Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Is Penguins' forward Bryan Rust on the TRADE BLOCK?

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Bryan Rust's no-trade clause expires on July 1, so should the Penguins explore a trade? Hunter and Patrick start the show discussing a potential Bryan Rust trade and whether or not it's worth it for the franchise. They talk about how, while he may be a fan and locker room favorite, a trade could bring them a windfall, but would that help the retooling? Then, they take a look at the small sample size from defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok and what they need to see from him next season. Finally, it was announced on Thursday that Sidney Crosby will be one of the subjects of season two of Faceoff: Inside The NHL. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNHL at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year.Wonderful PistachiosGet snackin' and get crackin' with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more! FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new FanDuel customers can get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins!FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brian Russ has spent his entire NHL career with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but could that change this summer? You're Locked-on Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I am one of your host, Hunter Hodes. You can follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, joined by my host, Patrick Damby can follow him on all social media. platforms at Sendin and Verwet, and you can follow these shows, Twitter, at L.O. Understore Penguins, of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listen slash watch of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. And finally,

today's episode is brought to you by Fandul right now. New Fandall customers can get $200 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. Yes, people, I am back. Shout out to Pat who, even though he was a bit under the weather on Wednesday, he delivered a very good solo episode for you guys. I was in Cleveland seeing ACDC for the second time of my life. And this has been a nine-year redemption tour in the making. I saw them for the first time in 2016 when Axel Rose of Guns and Roses was fronting the band because Brian Johnson, usually the lead singer, he wasn't there. And I was so stoked for the show until my first girlfriend at the time broke my heart and dumped me over text the night before. You always remember your first breakup. And I was an absolute

mess at that show. I got to see them again nine years later. And, And it was everything I could ask for in so much more. Brian Johnson was back. He was great. And then Angus Young was also, once again, great on the lead guitar. Really fun show. But let's get into the meat of today's episode. Enough about my personal life and all that.

Brian Rust Pat, Josh Joey, delivered a pretty big article on the athletic today touching on the Penguins' coaching search and how it's coming to an end soon, free agency stuff, trade rumors, all that stuff. And we're not going to dive into all of it on the show. we're only going to dive into a small little tidbit. You can read the rest for yourselves if you have a subscription to the athletic because Josh does a lot of really good work.

But Josh did report that the Penguins have been getting a lot of calls surrounding forward Brian Rust. And honestly, that's not something that surprises me. He's one of the Penguins best players. He's a two-time cup champion. He is great in a locker room. You and I have spoke glowingly about him and how he's really developed into one of the big leaders on this team outside of the core three leadership group.

of Afghani Malkin, Sidney Crosby, and Chriseltang, when they don't want to talk on a given day. Ryan Russ is always there to be like, hey, come over here. I'll deliver a big quote that the rest of the team needs to hear. He always steps up when he needed in the locker room and all that good stuff. And with Brian Rust, I only trade him. I said this on the show before. I'll repeat it again here. I really only trade him if you get a legit haul.

And I do think there could be teams out there that maybe want to give that up. but I'm not trading him for pennies on the dollar or just like kind of a run-of-the-mill regular return. If someone wants to overpay out at the very least considerate, if not potentially do it, but it has to make a lot of sense for the penguins considering how much he has meant to them over the years and especially how good of a player he is. Right. I'll fully admit that I have to kind of separate the emotional attachment that I have to

Brian Rust with the analytical side of it because I don't want to see Brian Rust play for any other team because you and I have said it a million times. He absolutely defines what it is to be a Pittsburgh penguin came from absolutely zero hype, absolutely zero expectation, builds into a top six forward and consistently puts up between 45 to 60 points a year. So even with all of that, he has gone on to score 200 NHO goals. He's got a bunch of clutch goals in the playoffs throughout his career. He very easily, maybe not very easily, but very plausibly could hit 500 NHL points this upcoming season or very early in the season after that.

But at the same time, he's 33. He plays a very hard game. And Josh brought this up in his article, which is something that. I kind of forgot about. Once July 1st hits, his no trade clause goes away. I was under the impression that he had one through the entirety of his contract, which apparently he doesn't. No, it was only for the first couple years of it and then it went away.

