The Pittsburgh Penguins have reached that awkward stretch of the offseason where the noise has faded, the big swings never came, and patience is once again part of the package.
That reality was on display late on a Friday night one month ago, after the first round of the NHL Draft, when president/general manager Kyle Dubas stood on the 61st floor of the U.S. Steel Tower with his back against the wall and a look that said plenty.
He admitted he had wanted to make a splash and had tried to move up in the first round. He tried and tried.
In the end, the market had shifted, and Dubas chose not to force it.
He was disappointed, but not because he had made the wrong call. He knew better than to let emotion steer the process.
He also knew what it meant: another year likely spent waiting for the aggressive plan he wants to put in motion. Another year of being average.
Another year of “ brick-by-boring-brick ” team building, as he put it that night.
That’s where the Penguins are now - not bad, not lost, but not exactly free of the middle either.
They don’t look like a team ready to go toe-to-toe with Florida, Carolina or the other Eastern heavyweights in a playoff series next spring. They might make the playoffs again.
They might not. They could also stumble badly enough to land the top-five pick that probably becomes necessary at some point.
None of those paths feels especially clean.
And if next season starts slowly, the good feelings from last year’s surprising playoff push won’t last long. Dubas understands that as well as anyone.
The summer transactional window has basically closed, and the Penguins appear headed into the same kind of holding pattern they were in a year ago. That wasn’t supposed to be the long-term plan for 2026-27, but the landscape changed.
Dubas has done a lot right since arriving, especially with his trades, but two calls didn’t break his way. First, the 2025-26 Penguins turned out to be much better than expected.
The assumption, at least from Dubas’ side, seemed to be that the roster would age out naturally and the organization would be ready to chase top-five picks. Instead, last fall happened, and the Penguins came out flying and delivered a season that was hard to ignore.
The aging-out part never really happened.
The second miss came this summer. Dubas clearly believed he could move up in the first round, maybe by dealing Bryan Rust or Rickard Rakell, or by using another valuable asset.
The Penguins had pieces other teams would want. But the market was brutal, and top-end talent cost a fortune.
Dubas either misread the value of his own assets or, more likely, underestimated how expensive the chase would be. He wasn’t willing to pay that price.
That restraint matters. There’s a point where a team decides to sell real pieces, and that usually comes when it’s ready to win.
The Penguins are not there yet, no matter how much people want to wrap Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang in one last championship storyline. They still haven’t won a playoff series since 2018.
Even so, there’s a case that they could be just as good next season. On paper, the forward group is deeper.
It’s also younger. And the biggest reason for optimism sits in the crease.
One of the most interesting parts of the Penguins’ run to the playoffs last season - despite 9 percent odds - was that Dan Muse’s team got there without a high-quality NHL goaltender. Stuart Skinner was a wonderful teammate, but he was below average last season and got the nod down the stretch and in the playoffs.
He was the guy, except he wasn’t particularly good. His lack of athleticism stood out.
Sergei Murashov is expected to make the roster out of training camp unless injury intervenes. Rookie goaltenders don’t usually light up the league right away, but it does happen now and then. If Murashov lives up to the hype, he could make the Penguins better.
The bigger boost, though, would come if Dubas finally lands the kind of trades he has been chasing for a while. He wants young players who can help now, the sort of addition represented by Egor Chinakhov.
He thought that kind of move might happen this summer. It didn’t.
No reasonable deals were there for the taking. So the wait continues.
The upside is that next summer could open everything up. The Penguins could have more than $70 million in cap space.
The market should be healthier. They’ll know more about which older players still fit the picture, how good Murashov really is, and which young players and prospects are ready for NHL minutes.
That means the summer of 2027 could be a big one.
But this is 2026, and Dubas is heading into his fourth year with the Penguins. He calls his push to turn them into contenders “urgent,” and the work he’s done so far deserves credit. The roster and prospect pipeline were in rough shape when he took over in 2023, and he’s helped move things forward.
Still, the view from that 61st floor last month probably wasn’t the one he wanted. The 2025-26 season beat expectations.
The summer of 2026 did not. Autumn is coming fast, and the spring still looks a long way off.
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