What a difference a few months can make. The Pittsburgh Penguins entered the playoffs as perhaps the feel-good story of the season, defying many NHL projections that had them as a lottery team and instead making the playoffs to everyone’s surprise. A quick playoff exit tempered those good vibes, but the Penguins entered the summer feeling ready to add to their lineup and perhaps have one last ride with Sidney Crosby and company.
General manager Kyle Dubas seemed poised to make major moves to add talent to his lineup and spoke candidly about doing so. By the time the first round of the NHL Entry Draft was complete, it was clear that Dubas was frustrated by his inability to move up in the draft and by the high prices he didn’t expect. The Penguins made several questionable moves this summer and appeared to strike out on high-end talent, which begs the question: did Dubas misread the summer market?
Dubas entered the summer believing he had assets that could be moved for premium players, but as time progressed, he quickly realized that many teams were seeking immediate roster upgrades and were quite willing to give up better assets than Pittsburgh had to acquire proven NHL commodities. Bowen Byram is a good example of this, as the Blackhawks were quite happy to give up the No. 4 and No. 45 picks in the 2026 NHL Draft and defenseman Louis Crevier in exchange for Byram.
The Penguins couldn’t put together anything close to those assets, and if they had, it would have effectively emptied the cupboards, which Dubas correctly didn’t want to do.
But while Dubas was busy chasing premium assets, it’s fair to wonder how much attention he paid to trading some of his better, more established assets, such as forwards Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell, as well as defenseman Erik Karlsson. The Penguins didn’t move any of their older pieces at a time when prices were higher than ever for established NHL talent, which has to make one wonder whether Dubas underestimated how desperate teams would become for NHL talent and effectively thought he could add to his lineup when perhaps he should have subtracted.
The Penguins essentially stood in place, opting to tinker around the edges rather than make any earth-shattering moves. Dubas brought in forwards Hendrix Lapierre and Nicholas Robertson via trade, as well as defenseman Kaedan Korczak in exchange for Parker Wotherspoon. Pittsburgh also signed forward Andrei Kuzmenko in free agency, as well as defenders Trevor van Riemsdyk and Declan Carlile.
The moves mostly made the Penguins younger, but it’s hard to say whether they made them better, especially when you look at the moves Pittsburgh’s division rivals made.
Dubas’ strategy of patiently waiting for teams to box themselves into a corner had paid off in the past, but it didn’t work this summer for a number of reasons, the biggest being the salary-cap increase and a poor free-agent market. Dubas spent previous years waiting for GMs to panic before he would capitalize; the best example was when he dumped goaltender Tristan Jarry on the Edmonton Oilers for a haul.
That strategy, while previously effective, did not work this summer in an environment where too much money was chasing too few goods, and Dubas found that out the hard way.
The Penguins were involved in trade talks for Darnell Nurse and Jason Robertson, but nothing materialized. Nurse was eventually dealt to the San Jose Sharks, while Robertson re-upped with Dallas. Dubas may have pivoted to Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks, but Pettersson would be a massive gamble and perhaps one Dubas doesn’t want to make.
Dubas encountered something this summer that he hadn’t dealt with in previous years, namely general managers who were reluctant to give him what he wanted. Dubas was on a heater for the previous two seasons, but this summer has proved to be a difficult one for the former Maple Leafs GM. Part of it is a league-wide tightening of the belts when it comes to trading premium future assets, but the other side of it is that Dubas has been making moves over the last few years with a much easier objective than he has now.
Dubas was trying to acquire young talent with upside over the last two years, while simultaneously acquiring future draft picks in exchange for taking on bad contracts. That seemed almost too easy for Dubas, which made sense given the bevy of bad contracts