Penguins Fans Getting Angry; Dubas, Ownership MUST Communicate the Plan

If the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the team, want to avoid some of the simmering anger within the fanbase, then they must begin to communicate openly with the fanbase.

Actually, the simmering anger is approaching a boil as the Penguins continue to lose. A 7-11-4 record places the team near the bottom of the league. Fans need something to support, and the current team is failing spectacularly with blown leads, ghastly mistakes, and questionable effort from some players.

Penguins president of hockey operations/GM Kyle Dubas is simultaneously trying to win and build for the very near future when the organization turns the page away from Sidney Crosby. Yet, wins are not happening, the team is not happy, fans are angry, and fans are left to insert their own narratives as the Penguins flounder.

Those fan narratives aren’t friendly or supportive to anyone involved. My X replies, and comments here have become a dark place almost exclusively featuring anger and accusation.

“Either they want to say contending or whatever phrase you want to use – retooling, retool on the fly, replenish, renew, rebuild, whatever you want to say. I think every situation is unique in every different marketplace,” Dubas said of labels and public perception on his bi-weekly team-produced TV appearance Wednesday.

“I’m a firm believer that if you throw everything overboard, you really have to be careful what you wish for because you could go a long time before you’re back to being a competitive and contending team. So, our focus is on trying to, as I always say, as urgently as possible bring in (what we can) using whatever means we have.”

That much is understood. Dubas is desperately trying to avoid a tear-it-down rebuild. But what about the current team’s lack of success?

Believing or being told the team is built to win in the face of pathetic losses and obvious reality is turning off fans in droves. Fans are outright rejecting the current sales pitch. Average attendance is already down by nearly 600 fans per game from last season, and it’s only going to get worse.

The sparse crowd Friday night for the game between the Penguins and Winnipeg Jets was jarring as large swaths of seats, even in the upper bowl, were empty. There might have been 14,000 fans there. Sure, it was raining in Pittsburgh. Gasp, rain! When has simple rain ever deterred a Pittsburgh sports fan?

No, the fans are telling the organization, “If this is trying to win, thanks, but no thanks,” and are voting with their feet.

Coach Mike Sullivan is left holding the bag as the team continues to lose and struggle. Sullivan is left answering questions daily for a team that doesn’t seem capable of more. Dubas gambled on several players over the past couple of summers in hopes of maintaining a competitive team, but those results are obviously inadequate, as Erik Karlsson yields worse results than Mikael Granlund and Jeff Petry.

The acquired players are not working out. It’s not even close, and it looks like Sullivan and the team have been left on their own for a second consecutive year.

It’s time for Dubas and ownership to articulate a path forward. Use those labels that people understand. Dubas has been acquiring draft picks like 10-year-olds used to collect baseball cards. The team has 10 picks in 2025 and 2027, but those additional picks aren’t high draft picks, and they most likely won’t see NHL ice for several years (if ever) after being drafted, which puts their arrival in 2028 and beyond.

That’s a long, LONG way in the future. What about the next four years?

Comparatively, the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers spoke directly to ticket buyers and used the word “Rebuild.” Those organizations didn’t dance around the reality or try to obfuscate it to sell more tickets. Last season, Flyers GM Daniel Briere sold assets during a playoff chase, which caused a team collapse, yet very few criticized him because he was transparent. In the process, very tough fans in New York and Philadelphia appreciated the honesty and supported the effort.

Friday night, the Penguins announced attendance was a mere 15,232. Actual attendance surely looked much less than that. On a Friday night?!

Conversely, the Rangers and Flyers fans felt included, not excluded or taken advantage of. Media knew how to cover the teams and through which lens to view actions. Sure, in Philly and New York, every move was debated, and all pined for big-name acquisitions—heck, we’re fans and media. That’s pretty much how this thing works and has for over 100 years of professional sports.

Silence or spin certainly isn’t going to change that. Communication will.

The Penguins would be wise to follow their rivals because the current product does not appear to be assembled with an intense desire to win, or if it was, that has failed. Fans are ready to tear it all down or ignore the Penguins until they do.

Fans badly want to invest their hope and passion.

Like any relationship, communication is key. Dubas can’t sidestep it with verbose answers promising all things in the face of conflicting reality. If the goal is to remain competitive, this team needs immediate help. Some addition by subtraction wouldn’t hurt, either. But going back to last season, that hasn’t been forthcoming, and the summer additions were underwhelming, at best.

Dubas has communicated via email with a pool of Penguins reporters, including Pittsburgh Hockey Now, twice over the past month as significant moves, such as the Lars Eller trade, were made. But this is 2024, and this is America; the printed word isn’t the king it used to be. Fans want to see and hear. Otherwise, Dubas hasn’t spoken since his training camp press conference.

Ownership also needs to be present and accountable to fans, though the lack of such accountability as FSG has overseen mediocre Boston Red Sox seasons and the somewhat muted success of Liverpool FC doesn’t provide much hope (the soccer club seems to be on very solid ground, but many fans are unhappy over lack of investment in the transfer portal and other issues, while the Red Sox have curtailed free-agent spending and made the playoffs just once in the last six seasons).

Local fans don’t have much affinity for FSG in either situation, and the hedge fund that collects heritage logos for its portfolio would be very wise to understand Pittsburgh. This town does not support outsiders who don’t care about it. This is a small town with a lot of big buildings, and faceless ownership isn’t going to hold up here.

FSG has held exactly one press conference in its three-year tenure. In fairness, former owner Mario Lemieux didn’t often speak, either, but he remained ever-present, and fans knew it. They didn’t need to hear from Lemieux because the big guy had earned their full faith and credit by saving the franchise twice as a player and as the owner.

Lemieux also didn’t oversee the organization with phone calls from afar to discuss spreadsheets.

The only FSG press conference featured a very nervous David Beeston, then the team’s governor, who discussed the organization’s dismissal of former GM Ron Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke in April 2023. However, Beeston was a representative, not a principal, of FSG and has since moved on. One of FSG’s founders, Tom Werner, recently took several questions from beat reporters in an informal setting in the press box. He gave Sullivan far more than a vote of confidence, calling him one of the two or three best coaches in the game, and firmly backed Dubas’s plan without using labels or many details.

Again, it wasn’t a press conference to communicate with fans, and there were no cameras. Werner didn’t go into great detail about ownership and shared some obvious platitudes.

“But on the other hand, I got frustrated; I think we were all disappointed last year that we didn’t make the playoffs,” Werner said last month. “I was talking to Sidney (Crosby) in March, and I said, ‘You know, we’re going to be better next year.’

Read More: FSG Ownership & State of the Penguins, ‘Mode of Being Impatient’

The view from this keyboard is that Penguins fans are far more educated about hockey than they were 20 years ago. They do not believe this team can be successful, and they’re frustrated to the point of anger. Fans will get behind a plan IF THEY FEEL INCLUDED. Seeing 13,000 or 14,000 fans on a weekend game should sound the alarm to management and ownership.

So, what exactly is the plan, and what is the timeline? If the ownership is impatient, who is accountable? What comes next? Fans don’t necessarily have a right to know, and no one has a legal responsibility to answer to them.

…Just as they have no obligation to show up.