Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - The Penguins continue to add to their front office!

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Hunter is back for this episode of Locked On Penguins and together, he and Pat discuss the Doug Wilson hire and how it looks to be a slam dunk for the Pittsburgh Penguins. They look at how Wilson did during his tenure with the San Jose Sharks and how he turned them into a contender for over a decade. The two analyze his role with the Penguins and how this front office is shaping up to be among the best in the NHL. After that, the two discuss how the Penguins have a great shot at finishing third in the Metropolitan Division this season. Pat argues why both the Rangers and Islanders may take some steps back while Hunter primarily argues against the Islanders. Finally, they take some questions from listeners to end the show, including a bunch on Kyle Dubas.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!BirddogsGo to birddogs.com/LOCKEDONNHL or enter promo code LOCKEDONNHL for a free water bottle with any order. You won’t want to take your birddogs off we promise you.AG1If a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine, then try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkAG1.com/NHLNETWORK.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS - GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Times, they are a changing, Bob Dylan once wrote. And even though Ron Burgundy had never heard that song, Fenway Sports Group and Kyle Dubis have. They made another big front office hire. We're going to talk about that and more on this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Your Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Locked-on. Penguins podcast. We thank you for making this your first listen of the day or your first watch of the day. You can get this show on YouTube for free or at any of your favorite podcasting platforms. And before we get going today, we got to mention our title sponsor, Bird Dogs. Go to birddogs.com slash locked on NHL or enter promo code locked on NHL and you'll get a free water bottle with every order. You don't want to take your bird dogs off. That We promise you. We're back.

It's a new day. And joining us again, you know them, you love them. The man, Hunter Hodes, back from vacation, back on the show. Man, we missed you. It's good to be back. You know, obviously I love being in Barbados for almost a week, celebrating, you know, my three-year anniversary with my girlfriend. And yes, I posted a picture, well, a couple pictures on Twitter.

No, I am not engaged. I think so many people thought I proposed to my girlfriend. That is coming probably next year or the year after. That was a different ring on her engagement ring finger. So I wanted to just clear the air there. In the business, we call that a tease. Engage. Yeah, it's a small team is what it was.

But Pat did a tremendous job with the couple of shows that he did while I was on vacation. Thank you all so much for listening to those. But glad to be back. And of course, while I'm on vacation, the Penguins dropped a lot of news. You covered a lot of it. They dropped some more news right now was coming home on Wednesday. So let's just jump into it back. Yeah, and we wanted to get you back for that rather than have me clunk my way through whatever news there is.

So as we talked about at the top, Penguins made a pretty, in my opinion, significant hire to their front office, naming Doug Wilson, the senior advisor of hockey operations. So, I mean, I just said it. I'll get into it. We'll both get into it. I think this is a slam dunk of a hire for this front office. So Hunter, your thoughts on it now that you're all situated and back. How are you feeling about this one?

You know, it's funny. It dropped right as we were just packing up and about to go to the airport. And I looked at my phone and I'm like, huh, that's interesting. I was just really surprised by it because I know he had been wanting to get back into the league. I just didn't think it would be what the penguins. Remember, he left the sharks. I believe it was for health reasons. Yeah, they said health related reasons.

Yeah. It was 22, early 2020, 2021, one of those. I believe it was April of last year, if I recall correctly. So a little about a year and a half ago at this point. And he had a pretty, I would say good tenure with the sharks.

He made some mistakes that Mark Edward Vlasic contract is an albatross. Let's just put that out there. But he had the original trade for Eric Carlson, which was a slam dunk. he drafted Joe Pavelski, also a slam dunk, the Joe Thornton acquisition. I mean, that was just highway robbery right there, the fact that he was able to get Joe Thornton. And honestly, not even give that much up in return. He had been with the sharks for about two decades, brought them up to a perennial contender for numerous years.

I mean, he was the architect behind that 2016 team that lost to the penguins in six games. And hey, if he can't beat them, join them. Yeah. And I mean, you said it there, and it's spot on, is that he took this expansion franchise that was middling and either really bad or just on the bubble of being competitive or in the conversation to in the, from about 2005 until maybe two, three years ago, they were always a team that you looked at in the West and said, man, if there's a team that could come out of the West, it's San Jose. And you look at the track record in his time there. 14 of the 19 years he's with the team, they make the playoffs. They played in 30 playoff series, which was second only to the Penguins at that time in 32. They went to the Western Conference final five times.

