Kingerski: It Seems Dubas Headed Down the Road of Past Mistakes

By the 3 p.m. buzzer Friday, the Pittsburgh Penguins were not a fundamentally different team. Still, the cache of draft picks and potential is now overflowing general manager Kyle Dubas’s top drawer.

But the biggest question is: How does Dubas plan to build the Penguins–in what image or style will he construct the next Penguins’ era?

One could also ask if Dubas learned from his two fatal flaws with the Toronto Maple Leafs because, thus far, history seems to be repeating itself.

The current Penguins roster badly lacks a team identity and an adequate defense corps.

Dubas also badly struggled with goalies in Toronto, as he has in Pittsburgh, but that issue isn’t uncommon.

Departing from hockey orthodoxy, the GM built his Toronto teams around the forwards crew, bypassing the typical path of building from the back out. Remember, even the most recent championship Penguins were built from the back. Brooks Orpik, Ryan Whitney, even Rob Scuderi, and Marc-Andre Fleury preceded Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby.

Former GM Craig Patrick also added free-agent defenseman Sergei Gonchar and drafted Kris Letang in 2005.

Conversely, Dubas’s Toronto teams were perennially top-heavy. They had more than enough talented forwards, and their big four are still the envy of the NHL. Not even the Edmonton Oilers can match the four-deep forwards at the top of that lineup.

But the team was always searching for itself. They lacked toughness on defense and upfront. At most trade deadlines, necessity forced Dubas to overspend on players such as Noel Acciari and Mark Giordano for grit and leadership. Still, it was never enough because it was just ancillary to the core.

If the games were played on paper, Dubas’s Toronto teams would have formed a dynasty. Instead, they relied on talent and were annually bounced from the playoffs like a Raptors’ practice ball.

The teams just weren’t constructed to win when it counts. After all, talent isn’t an identity. The Penguins also had to learn that lesson the hard way from 2010 to 2015.

Penguins Construction

So, two years into Dubas’s tenure and one year into his program to revamp the organization, what is the Penguins’ identity? In what mold is Dubas constructing the teams of the future?

Currently, the construction of his forwards crew is headed in the very wrong direction.

Dubas has acquired young, talented forwards who are perimeter players with a soft game. Cody Glass, Philip Tomasino, and now Tommy Novak fit that unfortunate description. They have offensive skills and positive advanced analytics but lack identity-building characteristics.

Novak has just 24 career hits in his first 203 games despite playing the first 201 games in a building that touts itself as “Smashville,” and official scorers aren’t stingy about awarding hits.

Friday, Dubas said that Novak has been on his priority list for a few years. Kevin Hayes and Danton Heinen are also part of the Dubas-assembled crew.

As more Dubas acquisitions arrive, the trend is clear. The Penguins seem to be constructed with an extra healthy dose of analytics. The players’ advanced stats show well, but the team’s record has continually worsened, and they are now next to last in the Eastern Conference.

Once again, if the games were played on paper, the Penguins would easily be a playoff team.

For example, the Penguins have the seventh-best Corsi (shot attempt ratio), the third-best expected goals-for percentage, and the 13th-best expected goals ratio. All stats from NaturalStatTrick.com.

Analytics surely aren’t a problem with this transitional Penguins roster, but there surely isn’t just a problem with their ability to finish; it is also their lack of physical contact and their general “tough to play against” mentality–things that aren’t measured on paper.

That is to say, while some leeway is proper, this current team has offensive talent but, to its almost extreme detriment, is soft.

Penguins Defense, Prospects

On the other side of the puck, the Penguins similarly lack a cohesive identity or defining characteristics. Worse, their defense corps is just inexcusably bad.

The defensemen’s lack of contact in battle areas is often noticeable. As a group, their turnovers, blown coverages, and occasional play that borders on inexplicable is sometimes jarring.

The occasional bad night is excusable, but the Penguins are the sum of their parts, and the assembled crew is each known for their weaknesses. It’s not like Karlsson’s defensive game is a surprise, or Graves’s stilted play wasn’t on tape for the Penguins scouts to see.

With the exception of Letang, Dubas exclusively acquired the blue line. And, no, it’s not the result of coach Mike Sullivan’s instruction or system.

Dubas is certainly not building the team from the back out.

In fairness, Owen Pickering and Harrison Brunicke are two good defensemen prospects who will arrive very soon, but with respect to those couple of promising players, both are complementary blueliners, and neither plays a physical game.

The Penguins forward prospects are a mixed bag. Ville Koivunen is a gritty type with scoring ability, and Rutger McGroarty is learning to adopt that style of game, too. Team Canada included 2024 second-round pick Tanner Howe on the 2025 World Juniors roster because he could be a greasy winger with some sandpaper. However, he’s still at least a couple of years away from NHL ice time, and his ceiling or projection at the pro game isn’t yet known.

In other words, it is unknown whether any of the Penguins’ prospects can ascend to the top-six forward ranks, and certainly not if they’ll become core players.

Dubas indeed has a near-ridiculous amount of draft picks to work with over the next three years (18 in the first three rounds, including four first-rounders). He’ll have an enormous amount of cap space (just over $26 million) to work with for next season, too.

But Dubas will need to use his massive cache of assets differently this time if he wants different results. Thus far, he has not shown a divergence from his previously unsuccessful path less traveled.