On June 1st 2023, the Penguins announced the hiring of Kyle Dubas as the President of Hockey Operations. Dubas then named himself interim general manager, a position he later would keep as a full time role. That makes tomorrow the full anniversary, but it’s close enough for the Friday poll to look back on the first year of Dubas, as well as what comes next.
From the introductory press conference and over the last 364 days on the job, Dubas has weighed two converging strategies against one another. Or as we put it last year with the goals of:
Supporting the core players and starting to create the “next era” was listed as an intention moving forward.
To that end, Dubas brought on Erik Karlsson and cleared away a bunch of undesirable contracts that he inherited. He added on Reilly Smith, Ryan Graves and rebuilt a bottom-six forward group. Ultimate results there ended up being mixed when the team failed to qualify for the playoffs,
It takes a while for a youth movement to get going in the long-term development world of hockey, but the Pens have started the process of stocking their system. Dubas held onto his 2023 first round pick and selected Brayden Yager. He added more young players and prospects with the Jake Guentzel trade. Other young-ish players like Valtteri Puustinen, Drew O’Connor and Jack St. Ivany have seen their stocks rise in meaningful ways over the past 12 months. The team is surely hoping others like Sam Poulin and Joel Blomqvist can add their names to that list in the year to come.
Dubas was given a seven year contract, and figures to be the key figure in the organization in the attempt to bridge the gap from the Sidney Crosby era into whatever is next to come after that. The one year mark on the job looks as good of a time as any before offseason transactions kick up to take the temperature after one year.
And, let’s not forget in the immediate afterglow of the announcement, perhaps as to be expected the Dubas hiring was incredibly popular. It was undoubtedly skewed by the celebratory feelings of making a big hire, coupled on top of the fact Dubas was replacing a very unpopular management team to only increase the levels of joy.
86% of respondents on this website ranked the Dubas hire a 8, 9 or 10 on a 1-10 scale of satisfaction. Only a minuscule 3% combined to be in the lower half of the 1-5 range. Short of Mario himself announcing a come back to run the half-wall on the power play next season, it’s unlikely that type of consensus among the Penguin fanbase is possible on any topic regarding the team these days.