They played in the one Stanley Cup final in 2016 against the Penguins, which we all remember very well. And they won the Pacific Division five times. and not the Pacific Division we know right now. We're talking about the Pacific Division when L.A., Anaheim, all were good. And it was a wide open division for the taking. So he put together some incredible rosters. And I'm so glad he's got his health back and the Penguins were able to get him. Right.

And he'll be the senior advisor to some of the hockey operations. be involved in some of the personnel decisions, trades, signings, Wilkesbury, all that good stuff. He'll be traveling on the road with the team. He'll also be working from home up further early. I think he'll also be working at Penguins games in Pittsburgh as well. And I think it's pretty obvious he's probably going to be sitting right next to Kyle Dubbs. I think in the press box, it's probably going to be of Dubbus in the center of it. And then you have Jason Spets on one side and then like Doug Wilson on the other. And then you have some of the other people behind him. But yeah, I mean, anytime you can add experience like that to your front of,

office, someone who has done a really good job throughout, you know, his career as an executive, you do it. And again, we talked about this a lot. This just goes to show how diverse of a front office this team has now. You added, now you've added a guy who, yes, is he up there? Is he, I guess, a quote unquote hockey man? Yes, but he actually, you know, has been pretty good at his job for most of his tenure. Went a little south toward the final few years with the sharks, just because the sharks were kind of going towards the rebuild that they're in now. But for most of his tenure there, he put together some really good teams. It really wasn't his fault that the sharks kept coming up short.

Remember during those early 2010 years, the sharks were playoff choke artists. That's what people thought of them when they played the Kings and maybe some of these other teams. But they were still a great regular season team. And he pulled off some great moves as I discussed a little earlier. I mean, their biggest issue was kind of the same issue that the Washington and capitals faced up until they won in 2018, they just would always run into a team that was just a little bit better. Or a team that was so on a hot streak and a heater that they weren't going to be able to

get by them. I mean, you look at that, like, I say this all the time. You look at the 2016 and the 2017 Stanley Cup finals. If I weren't a penguin fan, I would have been rooting for San Jose to get their first cup. And they were a great team that year, genuinely great team. And same thing in 2017 with the Predators would have been rooting for them to get their first Stanley Cup. Another great team.

But they were playing my favorite team. So forget that. I don't want them to win there. But the main thing I also want to say about this is I want to give a shout out to the Steve Dangel podcast because I'm a huge fan of them. And obviously, like, I have gotten a lot of dubous information and background on him from them. and I was actually listening to them today. And they brought up the fact that one of Kyle Dubus's Achilles' heels are, he's just almost too nice of a guy.

He always wants to do right by his guys. And in sports, you don't really get awards for being a good guy. You have to be a little bit ruthless. And you have to be willing to make tougher decisions rather than, I'm going to let this guy go because I want to do right by him and he's not going to play here. Or this is my guy. I got to give him what he wants and what he needs in this contract. And it can lead to problems in the future.

You look at Doug Wilson for the most part. He's the opposite. I said it to you before we hit record. It's an underrated, not spoken of often moved by Doug Wilson. But a few years ago, everybody on San Jose's hurt. and all of a sudden anchoring their first line is Barclay Gudra. And the sharks aren't going to make the playoffs. The sharks are looking like they're going to have to count it as an off year.

So what does he do? Rather than, oh, Barkley Gudro played above his head and did so well, we're going to reward him with a deal. No, they flipped them to a contender for a first round pick. And that is just incredibly good asset management. And while I do think Kyle Dubus does do very well with asset management, he can do better. And now having a voice like Doug Wilson in the room with him is going to make a guy who's already a great GM even better. You took the words right on my mouth there.