And if you're the penguins, there are going to be a lot of teams that would want his services. But this is in a way very similar to Ricard Raquel, where you can hold on to him and it's not the worst idea, only if you don't get a haulback for him. Like you said, this is not a pennies on the dollar trade. This is not a guy that you just get whatever you can for him because he has very good value. It's not a hard contract to move. It's he is very much lived up to it. And he brings what a lot of players don't. And I don't want to overhype him. But at the end of the day, this is a plug and play forward. And those are worth their weight in gold.

If you want him to be on your top line and provide offense, he's extremely capable of doing that. If you want to put him on your power play to be a good complimentary piece on a power play, he can do that. You want to put him in a bottom six role to play an energy role or a defensive role. He's shown he can do that. You want to put him on the penalty kill. He's a good penalty killer. So this is a player with a lot of value. And if the penguins do get offered a king's ransom for him, it would suck because I love him as a penguin. But for where this franchise wants to go, it has to be considered. Oh, 100%. Like if you get offered a return that kind of stuns you and it's like, oh, that's a lot more than we expected. You have to at very least consider it,

if not potentially do it, even though it would hurt, A, quite a few fans who obviously really like him, you know, us included, we love Brian Ross on this team. And then B, other players on the team, especially the core leadership group, who have been with him for a very long time now. So, again, that's only if that happens. The more likelyer of the two that could get dealt has always been Rickele. Like, if you were to look at both of them for this summer, I think Ricard Raquel is a lot more likelyer to get dealt. then Brian Rust, you know, even though Russ had a really good season, Raquel had an even better season.

Teams are always looking for scoring wingers in the summer, especially if they don't get some of their top targets in free agency. Honestly, after a few top guys at Ford and free agency, the market kind of goes down a little bit. So Ricard Raquel could be one of the top players available for trade for teams that need more scoring heading into next season. And I still feel like the Penguins could get a fairly decent return back for a man.

And Kyle Dubas kind of hinted at that during a couple GM shows during the season, where he was like, yeah, I know I didn't deal him, but I kind of know what the market is going to be for him this summer, which makes me confident that the penguins could potentially get a decent package for him back. But in terms of Brian Rust, again, I don't see it happening. But again, if you get a really good offer, it's something to be considered. Because I don't think he's an untouchable. I think there's very few untouchables on this roster.

Sidney Crosby is not going anywhere. Evgeny Malkin is not going anywhere. Chris Lattang, I would probably put him close to up there. I don't think he's going to get traded, though. So the main two, though, are Crosby and Malkin. You know, starts someone like Sergey Murshov is not going anywhere. Rockrum or Grority. I hate being a little unfair and calling him untouchable,

but I still don't think he's going anywhere either, you know, Vili Coiffinen. But, like, in terms of, like, purely, like, untouchables, you probably have to go to, like, ownership to move them or something like that. it's mainly Crosby, Malkin, and maybe to a lesser extent, what's hang. Ryan Rust, he's close, but I don't think he's in that category just yet. But that's how I kind of feel about the situation. And you can't discount, you know, what someone like him can do for the locker room,

for some of these younger players. You want someone like him around to really show some of these younger guys, the ropes of what it takes to potentially win at the NH level. Pat and I both know this team's probably not going to be very good next season. But you still want to surround some of these younger players with other players who have been in a winning culture before and knows what it takes to A, you know, be in that culture and B, get back to that winning culture. And I do feel like that plays a role in this as well. I'm not trying to overrate some of the intangibles here or anything like that. I'm just trying to look at the overall picture, you know, his play on the ice, his role off the ice, his role as a leader and all that good stuff.

It's what I've said about them multiple times. Do you know the aura that Crosby, Malkin, and Latang have around them? They're legends, they're surefire Hall of Famers. And not to mention, like I said, they have that aura around them. Brian Rust is a guy who had to scratch and claw to get to the NHL. And sure, he's become a bigger name, but you have a different perspective when it comes to leadership for those young guys. because it may be a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. Getting to the NHL is the quote unquote easy part.

The hard part is staying in the league because there are guys who there are so many who have a cup of coffee, they have a good few weeks, and then you never hear from them again. That very easily could have been Brian Rust. Instead, he did everything he needed to do to not just make it to the NHL, but stay in the NHL and become a key contributor. And that wisdom can help a lot of these young guys that they're going to start putting the saddle on over the next few years.

