The Blame Game: Ron Hextall and Brian Burke Take the Fall for the Penguins’ Poor Season

Wow.

It sure didn’t take long for the axe to fall.

Less than 48 hours after the Penguins were eliminated from playoff contention the team fired general manager Ron Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke. The announcement was made in a joint statement issued by Fenway Sports Group principal owner John Henry and FSG chairman Tom Werner. 

Assistant general manager Chris Pryor was also dismissed.

Hextall and Burke were hired in tandem by then-owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle on February 9, 2021, to replace Jim Rutherford, who abruptly resigned as the team’s general manager on January 27, 2021.

Since Burke seemed little more than a well-paid figurehead and Pryor played a support role, I’ll focus my attention on Hextall.

Tasked with keeping the team on a short list of Stanley Cup contenders while restocking the team’s badly depleted prospect coffers, Hextall struggled to serve two masters during his brief tenure. In hindsight his measured, patient and methodical approach was probably more suited to building a team through the draft than keeping a fading former champion competitive. A task that, ironically, requires a mover-and-shaker like…well…Rutherford.

On a personal level, I genuinely feel for Hextall. In hindsight, he was a given a near impossible mandate with little margin for error. It’s easy to forget that he inherited a team with significant cap issues from Rutherford. Kind of like being named captain of the RMS Titanic after the ship sideswiped the iceberg.

Unfortunately, he did little to resolve the issues and in some instances made them worse. 

Perhaps Hextall’s biggest shortcoming? His failure to surround the Pens’ aging but still productive core with a strong supporting cast.

Affordable and effective role players such as Frederick Gaudreau and Evan Rodrigues were allowed to depart through free agency, as well as solid right-shot defenseman Cody Ceci. Determined to protect prized trade deadline acquisition Jeff Carter in the ’21 Expansion Draft, Hextall traded talented but streaky Jared McCann to Toronto for middling prospect Filip Hallander, a former black-and-gold draft pick. McCann blossomed into a 40-goal scorer with Seattle.

Ouch.

Hextall also lost feisty heart-and-soul role player Brandon Tanev to the Kraken, effectively making the Pens the only team to lose two players in the draft. He signed the more affordable but far-less-dynamic Brock McGinn as a plain vanilla replacement.

In an effort to add physicality and change the mix on defense last summer, he signed free agent Jan Rutta and acquired veteran workhorse Jeff Petry and speedy forward Ryan Poehling from Montreal for puck-mover Mike Matheson. He also dealt mobile 25-year-old rearguard John Marino, thought to have plateaued, to New Jersey for Ty Smith.

While Petry and Rutta were adequate, they missed a combined 47 games due to injuries. A salary-cap casualty, Smith impressed with his skating and puckhandling during a brief injury-driven cameo, but spent virtually the entire season toiling in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

On the flip side, Marino’s settled in as a valued and solid citizen for the vastly improved Devils. Matheson emerged as a team leader for a young Montreal squad. We especially missed his ability to transition from defense to offense single-handed with his skating.

Perhaps Hextall’s most onerous move was to sign Carter, an old friend from his time with the Kings, to a two-year extension in January of 2022, almost precisely at the time the big center began to fade. Similarly, he inked RFA Kasperi Kapanen to a two-year extension at his previous rate, despite the fact that Kappy endured a miserable season in ’21-22.

Hextall’s work at this season’s trade deadline was uninspired as well. Surprised by the Pens’ uneven play (he mentioned on several occasions that he liked the team on paper) he remained in a state of inertia while other GMs jumped to improve their clubs. Finally spurred to action, he cleared nearly $6 million in cap space by offloading Kapanen and McGinn, but promptly spent it on deadline acquisitions Nick Bonino, Dmitry Kulikov and pricey Mikael Granlund ($5 million cap hit).

While wretched luck certainly played a part…Bonino and Kulikov were injured shortly after they arrived…the deals only served to make us older and even more brittle.

Under contract for two more seasons, Granlund managed a lone goal and four assists in 21 games. A move that may have ultimately sealed Hextall’s fate.

To be fair, GMRH did have his successes. Waiver pickup Mark Friedman proved to be a feisty, affordable and versatile depth defenseman. Hextall’s deal to acquire Carter at the ’21 trade deadline was initially a boon…the big center scored nine goals in 14 regular-season games with the Pens and four more in the playoffs that spring. He also filled in as our top-line center at the start of the ’21-22 campaign in the wake of injuries to Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Extra duty that in hindsight may have hastened Carter’s sudden and precipitous decline.

Hextall struck gold last spring with his deadline acquisition of forward Rickard Rakell from Anaheim. With a strong 28-goal, 60-point season, it’s safe to say Rakell exceeded all reasonable expectations. And Hextall gets high marks for inking pending UFAs and franchise icons Malkin and Kris Letang to new deals at affordable rates, along with Rakell and Bryan Rust.

Unfortunately, the victories were the exception rather than the rule.

A last word.

Blame appears to have been affixed. Don’t be surprised if coach Mike Sullivan, under contract through the ’26-27 season, will have significant input into the way the roster will be reshaped. No doubt in his image.

In other words…we could have at least four more seasons of Sully hockey. A bad thought for those of us hoping for a sea change in playing style and philosophy.