That was a great acquisition. He showed that he could, he knew where the team was going. He capitalized on it. He got a good return. I also will never get over the fact how he got Brent. Burns before he went to Carolina for basically nothing. You remember that trade? It was a first round pick, Charlie Coyle, and I believe it was set of Gucci. And that was it. That's all it took to get Brent Burns. His trades, a lot of them for just the big time players,

were for pennies on the dollar. And I think he can bring that expertise over to the penguins in a big way, especially if the penguins want to go hunting a little bit of the trade deadline. I expect them to you because Kyle Dubas, I don't think is ever going to stop tinkering with this team. But it has way more pros than it does cons. Heck, does this move even have a con? No, I don't really think it does. You're adding another voice to your front office.

You're making it more diverse. You're adding someone who has done great work in the past. And it's not even, it's like that big of a position. It's a senior advisor to Kyle. He's still running the show. This is not going to be someone who's making the decisions and all that. It'll just be helping out when they can.

And, you know, sure, maybe he's maybe a little bit of an old-time hockey guy, but, you know, sometimes you need that kind of voice in your front office while also having your analytics group hires that the Penguins have. It's just, it's a nice mix between those. Wilson, Mapof, Spetsa, this is shipping up, I think, to be a really good front office. For sure. And not that Kyle Dubus doesn't have a good track record or doesn't have content. But because the league is what it is, this gives him a little bit more credibility in this front office, a little bit more credibility.

You see the name Doug Wilson pop up on your phone or you see the name Doug Wilson on the front office roster sheet. And that because the league is the way it is, guys are going to go, you know what? Doug Wilson, he'd been around for a while. I'm going to take that call. And he was very much for a long period of time, one of those guys that. If his name popped up on your phone for a trade, don't answer. Just like how it is now sometimes with Kyle Dubis, Chris McFarland, especially in Colorado. Anyone who gets a call from him, please just don't answer it.

Send him to voicemail. Yeah, there's a few GMs that fit that mold now. 100%. So that's going to do it for this segment. When we come back, we're going to talk about the rest of the metro a little bit and how some off-season. and moves or lack thereof could work in the penguin's favor. But first, we got to tell you about today's sponsor, and that is bird dogs. Plain and simple, no hard sell here.

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You won't want to take off your bird dogs, we promise you. We're back here on the Locked on Penguins podcast. I am Patrick Damp. That is Hunter Hodes. You can follow me on Twitter at Synonym for Wet. You can follow him at Hunter Hodes. And of course, you can follow the show's Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. Now, as we said before we took a break there, we're going to take a look here at the Metropolitan Division and how some of these offseason moves for the bottom half of the division could really work in the Penguins favor.

and I'm going to tee it up for this and see if we're on the same wavelength here, Hunter, but I think there's a really good chance that this Penguins team isn't going to be in the wild card. They're going to finish third, the Metro. I can see it, especially if the Rangers do take a big step back this upcoming season. They have a lot of pressure on them, I think heading in. I mean, Shostarkin, he's one of the three best goals in the league. I would probably put him number two right now, in my opinion, behind Vasilevsky. You know he's going to bring in every single night.

but some of their big ticket players, well, they have had pretty decent regular seasons. They kind of turn into ghosts in the playoffs. I want to see more from Rattemi Panarin. I want to see more from someone like Amika Zabanajan. I don't think he's a true top center on a contending team. I think obviously he's a very good player, but I think when you're trying to contend, I don't think he should be your top center, in my opinion. You have Adam Fox, who I think is, well, you know, one of the favorites to win the Norris this year.

he's incredible. But you look down that lineup, they have the kids there, Lafranier, Caco, they got to start someone showing some glimpses of why they were picked where they were picked. I mean, especially LaFranier. I think if he's bad this year, they're going to try to trade him next offseason.

Heedle's the one who I think is the best of that bunch. But, man, I don't know, their off-season moves were interesting to say the least. You bring in Blake Wheeler, who I think is kind of cooked at this point, to bring in Nick Benino, Tyler Pitlick, some of these guys for bottom six roles, defensively. Again, box is way. Lingren is a good partner for him.

