come with Endy Rodriguez and Davis. Hence, those two stayed, and Bart was gone.
Which is, of course, absurd in all ways.
What's worse, Cherington knows this. He's as much into advanced analytics as any executive in sports, so he knows offense is always more valuable for any position player. Just as he knows that catching defense is now a slightly lower priority unto itself because pitch-framing's pretty much irrelevant with ABS challenges.
Why be disingenuous about it?
Because I'm sure he feels he can't say out loud that his staff made Davis a No. 1 overall pick, that he's bombing at age 26 and that he can't risk seeing him go elsewhere and blossom since that's what moved Bob Nutting to fire Neal Huntington and those guys. And because I'm sure he feels he can't say out loud that Davis and Skenes are too tight to separate, and that Skenes is too important to tick off.
• I'm not wild about evaluating pitching/hitting coaches in their first year, but ... man, it's one thing for slowpoke Bill Murphy to be presiding over year-to-year regressions for nearly everyone on his staff -- Braxton Ashcraft and Gregory Soto exempted -- but it's quite another when one of those happens to be a universally labeled generational talent.
Skenes has still been very good. He's one of five qualified starters in the majors with a sub-1 WHIP at 0.93, and his 107 strikeouts rank third. But even he sounded a little lost over the weekend in Denver, saying of his start, "Glad it wasn't worse."
Murphy might not want to drag this one out.
• I'm not joking in the slightest when I complain about his walk, by the way:
If I'm an umpire, I actually beat him to the mound -- wouldn't be hard -- and I stop him before he steps off the grass to send him right back to the dugout. Especially in this era of everyone doing their part to speed up the game, that act's damned disrespectful.
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
The Steelers' inside linebackers at minicamp earlier this month on the South Side.
• There are Jerome Bettis days between now and the Steelers' reporting date to Latrobe, and there's no single stage of the calendar that makes me miss football more. Because next to nothing happens on any front. Execs, coaches, players, even agents disperse across the globe for their last free time for months.
And this gap, for me, will feel longer than most, if only because so many questions remain maddeningly unanswered from the summer sessions.
Notably these three ...
What'll be this offense's foundational identity?
Could this defensive front be tasked with too much complexity?
Jalen Ramsey's doing who what where and why?
I'll give credit to Mike McCarthy for this much: No matter how much players were pressed for particulars on these or other fronts, they'd come back all-vanilla and apology-free. That tells me a ton about how this'll be run once there are pads.
• Good on the Steelers for forgoing Brendan Sorsby, the quarterback out ot Texas Tech with the all-engulfing gambling issues, as our Chris Halicke reported exclusively in Friday Insider.
And not just for the obvious reason.
See, there's also this: There are four quarterbacks in house, two of whom will be needed to make something of the coming season, plus Will Howard and Drew Allar being given real chances to poke through as franchise types, PLUS a presumed 2027 NFL Draft first-round pick at the position.
I'm in favor of quantity to go with the quality in this approach, but it's also fair to be mindful of management's dual outlook that very much includes 2026. Can't pretend it doesn't exist.
• Football friendships last a lifetime and always supersede team allegiances, and I love it: Pat Freiermuth's wedding over the weekend saw Najee Harris, Calvin Austin and Connor Heyward in attendance, along with current guys Mason Rudolph, Dylan Cook, Spencer Anderson and Alex Highsmith. And I'm sure many more would've been there, if able.
Oh, and congrats to Pat and Jillian! About time someone noticed he was open!
• In all candor, I'm offended more as an American than anything that NFL owners catered to every World Cup whim in setting up their stadiums, not least of which was installing real grass everywhere, while not doing likewise for their own athletes ... and themselves in terms of preventing injuries that cost them real assets.
I get that there are challenges associated with colder weather, but I also hear the players say they'd prefer grass to turf year-round and everywhere they go. Including Pittsburgh.
The NFL's a $23 billion industry, and Roger Goodell's on record that it'll be $25 billion by 2027. Which could cover the cost of sending a few dudes and their flatbeds to the nearest Lowe's.
• I've really enjoyed the soccer. Watched a bunch. (Cape Verde twice!)
Feels weird to have hope for the U.S., and feels that much weirder to see smart, skilled, soft-touched Americans on the pitch not named Christian Pulisic.
