CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Earlier this week, Kyle Dubas and Patrik Allvin checked in with each another about Marcus Pettersson, and not for the first time. The respective general managers of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Vancouver Canucks had been discussing the veteran defenseman for a while.
“They’d had a long interest in Marcus,” Dubas said Saturday morning, fewer than 12 hours after a multi-asset trade that sent Pettersson to the Canucks and either a 2025 or 2026 first-round pick from the New York Rangers — yeah, it’s complicated — went to the Penguins.
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Dubas said Allvin informed him the Canucks were likely acquiring an asset they couldn’t previously offer the Penguins in a Pettersson trade. When Dubas discovered he could likely land prospect Melvin Fernström and a first-round pick, the Penguins’ hockey boss couldn’t close the deal fast enough. And once the Rangers sent their protected 2025 first-rounder to the Canucks early Friday evening as part of the J.T. Miller trade, Dubas didn’t waste time in doing a deal for the Penguins, too.
In total, Dubas added the winger Fernström, either the Rangers’ first-round pick in 2025 or 2026, and a couple of veterans in forward Danton Heinen and Vincent Desharnais. The cost was Pettersson and O’Connor, two popular players on expiring contracts likely headed for unrestricted free agency.
The passage of time has a way of determining whether a trade is a winner or a loser. For the Penguins, this one continued the process of moving on from players who weren’t part of the long-term plan and adding future assets.
Dubas started on that course before the last trade deadline when he shipped winger Jake Guentzel to the Carolina Hurricanes. He may continue it before the March 7 deadline and will certainly explore options this summer.
“We have to continue to move down the path of the mission we set out about a year ago,” Dubas said. “Which is to continue to stockpile younger players, prospects and draft picks.”
During his 16-plus minute meeting with local media Saturday, Dubas never used the word “rebuild,” which is consistent with his public comments dating to the Guentzel trade last season. However, by boosting a previously barren prospect system and amassing a haul of future picks — including eight in Rounds 1 or 2 from 2025 through 2027 — Dubas is operating like a GM who is remaking an organization.
“I don’t want to ever put a timeline on anything,” Dubas said, alluding to current players from the Penguins’ Stanley Cup teams in 2016 and 2017 and citing urgency to return the franchise to that level.
“Our goal is to try to acquire the assets we’ve laid out and either turn those draft picks into players that can help the team quickly, but not expedite the development of the player, or use those assets and be in the mix when there are players that can make an impact and help us.”
The Penguins have lacked the assets necessary to trade for a potential dynamic-altering young player. With four first-round picks through 2027, they can at least enter the chat.
Dubas still faces a steep climb back to relevancy for the Penguins.
They have 11 current players with full or modified no-trade or no-movement clauses. That group includes the team’s famous Big Three — captain Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang — along with Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson. Breaking up that band won’t prove easy, though Rust’s clause expires after this season. The escalating salary cap would likely make it easier to trade either Letang or Karlsson if either defenseman wanted a change of scenery after what’s shaping up to be a second consecutive bitterly disappointing season and the third in a row without a postseason appearance.
Crosby, who signed an extension that begins next season, has said he will play only in Pittsburgh. Malkin told The Athletic he won’t waive his full no-movement clause going into his final season.
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Dubas’ eye toward the future has caught the attention of veterans with contractual protections. He’s said previously that asking players to surrender those protections is not his preference.
“I don’t think anything has changed with those particular players,” Dubas said.
“I think, as we’ve gone through this for the last year, there’s been more communication from agents to us wondering where does their player stand in the mix. Some of that has been initiated from this side, but nothing other than trying to inform their client what may or may not happen here — but no real change in that regard.”
With Malkin’s hockey future uncertain beyond next season, next season is probably the last that Crosby, Malkin and Letang will be teammates.
They have lifted the Stanley Cup on three occasions. They also haven’t been on the winning end of a postseason series handshake line since 2018.
Their stated priority has been to stay together and win together. The last part isn’t happening despite three consecutive GMs, including Dubas, trying to fortify the roster for one last great run.
Dubas’ pivot starting with the Guentzel trade and continuing with Friday’s deal might not win favor with the legendary Penguins he inherited. But it would be hard for them to argue the Penguins don’t need a different approach, especially with the current team toiling second from the bottom in the Eastern Conference and 26th overall in the NHL standings before Saturday’s games.
Could things be much worse if, next season, the Penguins promoted from a group of improving forward prospects including Ville Koivunen, Vasily Ponomarev, Tristan Broz and Rutger McGroarty? Probably not.
Fernström will not join those players at AHL affiliate Wilkes-Barre/Scranton this season. He’s an unsigned third-round pick from last season playing a bottom-six role Örebro HK in Sweden’s top professional league.
He’s 18 and holding his own against players much older. That is an accomplishment on its own.
Dubas said Penguins scouts were high on Fernström going into the 2024 NHL Draft because of his skills and his interview with the team.
“He showed an understanding for what the development path was going to be like and what he had to put into it,” Dubas said on Saturday. “He’s executing on everything he said, which is, for us, an important developmental attribute.”
Development is emerging as a theme in another lost season for the Penguins. It’s about the future, even if it’s not officially a rebuild.
(Photo of Melvin Fernström: Jens Carlsson / Sipa via AP)