Yep, I agree with that. And that's another thing that someone told Josh in the article is that they're going younger next year. So you want someone like Ryan Russ to be around there, especially to, again, help some of these younger pieces. So to sum this all up, the Penguins are going to be very busy this off season. Not going to hand out long-term contracts in a free agency or anything like that, they're going to be really busy in the trade market, but I don't think we see

them trading Rust at this time unless someone really blows them away with an offer. Very well could happen, but we'll just have to see. But I think that would do it for this first segment of today's episode coming up in the second segment, Pat and I are going to continue our season in review series with a defenseman who didn't get that much playing time down the stretch and someone who were at least intrigued about heading into next season. All right. Before we get to that, though, we have to tell you all about our first sponsor, and that is Fandul.

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If it wins, you will get $200 in bonus bets. Make every moment more to Fandle, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. All right, we're back here in this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-host, Patrick Dam, and Pat, We're continuing our season in review series today with Penguins defense in Vadaslov, Koya Chonuk. So he was claimed on waivers during the season. The Penguins wanted to take a little bit of a chance on him.

Played 12 games a little over 162 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time. The underlying numbers definitely weren't that good when he got to Pittsburgh. 44% of a shot attempts when he was on the ice. Minus 4-4-goal differential at 5-on-5. 43% expected goal share. 38% swine chances, 40% high-danger chances. It's a far cry from where he was with Utah, where he was at 52% of the Sean attempts,

57% expected goal share, 56% of the soaring chances, 61% of the high danger chances, though. I think with a new coach, he could potentially get back to that level, say if the Penguins hire Mitch Love. And again, I still think it's his job to lose right now. Maybe we get an announcement on Friday.

Maybe we get it early next week. I think it's coming in the next two days. June 1st is just three days away at this rate. Mitch Love is the higher. I really do feel like he could really work with Koyochana to get his game back up to where it was during his short stint with the Utah Mammoth. I got to get used to saying that now. But now that is that is their official name. We're not doing the Utah H.C.

anymore and all that. But I still like Koyochonok's skating for the Penguins, though I felt like some of his decision making, especially as he played a few more games, wasn't where I wanted it to be. But I still feel like this is a very incomplete grade. you turn on the tape for Utah, he skates like the wind, has some offensive ability, but didn't really use a lot of that to his disposal in Pittsburgh. But again, Pat, it's only 12 games. That's why I say it's an incomplete grade.

I felt like he's skating at times who was fine with the Penguins. It just wasn't at the level that I saw with Utah, even though that was also a short sample size before that only played in 23 games for Utah. I saw some of his offensive ability a bit more with Utah. didn't see it with the penguins a bit, but he was also shuffling between defensive pairings, playing in the top four, playing in the bottom pair.

It was kind of a makeshift defensive group to end last season, if I'm being honest. So I think heading into next season, he's someone that can be a number seven guy, maybe at best number six guy, but I'm still not sure he's going to be in the opening night, opening night lineup next year, excuse me,

just because they still have quite a few holes to fill on that left side. But if he's your number seven, number eight guy along with Ryan Shea, I think that's totally fine. The one thing I'm really curious to see from him next season is where his level of comfortability is because the one thing I noticed a lot

in the short sample size we have of him as a Pittsburgh penguin is it looked like he was kind of struggling to adjust to being in a new franchise because he gets waived, He's claimed off of waivers. He's in and out of the lineup. Didn't really have a chance to get any sort of level of consistency. While at the same time, when he was in the lineup, he didn't do a ton to impress.

I believe I said this a few times during the season when we discussed him. It wasn't that he played poorly. He just didn't do enough to stay in the lineup because I know that was another big data point for people when Mike Sullivan was still. the coach say, oh, here's Mike Sullivan again, burying a young player, but he never grabbed a role and stuck with it. He just was kind of there. Now, a new coaching staff is going to come in. He's still under contract for this upcoming season, and that should give him a chance to develop because he is only 24. He's, and we know with defensemen, it takes a little bit longer for them to hit.