• Thanks so much for reading the second edition of the reborn 21 Takes. For anyone who might not know, I once wrote an all-bullets column called Tuesday Takes, which then briefly morphed into 21 Takes before fading into the ether for reasons I can't even recall.
This feature will run Monday mornings -- by far our busiest reading period of the week -- and it'll usually, not always, offer material on all three of our coverage teams.
• Hope all the dads in our audience had a fulfilling Fathers Day. We all take a little too much for granted in life, but family should never crack that list.
THE ASYLUM
DK's 21 Takes: With Mario, Sid, winning's always first ... Appreciating Reynolds ... Football vs. fútbol
I believe in Mario Lemieux.
I believe in Sidney Crosby.
Couple of bold stances there, huh?
But no, I've been blessed to know both for decades now, and I believe in both as iconic performers, as incredible people and, of course, as perpetual winners in all walks of life. It's what pushes them. It's the underpinning of everything they do.
In the coming week, in all likelihood, we're about to be reminded of both.
Tuesday in New York, the NHL's Board of Governors will meet, presenting the first opportunity for the league to confirm the sale of the Penguins to the Hoffman Family of Companies. And that, as I've been reporting for months, is expected to bring Mario back more fully into the franchise fold for the first time in far too long.
I've yet to hear details on that arrangement, but a source confirmed over the weekend that this is something Mario's wanted for a while, and that he'd never enter into any agreement without being extra-cautious that the principal buyer would arrive with the means -- that's come into question, fair or not, through this process -- and the proper intentions.
All of which sounds super-encouraging, to say the least.
Then, Friday, the Penguins will have the 22nd overall pick in the NHL Draft. And it'll be in that setting that Kyle Dubas will yet again be faced with one of those figurative forks in the road between the present, always best represented by Sid's enduring excellence, and the future. All the usual fodder: Trade up for a higher slot, as Dubas tried to do a year ago? Give up the pick as part of some bigger pursuit? Keep on this more cautious course of building up assets?
No one's about to ask, but here's what I say: When you've got winners like these ... win.
I can't know what all opportunities Dubas might see or anticipate, who's available from other teams, who might be a realistic target to be offer-sheeted through restricted free agency, who might be a star type who'd want out of their current settings, who might have no-movement clauses to be able to choose a destination the way Erik Karlsson chose Pittsburgh ... all that fun fare. But a GM knows. And this one's got to make calls based on all those circumstances and then some.
Within that ... yeah, win.
Now.
That doesn't mean dumping off all the picks and prospects who've been piled up. And it definitely doesn't mean doing something flat-out dumb like moving a Ben Kindel, Harrison Brunicke or Sergei Murashov. There's no cause for a second coming of the Jim Rutherford approach. That worked then. It'd make no sense now.
But building up further on a Stanley Cup playoff berth just now? On finishing second in the Metro only to the team that'd wind up winning it all? On having the league's third-highest scoring operation?
Backward doesn't make sense, either.
Sid's 38, but he's still a point-a-game guarantee at a bargain rate. Same with Evgeni Malkin in what'll presumably be his farewell season. And that's to say nothing of the riveting revival of the Norris Trophy version of Karlsson. Those are gifts from the hockey gods, and there's no good that comes from disregarding them as such.
Go put out those offer sheets. Get someone else in the Egor Chinakhov age range. That'd be optimal, as it benefits both causes. There's still $37,858,750 in cap space, per Spotrac, which spells extraordinary flexibility to be aggressive, even in a market that'll be bone-dry in unrestricted free agency.
But yeah, get after the Auston Matthews or Dylan Larkin or Elias Pettersson types who, for various reasons, might want out from where they are. Because they're all in their 20s, too, and they'd fit with any program Dubas has in mind, beyond bolstering the present.
Makes sense with Sid.
But also with Mario, who's never had much appetite for rebuilding of any scale or within any scenario, never mind one in which both he and the Hoffmans will want to arrive as good-guy owners, not the ones who show up as buzzkills.
These two were twice-in-a-lifetime. We're still there. Don't let it lapse.
• With gusto, once and for all: Good riddance to the Fenway Sports Group, if only for their classless, clueless conduct in dealing with Mario. Imagine the collective business acumen involved in coming into this market and thinking that's a good idea.
Mario and the Penguins aren't just inseparable. They're synonymous.
