Are the Penguins This Season’s Islanders?

On practically every conceivable level, Penguins GM Ron Hextall had a very successful summer. Staring down the gunwales at a potential free-agent cataclysm involving Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, GMRH coolly stuck to his guns and signed the franchise pillars, and at discounted rate to boot.

When the negotiations dust had settled and the ink on the contracts was dry, Hextall had succeeded in bringing back not only “Geno” and “Tanger” but top-nine wingers Danton Heinen, Kasperi Kapanen, Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust for practically the same combined AAV as the previous season.

Hextall also showed he wasn’t afraid to stir the pot. With a pair of dramatic trades and an adroit free-agent signing, he remade the defensive corps. Gone were pricey if talented 20-somethings John Marino and Mike Matheson, replaced by veteran puck-mover Jeff Petry, mobile youngster Ty Smith and sturdy Jan Rutta, a two-time Cup winner with Tampa Bay.

The result? On paper, we appear to be a deep, formidable team.

Still, I can’t help but shake the feeling that before all is said and done our Pens are going to be this season’s New York Islanders.

To review, the Islanders went to the Eastern Conference Final in 2020 and the Stanley Cup Semi-Finals in 2021. Then the wheels fell of the wagon.

So why the pessimism? Especially following an off-season when Hextall did just about everything right?

Call it a hunch or an intuition.

As much as I’d like to be bullish on our chances, the taste of last season’s lackluster 7-9-1 stretch run lingers like a huge gulp of sour milk. When we played teams with inferior talent like Detroit we had a field day. But when we squared off against tough foes like the Avalanche and Oilers? We didn’t quite measure up. In fact, the speedy Oilers skated us into the ice en route to a 5-1 hiding that was more lopsided than the score would indicate. One that seemed to signal a changing of the guard or a passing of the torch, take your pick.

Sadly, I see this being our pattern for the upcoming season. Good enough to handle the have-nots and the middle-of-the-road clubs. But legit Cup contenders?

Too, many of our key players…Sidney Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Jeff Carter among the most prominent…are approaching a point in their respective careers where a downturn is inevitable. Which puts the onus on other players to pick up the slack.

Are they able?

Brian Dumoulin needs to bounce back and play like the Brian Dumoulin of old. Or a reasonable facsimile. Can he do it at age 31 with a lot of hard miles on his frame, or more precisely, his troubled knees and ankles?

We need Rakell to more closely resemble the 30-goal scorer he was circa 2016-18 instead of the 15-goal scorer he’s been since. Personally, I was very impressed with the elements in his game after his arrival from Anaheim at last season’s deadline. The size, speed, smarts and creativity. The willingness to venture into traffic. Not to mention the way he meshed with Sid and scoring ace Jake Guentzel.

Yet for all his talents, Rakell scored only four goals in 19 regular-season games for us. A 17-goal pace. Two of those came during a victory over Minnesota on March 31.

I’m betting he’ll be closer to 15 than 30.

Kapanen needs to bounce back from an abysmal season. The days when he was projected to score 20-25 goals are long gone. IMHO, we’ll be lucky to get 15 out of him.

Speaking of 20-25 goal guys, it sure would be nice to see Jason Zucker return to that range. While “Zucks” appears to be healthy and rarin’ to go, he and Malkin have a well-documented history of mixing about as well as oil and water.

Can Heinen repeat his career-best 18-goal season…or come close? How will Carter fare at age 38? Is it unreasonable to expect 15 goals from the big guy? And what about the soon-to-be 35-year-old Petry? He slipped a bit in ’21-22 following four consecutive seasons of double-digit goals. Did we acquire him precisely at the point of his career when he’s primed for a drop-off?

Catalog these and other concerns, including our penalty kill minus Zach Aston-Reese and Brian Boyle and the left side of our defense, reclamation project Smith in particular?

Some cracks may appear in the Pens’ well-worn battle armor. Fissures that could cause us to bleed off valuable points.

Our saving grace in terms of qualifying for the postseason a 17th consecutive season? The aforementioned Islanders really didn’t do much to improve and they’re aging. Plus, they fired a future Hall-of-Fame coach.

Columbus and New Jersey took steps forward, but perhaps not enough to overtake our Pens. The John Tortorella-led Flyers are a mess.

Then again?