There are a handful of prospects ready to fight for Pittsburgh Penguins roster spots. There are young players on the roster who need to continue their elevation. And there are veterans in the dressing room close enough to the finish line that they can see it.
But the arduous task ahead is not patching them up for one more run. No, the cough syrup the Penguins need to down this offseason is realizing there needs to be more, not less, Penguins trades and efforts to get to the next era of success.
The Penguins had a resurgent 2025-26 season, but the reasons they were successful had nothing to do with trying to win this season and everything to do with the byproducts of making good decisions for the future.
So much of the recent Evgeni Malkin debate centers on the lack of replacements for next season. And in that shrunken field of vision, the bigger picture has been lost, if not discarded. The Penguins are not Stanley Cup contenders, and there is nothing they can do in the next few months to change that dynamic for next season.
Nothing.
So the difficult donut to sprinkle is accepting that what Dubas does for next season cannot focus specifically on next season, just as nothing that happened this season was specifically built for this season. And artificially winning a few games next season without a greater benefit for the future holds no value to the present.
The success of the 2025-26 season, albeit with a bitter ending, was not the result of trying to win in 2025-26, but the byproduct of numerous superior decisions made in pursuit of the rebuild that jelled together to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Egor Chinakhov. Elmer Soderblom. Parker Wotherspoon. Justin Brazeau. Anthony Mantha. Those were the decisions that for the Penguins’ next era that panned out to an astonishing level. Add Arturs Silovs, trading Tristan Jarry at the apex of his revival, drafting Ben Kindel, and hiring coach Dan Muse to the list of moves that paid off in the present, too.
If Dubas were to deviate from that course for next season, it may have some marginally positive effects for 2026-27, but they won’t become a Stanley Cup contender, and it would almost certainly delay the rebuild.
Remember the rebuild that everyone was clamoring for last summer?
Dubas’s current hot streak defies all statistical probabilities, but he must hold firm on building for the future, even as some prospects and acquisitions don’t pan out. In fact, Dubas needs to be more aggressive this summer than last; more veterans traded away for more youngsters and future-facing assets.
Sidney Crosby is going to be 39. Kris Letang will be 39. Erik Karlsson will be 36. Bryan Rust turns 34 Monday. Rickard Rakell is 33.
Lost amidst the Malkin talk has been the fact that the top of the Penguins’ roster will be another year older next season. That means the youngest of the core crew would be Rakell at 33. The sad truth is that all of their top players are now in the red zone for age-induced decline.
Some of the core, specifically Crosby, will stay to remain competitive and teach the youngsters, but there is no benefit to keeping everyone. In short, more emotionally difficult goodbyes via more Penguins trades are needed.
Some may have noted, nestled between the lines of our week-long analysis of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins was a simple truth that the Penguins have some prospects who could fill NHL spots next season, but the organization does not yet have cornerstones and pillars for the next Stanley Cup journey. Perhaps Kindel can become a bedrock 2C, but no one should be disappointed if he’s “merely” a good center.
Nor should anyone be disappointed if prospect Rutger McGroarty is merely a third-line winger, or heralded goalie prospect Sergei Murashov is simply an average starting NHL goalie but not the exalted savior of the blue paint.
Unexpected hits and misses are part of a rebuild, but the process can’t pause or detour or even slow for one more playoff run in which a Round One or Round Two exit is the most likely result.
After getting a firsthand look at the Penguins’ prospects and letting the NHL season digest, it seems quite clear the Penguins are in a nice spot moving forward, but they are not even close to being ready to shed the limiting discipline of rebuilding. The reason the Penguins are ahead in the process is because of the gems Dubas uncovered in the retooling phase.
But there is far more work to do, more trades to make, and more goodbyes to say before the Penguins can again dream of saying hello to another Stanley Cup.
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