• Mario once spoke that Sid could play at a high level till he's 50. Think about that.
• And on the subject of treasured Penguins: Welcome back to Ron Francis, a wonderful addition by Dubas to his staff. And welcome back to Eddie Johnston and Craig Patrick being up and around, gradually but surely. The rink's never the same without them.
• There's one unrestricted free agent the Penguins ought to pursue ... or, to word that more aptly, to prevent from becoming one: Ryan Shea, 29, put up 35 points and a plus-30 rating in 80 games this past regular season, he's a terrific teammate, he just happens to play a position that's the greatest need in the organization, he told me he'd love to stay, and he'd be eminently affordable.
It's nuts to imagine allowing him to walk, but he can do precisely that July 1.
• It's not so much the reunification of the Tkachuk brothers in Sunrise that represents a seismic shock to the Eastern Conference, as it is to see the Panthers' new top three lines:
Carter Verhaeghe-Sasha Barkov-Sam Reinhart
Matthew Tkachuk-Sam Bennett-Brady Tkachuk
Brad Marchand-Anton Lundell-Eetu Luostarinen
Carolina who?
• It could be just as much a shock in the other direction in Ottawa, of course. The Senators added three first-round picks, plus a second, but that'll be scant consolation to Tim Stutzle and everyone else who'd been seen as an up-and-comer in the conference.
• Buckle up. There's about to be a bunch more. That extra $8.5 million everyone's getting in cap space will make everyone feel like a contender in the summertime. And with such a bad free-agent class, it'll all turn into trades, trades, trades.
GETTY
Bryan Reynolds gets welcomed after his three-run home run Sunday in Denver.
• Few baseball things can make anyone look dumber than doubting Bryan Reynolds. Which way too many in our small corner of the world tend to do.
It's not just that he's been the Pirates' plain-as-day MVP to date with an .884 OPS that's 42 points higher than the next-best in the lineup, that's 16th-highest of everyone across Major League Baseball, and that's No. 1 among all left fielders not named Juan Soto.
It's not just that he's been on an outrageous tear of late, underscored by a 27-game on-base streak that was extended yesterday in the 8-6 victory over the Rockies in Denver with a three-run home run and a double. Within that streak, he's batting .367 with seven home runs and 19 RBIs.
It's not just that he's back in line for a third career All-Star selection with season slashes of .287/.400/.484, 11 home runs and 51 RBIs.
Rather, it's ... I mean, come on. He's been here a while. This is what he does. And he does it in the most professional manner while also out-performing the eight-year, $106.75 million contract extension that so many worried would get wasted.
Very good player. Great value. One of the greatest humans. Give it up for the guy already.
• My All-Stars: Reynolds, Brandon Lowe and Paul Skenes. And no, I couldn't care less that there would be three picks from a .500 team. It's about individual performance.
• It is, in fact, a .500 team. The record's 39-39.
It's also Year 7 for this front office. A long, long, long, long, long, long, long time to reach .500.
• Anyone who ever wants to fathom how frustrating it is for a pitcher to fight back from an elbow surgery only needed to witness Jared Jones' reaction upon being hit by a liner on that same elbow yesterday in Denver:
Early word's upbeat on this. Initial imaging showed no fractures. Jones himself called it a "best-case scenario" and went so far as to laugh off his "overdramatic” reaction.
Yeah, no. These athletes who endure long-term rehabs, they'll all attest that they go through far more mentally than physically.
• Henry Davis has eight hits in his past 83 plate appearances. He hasn't had more than one hit in the same game since May 1. He's batting .136 with a .238 on-base.
Ben Cherington, taking questions yesterday on the team-produced radio show by a team employee, tried to explain trading Joey Bart to the Braves this past week by saying that "the best balance of offense and defense" would come with Endy Rodriguez and Davis. Hence, those two stayed, and Bart was gone.
Which is, of course, absurd in all ways.
What's worse, Cherington knows this. He's as much into advanced analytics as any executive in sports, so he knows offense is always more valuable for any position player. Just as he knows that catching defense is now a slightly lower priority unto itself because pitch-framing's pretty much irrelevant with ABS challenges.
Why be disingenuous about it?
