Better luck next year: The rebuild has arrived for the Pittsburgh Penguins

Stop asking about it. It is here.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Pittsburgh Penguins.

Whenever I find myself in a discussion about the Pittsburgh Penguins lately I keep getting asked the same questions.

When are they going to rebuild?

Why are they not rebuilding?

Why didn’t they start rebuilding a few years ago?

When it comes to the latter question, I don’t fault the Penguins for putting it off.

Or trying to put it off.

Fans — and media — are in too big of a rush anymore to see the team they cheer for or cover become bad. The mindset seems to be that if you are not actually winning a championship that you are just better off throwing everything out the window, tanking, and playing for draft picks.

Making the playoffs and getting close? Not worth it.

Making the playoffs and losing? Who cares.

And I just don’t get that mindset. I still want to see a competitive team if I can. I still want to see meaningful games. I still want something to matter even if it does not necessarily result in a championship. Especially when you, as a Penguins fan, have already seen so many championships in the modern era.

From a results standpoint, the Penguins’ success has clearly dried up since their most recent playoff series win in 2018 and their most recent championship in 2017. They have now missed the playoffs three years in a row, and when they were making the playoffs had lost in the first round four years in a row.

It is easy to look back on that and say, “well, you should have made some bigger changes because that clearly wasn’t working.”

Maybe to a degree they should have. Mike Sullivan has gotten a longer leash than most NHL coaches do. They need a fresh voice and approach. Especially with a new wave of talent coming through.

They absolutely made some big mistakes in some of their front office decisions and roster management. Ron Hextall’s reign of error was a total failure from the very beginning. Even Kyle Dubas has had some big whiffs in his first two years.

But I don’t fault them for not wanting to become bad sooner. Some of those playoff exits were the result of some bad luck. Or weird circumstances. Or an otherwise good team getting done in by bad goaltending. I still maintain that the 2021-22 team could have seriously competed for a Stanley Cup if it did not have to rely on Louis Domingue in the playoffs. Or if Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell did not get injured.

That team, when healthy, was pretty good. Why should they have tried to dismantle it at that point?

As long as you still have players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang playing at high levels — as all of them were — you owe it to yourself to keep trying. Trading for Erik Karlsson did not work. It was worth the swing. They did not find success in 2022-23 and 2023-24. They were not wrong to try.

Overall, this has been a WILDLY successful franchise throughout the Crosby era. Pretty much unmatched.

Since Crosby’s NHL debut in 2005-06, and including the past three non-playoff seasons, the Penguins are still third in the NHL in regular season wins. They are still FIRST in playoff wins, with only Boston (one win back) and Tampa Bay (two wins back) in a reasonable position to pass them anytime soon. No team has played in more Stanley Cup Finals or won more Stanley Cups over that time. They have also gone above and beyond in trying to put a winning team on the ice pretty much every season. They did not always make the right moves. But the effort and mindset was always there.

As a sports fan, that is all you can really ask for and it is all you are owed.

If any team is deserving of some patience to build itself back up, it is probably this one.

You also might need that patience, because even though the rebuild is now officially here, it is also just starting. It is not always quick.

Even though nobody actually came out and said the word “rebuilding” to start the season, it is pretty clear in looking at their roster and what they have done going back to last year’s trade deadline that everything has an eye toward the future.

• Of the players that were in the lineup at the end of the 2022-23 regular season, only eight of them are still on the roster today, and two of them — Danton Heinen and Pierre-Olivier Joseph — were re-acquired after originally being let go.

• Every free agent they signed this offseason was a short-term, stop-gap solution.

• Every trade they have made for the past calendar year has been made in the name of securing future assets.

• They have traded veterans Jake Guentzel, Chad Ruhwedel, Reilly Smith, Lars Eller, Marcus Pettersson, Drew O’Connor, Michael Bunting and Anthony Beauvillier. They took on other team’s unwanted contracts in Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass to acquire multiple draft picks.

• Of their top-10 prospects (via The Athletic), five of them have been acquired over the past calendar year by trade, or the result of a trade.

• They have net gain of nine draft picks over the next three years, owning 30 of them in the next three classes. That includes four first-round picks and seven second-round picks over that time period (as of now).

There are all rebuilding moves.

There is a huge overhaul happening.

But because it has not involved the biggest name players (Crosby, Malkin, Letang) there is still a belief that the team isn’t rebuilding. Make no mistake. It is. And there is nothing wrong with keeping some of those older core players around, and there is also nothing wrong with NOT tearing it all down to the ground.

What went right this season