Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas laid out his rebuilding strategy a couple of seasons ago. He would not tear it down to the studs and cited the Washington Capitals and LA Kings as prime examples of teams that were able to turn around quickly without enduring years of pain.
Do it the traditional way and possibly follow the agonizing process of the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks? No thanks. No, Dubas didn’t want to blow it up, tear it down, or go through years of losing to acquire high draft picks because, as he noted, too often those teams get trapped in rebuilding.
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Yet, those crushing losses, an uncompetitive team, and increasingly frustrated fans are here anyway.
With a ticking clock, the Penguins couldn’t develop their young players in time, or Dubas hasn’t believed in them, and age is catching the team’s core players. Dubas’s offseason moves lacked the same success he had a year earlier, and the gaggle of incoming veterans actually set back the hard work to acquire young players for the next era.
Unfortunately for the Penguins and Dubas, the very thing he fought to avoid has arrived whether he chose it or not. After yet another sinking loss Saturday to the Ottawa Senators, again complete with loud mistakes and louder scoring chances, the Penguins showed once again they cannot compete with good teams.
After 20 games, the Penguins have just three regulation wins, seven overall, and trail a wild-card spot by double digits and trail the New York Rangers for third place in the Metro Division by nine points.
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The Attempt
Dubas cautioned against shortcuts: “Shortcuts cut long runs short,” he said in April of 2025.
However, we’ll compare Dubas two years ago to where the team is now. In that same April 2025 presser, Dubas uncorked some personality and a homespun saying about rebuilding. He just wasn’t going to follow the traditional path.
“You can go into the mass teardown rebuild and hope you get lucky with the lottery and hope that all this happens,” Dubas said on April 21, 2025. “But you can hope in one hand and s*** in the other, and see which one fills up first.”
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But he also expressed optimism for the team. Just 18 months later, this one might sting:
“I feel like we’re slightly better positioned (than last year) because of the young players here. I’m more optimistic going into next year than I was organizationally. The results are going to be what they’re going to be, but I feel like we’re closer to where we want to get back to than last year.”
Yet, in November 2026, they are not closer.
It all seems like playing Perfection, and Dubas wasn’t able to get all of the pieces in place before the board popped and all of his pieces scattered.
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Those young players Dubas touted, such as Rutger McGroarty and Ville Koivunen, have had trouble cracking the lineup. Most have curiously not been given the same runway of opportunity that players such as Cody Glass, Philip Tomasino, Tommy Novak, and Ryan Shea got.
Despite the potential of filling the lineup with prospects who performed admirably in the AHL last season, Dubas used his budget to sign veterans to fill those spots and also kept all of his tradeable vets. See also: Andrei Kuzmenko and Trevor van Riemsdyk.
On Saturday, only McGroarty and Sergei Murashov were in the lineup. Acquired young players on their second chance, Nick Robertson and Hendrix Lapierre, were also in the lineup. Otherwise, the team is still reliant upon its aged veterans.
Dubas’s optimism in April 2025 was a springboard into a remarkable 2025 offseason; Parker Wotherspoon, Anthony Mantha, and Justin Brazeau were stunning successes on the free agent market. Via trades last season, Dubas also dumped Tristan Jarry, and acquired Egor Chinakhov. The Penguins drafted Ben Kindel and turned the 12th overall pick into additional picks that added Bill Zonnon and Will Horcoff to the prospect pool.
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It was all pointing upward, but everything that went right in 2025 has gone wrong in 2026. As we know, time was not on Dubas’s side. The very narrow window to leap forward slammed shut in the summer of 2026. The trade market changed dramatically. The young players Dubas hoped to acquire began requiring a premium plus more.
Buffalo Sabres third-pairing defenseman Bo Byram was traded for the fourth overall pick. Brady Tkachuk netted the ninth overall selection (and the 25th pick and a 2029 first-rounder) from the Florida Panthers. And Ottawa acquired William Eklund for that same ninth overall selection.
Top-10 picks and can’t-miss young players were the trade currency, and Dubas’s wallet was empty. Naturally, the team has atrophied.
Sure, the Penguins have a few wins against good teams this season, but they beat a slumping Florida Panthers on the second of back-to-back games, and a flat Dallas Stars team going through the motions of an East Coast trip. But those games and an opening night beatdown of the Philadelphia Flyers are the only 60-minute wins.
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And now, despite all efforts to avoid it, despite trade pursuits, and despite the best intentions to leap from here to there, it’s a situation without a short-term fix that requires long-term pain. And now, there is no other way out but that dreaded full rebuild in which Dubas relies on draft picks and lotteries, player development, and some luck.
In other words, the Penguins are already out of it. Worse, they look every bit like a team that was already blown it up despite not having done so.
To use Dubas’s phrase, he indeed has a handful of excrement, and the only choice is to turn that into the fertilizer of top draft picks and eventually trades for young players when he’s got a foundation.
But before trades for premium players happen, the Penguins need that next foundation. Even the young players currently in the system who are banging on the door do not represent future cornerstones, so it’s time to sell hope and get to it, whether that was the plan or not.
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