Believe it or not, losing and Pittsburgh sports were once synonymous.

The Pittsburgh Steelers were a lovable loser for nearly 40 years until Dan Rooney took over as the team president in 1969, hired Chuck Noll, heavily invested in scouting, including the typically ignored black colleges, and the rest is history.

The Pittsburgh Penguins were perennial losers for 25 years, twice in bankruptcy, before they drafted perhaps the greatest player in the game, yet still missed the playoffs for five of the next six years.

For decades, the Pirates provided the city’s only major professional championships in 1925, 1960, and 1971, until the Steelers caught up.

It took another 20 years for the Penguins to catch up, but once the Penguins started in 1991, no team has won more Stanley Cups in the last 34 years. In fact, the Penguins’ five Cup wins are the most in the league, two more than the Detroit Red Wings and New Jersey Devils, who have each won three.

Since 1992, the Penguins have won three Stanley Cups and been to a fourth Cup Final. The Steelers have won two Super Bowls and lost two. And the Pirates have … three winning seasons. There was the Pirates’ electric wild-card game win.

The Cueto game was great, but that’s one memory in 32 years. Otherwise, poor Pittsburgh baseball fans are treated to annual ineptitude, perpetual rebuilding, and a tone deaf owner who reportedly puts a lot of money in his pocket while at the same time crimping the team’s payroll.

After the Pirates’ pathetic performance on Thursday, in which the general manager reversed his own stated mission to improve the team for next season by trading away a premier closer and starting pitcher for Single-A-level players and a bag of baseballs, the contrast with other Pittsburgh sports teams was clear.

Sure, criticism Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. We certainly have. Wonder about or criticize Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas. Of course, we have analyzed his job performance.

There are different economics in baseball, but money doesn’t preclude planning. Trying. Of the criticisms hurled at the Penguins and Steelers, trying isn’t one of them. With the Pirates, that’s exactly the biggest knock.

Penguins fans, you can thank God that the Penguins aren’t the Pirates.

Penguins Rebuilding

One of the great problems of rebuilding is that not every draft is a bumper crop. For example, 2019.

The Penguins selected Sam Poulin with the 21st overall pick. Of the first-round picks, Poulin has played the third-fewest NHL games of the entire class. Poulin has played only 13 games, but Ryan Suzuki, selected 28th by the Carolina Hurricanes, has played two NHL games, and Brayden Tracey, selected 29th by the Anaheim Ducks, has played one. Tracey has left North America to play in Slovakia.

While Poulin’s lack of NHL games might be concerning or cause to call it a bust of a pick, the reality is only two players selected in the next 13 picks have become stable NHL contributors: Simon Holmstrom (23rd overall, NYI), Conno McMichael (25th, Washington), and Shane Pinto (32nd, Ottawa).

The Penguins’ next first-round pick was in 2022. Owen Pickering was taken 21st overall and has played more NHL games (25) than all but one of the 11 first-round players selected behind him. Buffalo’s Juri Kulich has played 63 games. The player that everyone whiffed on was 2025 Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson, who fell to Montreal at 62nd overall (despite PHN’s advocating for the Penguins to select in the first round).

Drafting 18-year-olds is an inexact science, but the light of hindsight shows that even though the Penguins haven’t gotten any more than minimal contributions from any of their last six drafts, they weren’t selecting from a crop of players who were likely to contribute.

For the record, Valttteri Puustinen, the 2019 seventh-round pick, has given the most, playing 66 NHL games with seven goals.

2024 Penguins Prospects Top 5

At the request of a reader, we’ll look at our 2024 Top 5 Penguins prospects list and how the list has changed.

Last summer, our Top 5 was:

5. Sergei Murashov

4. Vasily Ponomarev

3. Tanner Howe

2. Joel Blomqvist

1. Brayden Yager

What a difference a year makes. Only Murashov remained in our top five. Dubas flipped Yager to the Winnipeg Jets for Rutger McGroarty shortly after we published our list, and McGroarty was No. 2 on our 2025 list. We dropped Vasily Ponomarev from the list after his lackluster six NHL games, and that he bolted for Russia.

Our 2025 Top 5 Penguins prospects list is for our PHN+ subscribers. You can view it here.

We also dropped Joel Blomqvist to No. 10 because of his struggles last season, and Tanner Howe was also shoved out of our Top 5 because of the influx of quality young players and the upper-body injury that robbed him of much of the 2024-25 season.