Jim Rutherford has resigned from his position as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, this is incredibly weird timing. Yes, it was his decision.

Jim Rutherford has resigned as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, citing personal reasons.

Patrik Allvin, the team's assistant general manager, has been promoted to interim GM, and the search for a new GM will begin immediately.

Details: https://t.co/VMYNzYkXcX pic.twitter.com/d846dWrpIC

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) January 27, 2021

What are the personal reasons? We will have to wait and see. At least from initial reporting it is not a health scare and that is a very good thing.

Morehouse on Rutherford: "There is nothing wrong with Jim Rutherford's health. He is perfectly healthy, I just wanted to make that clear... It's a personal decision that Jim made."

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) January 27, 2021

Is it because he feels isolated from family due to the pandemic (daughter in Carolina)? If so, then this didn’t age too well

Rutherford: "I don't know. Did some of the players feel they didn't want to put in the extra work to stay in the bubble longer? Prefer to be with their families? Nobody knows the answer to all those things. But it's very disappointing." #Pens

— Wes Crosby (@OtherNHLCrosby) August 11, 2020

Could the fallout from the Clark Donatelli sexual assault case in WBS be a factor? It has been rather quiet on that front and it is a huge black eye for the organization which hasn’t been addressed. We will have to wait and see.

Did Rutherford start talking about Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang trades and ownership say nope?

My sense of it is that Jim will take balance of the 2021 season to relax/reflect and after his contract expires, he’ll take full stock of his situation. Could he fully retire then? Sure. Could he be open to possibilities to work with another organization? I’d say yes, perhaps.

— Bob McKenzie (@TSNBobMcKenzie) January 27, 2021

The last part off what Bob said opens up that possibility. Nowhere does it say he is retiring. He is resigning. Alas, the team is saying this is not the case

Morehouse: "I don't think there was any one thing that led to Jim resigning." Said it was a personal decision that Rutherford made.

— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) January 27, 2021

Regardless, Rutherford keeping the door open for working on other teams while leaving the Penguins out in the cold is certainly a vibe

Which doesn’t mean he’s necessarily retiring. His contract with the Penguins expires at the end of June.
``I will just take it easy for a while until the summer time and at that point I can decide if I want to keep working or if I want to just retire,’’ Rutherford said.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) January 27, 2021

On the surface it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the timing of this resignation to be seven games into a shortened NHL season. They overhauled the front office over the offseason and not many of those people have a lot of experience in a front office. I don’t think those things would have happened if they knew Rutherford was going to bounce. Rutherford is kind of leaving the Penguins high and dry here. There is nothing out here suggesting this was a move in the making and something the Penguins were aware of.

Penguins will immediately begin a broad search, both looking at internal and external possibilities. No firm time line but I also don't think the Penguins want this to to drag too long.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) January 27, 2021

The timing of this resignation is probably going to lend itself to hearing retread names popping up for the gig. The Penguins are probably going to want somebody with “experience” to do the job. Be prepared to hear about Peter Chiarellli, Dale Tallon, and the like. When teams are pressed into a corner they usually try to do the “safe” thing and don’t try to break the mold with a progressive hire. One place I would look to is Tom Fitzgerald of the New Jersey Devils who has a long track record with the Penguins and somebody who has earned GM experience in the last year. He has been an assistant GM for over a decade between the Penguins and Devils. I think that would be their safe hire. I think it would be better than a lot of other names you’ll hear. He as they say “checks all the boxes”. I think an ideal setup would be somebody like Fitzgerald coming in to play the Don Waddell role with Sam Ventura playing the Eric Tulsky role like they did in Carolina. Fitzgerald does currently work with Tyler Dellow and Matt Cane...

Ultimately, whatever Rutherford’s reasons are for resigning he is leaving the Penguins high and dry and putting them in an incredibly awkward position of trying to execute a GM search when they had no idea they needed to have one. He used up a ton of resources and assets fixing his own mistakes and now he will not be around to clean up the mess he made.

He inherited one of the easiest jobs in the sport with two #1 centers, a #1 defenseman, the best winger currently on the team and all three of his starting goalies. He made some great trades in an 11 month span and sat on those laurels for the rest of his term. It resulted in two Stanley Cups which will never be taken away. He also destroyed the great thing he helped molded with incompetence over the next four plus years. He is getting out before he has to answer for those choices. He was always the same general manager he was in Carolina. He just started with a better hand in Pittsburgh.

In a lot of ways Rutherford was just like Marc-Andre Fleury. Mediocre at what they do overall, but how they get there takes extremes on both sides. The highs are high and the lows are comically bad. Fortunately, the Penguins were able to cash in on the few highs Rutherford had. The next general manager for the Penguins is going to have to clean up Rutherford’s lows with only a 2nd, 5th, and 7th round pick in this year's draft. It is also a roster with few tradable assets unless you are talking about blowing up the roster, which they are not. A convenient time to leave one might say.

Thanks for reading!

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