And if you get Mitch Love as your head coach, he has done a really good job working with defensemen and developing defensemen, and that's right in this kid's wheelhouse. So you want to see him get back to using his skating abilities. You want to see him have that offensive prowess push forward a little bit again. So it's an incomplete grade. I think the potential's there for him to be a second or third pairing defenseman if he develops correctly. But where you have him slated going into next year as your,

seventh or eighth defenseman. I think that's a good spot for him. You give him favorable deployments. If you have to give him some time with the baby penguins to really maybe play in a smaller pond and develop some confidence and get his game to a certain level, that could work as well. Again, it's a no risk, high reward kind of proposition you acquired him for nothing. He takes up next to no cap space and he's young. So if he develops into something next year, great. You've got a piece that you can use for the next few years. If not, he's going to be a group six UFC at the end of the year. You can just move on. So I like where the potential is, but I've got to see more from him going into next year. I hear you. And I do want to see if they potentially pair him a little bit more

with Connor Timmons. I had that in my notes today. They were really good together down the stretch. I felt like that was the best partner for Akoya Chonuk when he was in the lineup down the stretch. So they played 10 games together, very short sample size minutes wise, Pat, only 14 minutes, but they crushed those minutes together. They had 71% of the shot attempts for the penguins when they were on the ice as a pair. No goals for, no goals against, but 62% of the expected goal share, 66% of the scoring chances, and then two high danger chances for one high danger chance against. give me a little bit more of that. I know it's only 14 minutes, but if you want to experiment a little bit more with that pairing, I'll be totally good with it because I thought Timmons for the most part was good once he was acquired.

And when you put Koyochanaq with him, even though it wasn't even 15 minutes, they still showed some flashes together. So if they do want to experiment with that at times during next season, when Koyok Chonok has to come in, because I'm sure there's going to be an injury or two to this defensive group, you're not going to probably play all six of your regular defenseman every game. that's just not how it usually goes at the antial level. But assuming they bring Timons back, assuming that Coelotronic is the number seven guy, give them some more minutes at times next season because I feel like that could be something worth exploring a little bit.

Right. And I think that's something that we are going to see a lot over the next couple of years, especially with team sources basically saying that they're going younger next year. They're going to put a lot more focus on the young players. And if you do bring Timmons back and Koliath, is still here. See if there is something there because very small sample size of those two together. And you want to find out if that is a thing or if it was just an outlier. And if you have both of them, it's worth a look. We know what the goal is right now. The goal right now is not to win.

The goal is to get younger, find your key pieces for the future and be ready for it, ready to go in a year or two. So this year, whether it's Mitch Love, Jay Woodcroft, DJ Smith, somebody who hasn't been named yet, be a mad scientist this coming year. Experiment with everything. Forewords, defensemen, goaltenders, strategies, you name it. If you've got to throw everything in a blender every third game, that's fine. Find out if you've got something that works. And once it does, or if it appears like it does, give it some time to cook. If you're going to put those two together, don't put them together for a period in one game.

Put them together for a five game stretch and find out, do they work well together? Is it a flash in the pan? Do we need to move on? And I think us as analysts and fans as well, got to get yourself in that mindset for the next couple of years. There's going to be a lot of experimenting. There's going to be a lot of things that you're not expecting to see, but it's all going to be in service of developing these younger guys and finding out which pieces work and which ones don't. And that's really what matters.

You want to see how these young players develop. Obviously, it is very important to send the core out the right way because Crosby, Malkin, what's saying they're at the end of their careers. And yes, people, we all know they very much want to win. They want to get back to the playoffs. But still, one of the biggest things is getting the development of these younger players right. So I think you're going to see quite a bit of that experimenting next season. I would assume that Rucker McGority will be in the top six to start next season.

Same with Dilly-Cloven, have to see what happens with Pils. Hickering Harrison Brunich, Yel Blumquist, whoever else they potentially acquired during the offseason, if they bring in some more younger pieces that other teams are able to fit under the cap or younger pieces that want to change a scenery. Who knows? Again, they're going to be busy, and there's going to be a pretty big influx of young talent that's going to be on this team next season. That's probably even outside of McGority and Coivenden. But that will do it for the second segment. coming up to end the show. Sydney Crosby and Mark Andre Fleury are going to be on a pretty cool hockey show starting next season.