Because I'm sure he feels he can't say out loud that his staff made Davis a No. 1 overall pick, that he's bombing at age 26 and that he can't risk seeing him go elsewhere and blossom since that's what moved Bob Nutting to fire Neal Huntington and those guys. And because I'm sure he feels he can't say out loud that Davis and Skenes are too tight to separate, and that Skenes is too important to tick off.
• I'm not wild about evaluating pitching/hitting coaches in their first year, but ... man, it's one thing for slowpoke Bill Murphy to be presiding over year-to-year regressions for nearly everyone on his staff -- Braxton Ashcraft and Gregory Soto exempted -- but it's quite another when one of those happens to be a universally labeled generational talent.
Skenes has still been very good. He's one of five qualified starters in the majors with a sub-1 WHIP at 0.93, and his 107 strikeouts rank third. But even he sounded a little lost over the weekend in Denver, saying of his start, "Glad it wasn't worse."
Murphy might not want to drag this one out.
• I'm not joking in the slightest when I complain about his walk, by the way:
If I'm an umpire, I actually beat him to the mound -- wouldn't be hard -- and I stop him before he steps off the grass to send him right back to the dugout. Especially in this era of everyone doing their part to speed up the game, that act's damned disrespectful.
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
The Steelers' inside linebackers at minicamp earlier this month on the South Side.
• There are Jerome Bettis days between now and the Steelers' reporting date to Latrobe, and there's no single stage of the calendar that makes me miss football more. Because next to nothing happens on any front. Execs, coaches, players, even agents disperse across the globe for their last free time for months.
And this gap, for me, will feel longer than most, if only because so many questions remain maddeningly unanswered from the summer sessions.
Notably these three ...
What'll be this offense's foundational identity?
Could this defensive front be tasked with too much complexity?
Jalen Ramsey's doing who what where and why?
I'll give credit to Mike McCarthy for this much: No matter how much players were pressed for particulars on these or other fronts, they'd come back all-vanilla and apology-free. That tells me a ton about how this'll be run once there are pads.
• Good on the Steelers for forgoing Brendan Sorsby, the quarterback out ot Texas Tech with the all-engulfing gambling issues, as our Chris Halicke reported exclusively in Friday Insider.
And not just for the obvious reason.
See, there's also this: There are four quarterbacks in house, two of whom will be needed to make something of the coming season, plus Will Howard and Drew Allar being given real chances to poke through as franchise types, PLUS a presumed 2027 NFL Draft first-round pick at the position.
I'm in favor of quantity to go with the quality in this approach, but it's also fair to be mindful of management's dual outlook that very much includes 2026. Can't pretend it doesn't exist.
• Football friendships last a lifetime and always supersede team allegiances, and I love it: Pat Freiermuth's wedding over the weekend saw Najee Harris, Calvin Austin and Connor Heyward in attendance, along with current guys Mason Rudolph, Dylan Cook, Spencer Anderson and Alex Highsmith. And I'm sure many more would've been there, if able.
Oh, and congrats to Pat and Jillian! About time someone noticed he was open!
• In all candor, I'm offended more as an American than anything that NFL owners catered to every World Cup whim in setting up their stadiums, not least of which was installing real grass everywhere, while not doing likewise for their own athletes ... and themselves in terms of preventing injuries that cost them real assets.
I get that there are challenges associated with colder weather, but I also hear the players say they'd prefer grass to turf year-round and everywhere they go. Including Pittsburgh.
The NFL's a $23 billion industry, and Roger Goodell's on record that it'll be $25 billion by 2027. Which could cover the cost of sending a few dudes and their flatbeds to the nearest Lowe's.
• I've really enjoyed the soccer. Watched a bunch. (Cape Verde twice!)
Feels weird to have hope for the U.S., and feels that much weirder to see smart, skilled, soft-touched Americans on the pitch not named Christian Pulisic.
• Thanks so much for reading the second edition of the reborn 21 Takes. For anyone who might not know, I once wrote an all-bullets column called Tuesday Takes, which then briefly morphed into 21 Takes before fading into the ether for reasons I can't even recall.
This feature will run Monday mornings -- by far our busiest reading period of the week -- and it'll usually, not always, offer material on all three of our coverage teams.
• Hope all the dads in our audience had a fulfilling Fathers Day. We all take a little too much for granted in life, but family should never crack that list.
Want to participate in our comments?
Want an ad-free experience?
Become a member, and enjoy premium benefits!
We’d love to have you!