Keontra Miller is probably one of the more underrated defensemen in the league. But I don't know. Something about them, even with no Galant there anymore, Lobulet, sure, he can get, you know, the best out of a team early on in a tenure, but is that really going to be the case here with the Rangers team that, you know, it's, you know, they're on the, I wouldn't say down swing, but especially eight. age-wise, they're going up there, to say the least. And again, also with Lobulette, his teams don't bring a lot of offense. And with the offensive players that the Rangers have, I think that might be more difficult

for them heading into the season. So I definitely could see a scenario where the Penguins do finish third behind the hurricanes and Devils this year. And the Rangers take a little bit of a step back. Yeah. So as I figured, we're kind of on the same wavelength here. I do think this division's one and two are New Jersey and Carolina in either order. I look at the Rangers and the one thing I will say is one,

I don't want to get this twisted. I don't want to get clipped and radioed here. I'm not saying the Rangers are bad. They're still a very good, very good hockey team. But one thing I do think is going to work in their favor, you kind of hinted at this a little bit. They have Peter Lobby, a lot behind the bench now. And if there's one thing we know from his history,

is that in his first two, three years, he gets the absolute most out of those teams. He takes them to heights you didn't expect. He puts them in an almost contender status, so that could work in the Rangers' favor. But then, like you were saying, I look at guys like Caco, LaFrenier, now Jimmy Visi's back,

and Caco and LaFrenier are still young enough. They can take a jump. They could, I don't want to say surprise because when you're a younger guy, it takes, sometimes it takes time. You don't look as effective or that great in your early years and then something clicks. All of a sudden, you're putting up 50, 60, 70 or more points because you finally have a feel for the league. You're starting to get into a rhythm and become an NHLer. But, you know, I look at that team and a lot of the guys they're counting on right now. now, the trajectory that they're on, it looks like their middle six forwards at best.

And a guy like Jimmy Visi has blamed out everywhere he's gone. I love Nick Benino. He's got beachfront property in my heart for everything he did during the Stanley Cup runs, but he's pretty cooked at this point. Same thing with Blake Wheeler. And not to mention, he's coming from Winnipeg, which by all accounts was an absolutely toxic place to play. And he was the captain. So how much of that does that fall on his shoulder? And then on the other New York team, with the Islanders, the old adage is someone has

to score. But I look at that roster and who's it going to be? Brock Nelson had 36 last year, and he's genuinely great. But other than him, they only had two players last year, eclipse 20 goals. I don't think the Islanders are that good. I understand what Islanders fans are optimistic, but I really just don't see it. Defensively, okay, Peluk, Pulock, they're great. You won't get an argument for me. That Scott Mayfield contract is hilarious.

I mean, Lou Lamerl. That was probably not even going to be there at that point anyway. He's so old at this point. But, I mean, you know, Brock Nelson, one of the more underrated goal scores, he's great. Matt Barzell, great playmaker. He's awesome. Anders Lee, very annoying net front presence. It seems like every game against the Penguins, he scores a goal, him and Brock Nelson.

But outside of that, and hey, Penguin Killer Josh Bailey is gone, even though he's kind of cooked at this point in his career. Outside of that, I'm sorry, I really don't see it with the Islanders. Islanders fans were wanting Lane Lambert fired for most of last season. They barely even squeaked into the playoffs. And the only reason they did is because the Penguins crap the bet against the worst team in hockey. And, you know, like I was saying before that, they had two other guys. guys who topped out 20 goals. And it was Anders Lee who's back and Zach Parise, who's still out there. They could bring him back. Lou Lamarillo apparently loves him so he might be back.

But it's a typical Lamarillo team. They're great in goal. They're strong defensively, but nobody on offense is a game breaker. So again, everybody loves to use the old hockey cliche of us. Somebody's got to score, but no, no, they don't. If you don't, if you don't, if you don't have anybody that can score. Nobody is going to score. The other thing I want to say, they could work really well in the Penguins favor to finish third in the metro. And hilarious, we're sitting here talking about them only finishing third in the division. But their early schedule is soft. They play a lot of the lower tier teams like Columbus, and then they play the Pacific with out. And it's, it's, it's, it's, they're not playing very.

Vegas and Edmonton. They're playing San Jose. They're playing L.A., who while improved, I'm still not a huge believer in just yet. And they also play Seattle, who for as good as they've been, I do think the Penguins match up better with them. So they have a chance in the first four or five weeks of the season to stack some very valuable points, which when we get to the end of the season and we're playing the lion's share of those metro games, they're going to obviously still matter because this division is going to be a log jam at the top. But if you bank those early points, you put the numbers up early, that gives you more room for error at the end, which was what they struggled with last year. They were unable to have that margin for error come the end of the year.