We're going to give you all the details on that coming up right after this. All right. We're back here on this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-host, Patrick Dam and Pat. Mark Andre Fleury and Cindy Crosby are going to be on the face-off inside the NHL series. This will be season two. Season one was fairly decent. I didn't finish all of it, but the parts I did see, I felt like were pretty good.

But getting the chance to go inside for Sidney Crosby and Flory, just for this past season, you know, Flurry, his final season in the league. Crosby had another 90 plus point campaign. Matthew Cichuk is also there. Miko Ransana, that's going to be a really fun one, too, especially with the year. He had Ange Coupitzar, William Nealander, Brendan Shanahan, Sean Monaghan, with everything that happened, of course, in Columbus. I'm really excited to watch this.

I am too. I loved the first season for one main reason. The NHL over the past 20 years has been so brand conscious and not in a good way. They don't want anybody stepping out of line. And Amazon pretty much came in with season one of this and said, get the hell out of our way. We are doing this the way we are doing this. It's the thing that's great about it is the people who made the documentary that kicked off this era of the behind the scenes sports documentary was Drive to Survive on Netflix.

The same people who made Drive to Survive are making this show. And Drive to Survive, you can't go anywhere anymore, especially on sports social media, without hearing about F1. it made F1 so much more popular in the United States that people now get out of bed to watch F1 on the weekends. We'll find out if it does the same for hockey. I'm a little skeptical because it's such a niche sport and everything. But the fact that Amazon brought the cameras in, they followed people like McDavid,

the Kachuk brothers, Jack Eichol, and it wasn't just, oh, you know, we played a good game. and now I'm going to tell some jokes in the locker room with my friends and then the camera's going to go away. No, it's like the McDavid thing where he yelled and screamed. It got memed, but you're not seeing that anywhere else. And they're getting all access. This is going to be what HBO 24-7 was when the Penguins and Capitals were on it

in the first season before the NHL stepped in to take editorial control, but even better. That McDavid clip was still so much fun. Like just getting that. type of access, seeing his raw emotion in the locker room during that game in that moment was awesome. We're not going to get anything like that with Sid just because the Penguins did not make the playoffs this last season, but it's still going to be really cool to go inside his day to day life, see what he says in the locker room and Mark Andre Fleury, his retirement tour, that's going to be quite a bit of fun as well. So really stoked to watch that.

Real quickly, just want to say, congrats to the Four Panthers getting to the third straight Stanley Cup final. What a team that is. And, And I am now one-win away from getting my preseason Stanley Cup final prediction, right? I predicted Oilers, Panthers at the beginning of the year. Yes, people, I think I'm getting dumber because I picked the Panthers to lose in the first round of the bolts because I didn't like the way they were playing down the stretch. And I picked against the Oilers in the second round against the biggest golden nights. As I said, I think I'm just getting stupid now.

I should have just stuck to my guns at this rate. But if the Oilers win tonight, we'll get the rematch first time since Penguins Red Wings in 09 and the Stanley Cup final would start June 4th. But I think unless you have anything else, that's probably going to do it for today's episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Pat and I are going to be back on Friday, and who knows, we could get the coaching higher,

potentially as early as tomorrow. We get that Friday news dump, all that good stuff, or unless they maybe do it Monday, Tuesday, something like that. Who knows? But if it's tomorrow, don't worry. We're going to have a breaking news episode for you guys. Might be a car cast for me, because I'm going to the beach for the next week.

Don't worry though, people. Pat's not doing any solo episodes. Bringing my mic, bringing my laptop. We're doing five episodes daily next week. Really stoked for that. And yeah, do you have anything else to add for this one? I'm really excited for this Stanley Cup final if we get the rematch because these are two teams at the height of their power. And I don't know if I want to root for a Canadian team, but you know what?

give me that rematch and give me Connor McDavid getting his first cup because we all love the comeback story when you have round two just like our Pittsburgh Penguins did. I think it might be their time, but man, that Panthers team just pesky and they are a blast to watch. It will not be easy for the Oilers to do it. But hey, if you want to be the best, you got to beat the best. I think it would be really fitting for the Oilers to win it after losing the way they did last year. But hey, let's see if they can close out the stars first. But Pat and I will be back with a fresh episode of Locked on Penguins on Friday before five new episodes for you all next week. So for Patrick Damp, I'm Hunter Hodes. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We appreciate it.

We'll be back on Friday.