The Pittsburgh Penguins’ streak of consecutive playoff appearances came to an abrupt and stunning end this season, and ownership is not wasting any time making sweeping changes.
The team announced on Friday that it has fired general manager Ron Hextall, assistant general manager Chris Pryor and president of hockey operations Brian Burke.
Prior to this season the Penguins were the most successful team of the NHL’s salary cap era (starting with the 2005-06 season) and made the playoffs 16 years in a row, appearing in four Stanley Cup Finals and winning three Stanley Cups during that time.
Everything fell apart this season due to a series of troubling moves by the Hextall-led front office that robbed the team of its depth and the appropriate complementary players.
Hextall and Burke were hired by the previous ownership group led by Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle midway through the 2020-21 season. It was the last major move by those owners before selling the team to Fenway Sports Group later that year.
Hextall and Burke were hired after the team’s previous general manager, Jim Rutherford, shockingly resigned without explanation earlier that year.
Despite having a core of future Hall of Famers, including Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and defenseman Kris Letang, all of whom are still top-tier players and signed to far below market value contracts, Hextall and his front office were unable to build a playoff-caliber team around them.
Contract extensions for Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen ate into the team’s salary cap space, while trades for Jeff Petry and Mikael Granlund did not address any of the team’s most pressing needs while also adding more bad contracts to the roster. Hextall also failed to address a goaltending position that sabotaged the past two postseason appearances, bringing back the same goalie duo who could not be counted on to stay healthy or produce at a Stanley Cup level.
Fans quickly grew frustrated with Hextall’s decisions and repeatedly chanted for him to be fired at several home games down the stretch.
The Penguins still have a core of players in Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell that is good enough to win, along with some salary cap flexibility to work with. They just need to now find a general manager who is competent enough to build around those pieces while they are still high-level players.
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