The following development shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anybody following the team. The Pittsburgh Penguins have the worst farm system in the NHL with the exception of the brand-new Seattle Kraken.
Pipeline #31: Pittsburgh https://t.co/v5lQSOsf8s
— Corey Pronman (@coreypronman) August 30, 2021
This was the path the Jim Rutherford put the team on. He traded asset after asset to help the short-term product and now here we are. Part of being a team who has won and has plans to continue contending is sacrificing the future for the now, but Rutherford took it past the point of no return. He put the team all-in on the now with no finesse or wherewithal for the future, a future he was never going to be around for.
This puts the current front office in a not so enviable position. How do you move forward with the Penguins aging core? Unfortunately, the answer is pretty black and white. Either ride out this era while continuing to try to improve the current roster to the best of your ability or blow it up. I lean towards the former. The hybrid approach isn’t going to cut it. Ron Hextall and Brian Burke are never going to be able to balance the task of being competitive right now and building up the prospect cupboard. It will put the team on a middling path to first round losses or worse while just maybe the prospect pool gets ranked in the 25-30 range. That looks and feels like purgatory which is not where you want to be as an NHL franchise. The team did nothing to improve the current roster (there’s an argument they are actually worse) and they remain the worst non-expansion as far as prospects are concerned.
This is a path to irrelevancy, but without going down swinging. Probably the worst path possible to exit this amazing era of hockey in Pittsburgh.
Thanks for reading!