Right. And if, you know, you, perfect point there. Heck, their final game is against the Islanders. And wouldn't you know it? It's on national television. I wonder why, Pat. I wonder why that game is on national television. And I'm wondering why the NHL schedule makers scheduled the Islanders for the final game. I bet that's going to be very important. Let's be honest here, though. It's the Islanders. I don't know what kind of voodoo wizardry they have over there in Long Island.

But every, we, again, I have to add this caveat. We do this every year, but we're like, oh, you know, this is Islanders team. I don't know about them. And the next thing you know, they're making a run. for the division and we're like how beats me man and to go off your point about the schedule being soft you know i have the october schedule up right now right first five games of this season non-playoff teams well to be fair we're not the game too yes i know i know the penguins did not make the playoffs last year but for a team that wants to contend and make the playoffs this year

seven of their first nine games are against teams that did not make the playoffs. There is a perfect opportunity for them to start fast and they're going to need to so that, as you said, they're not going to have to be chasing points at the end of the season like they did this past year where you're needing to, you know, having a must win against the Blackhawks. Because, you know, maybe if you were already in the playoffs, you drop that game. Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, you screw them over maybe with Connor Bredard, even though they got kind of Bernard anyway, but at that point in the season, the stakes were just too high. You can't have it come down to that.

You need to take care of business when you can. That also means not having nearly as many overtime losses this upcoming season. They were horrendous to start OT last season. That needs to change. I expect it to change. And that happens. Plus, Penguins start out quick and maybe a team like the Rangers or Islanders Foulter a little bit, there's no reason to think they can't finish third with the

depth that they have up front, the top six being great, and now defensively, they're a lot better than last year. And of course, the goal just needs to stay healthy. Yeah. It's all right there for them to make the Metropolitan Division playoffs rather than scratch and claw for a wild card, maybe crossover into the Atlantic. So that's going to do it for this segment. When we come back, we put out a little feeler for you guys, figured it's Friday here, or almost Friday, hear from our audience. And we'll answer. answer a couple of your questions when we come back right after this. Welcome back to the Locked on Penguins podcast. One more time for good measure. We appreciate you making this your first

listen or watch of the day. As I said before we went to break, we put a feeler out. Wanted to get some questions for you guys. See how the audience was feeling here now that we're coming up on a Friday. So we're going to start, it's going to be kind of a combining here of questions because we got the same question a bunch of different ways. So thanks to all of you who responded, by the way. I know we put that out on kind of some short notice, but basically a lot of people have asked, okay, so it seems like Ile Dubus has been hitting all the right notes this offseason

with all of his hockey operations moves, mainly just the roster. We're not going to talk. We already talked a good bit about Doug Wilson in the front office. So I'm going to take Matt Schaefer's question here and just use him is the example. He asks, Dubus has made a lot of good moves in his tenure with the team so far. However, what is one move he's made or hasn't made that you didn't like? See, for me, I really don't know if I- It's a great question. I would say, I guess, not finding a way yet to get Tomas Tatar since he's still out there. But as we kind of hinted at on this show before, the longer he's out there means

the less leverage he has as a player to get a contract and get on a roster. So this really could just be a game of chicken between Kyle Dubus and Tomas Tatar. And funny enough, and I apologize if my voice sounds a little bit mad today. I am battling a little bit of a cold that I suffered. Funny enough, as I was coming home from Barbados, that's just my luck. But funny enough, Pat, someone did ask that, what the heck is going on with Tomas Tatar. Yeah, I have no idea. I don't know what that situation entails.

I don't know if he's in talks to other teams. Camp opens in just a couple of weeks. You figured he'll have a home by then, but honestly, who knows? But to get back to your original point, I would agree with you, I guess, with somehow not finding a way to sign Tomas Dutard. If there was,

and this kind of goes with that, if there was another thing, not getting more offense for the bottom six. I mean, we beat that drum so many times on the show. this off season. I mean, I was doing that before you even join. I guess that's really the one move where I would be like, okay, like, you know, you made some other bottom six moves to shore up the defensive side. Where's the offense? So again, I think he's had, you know, an A offseason to date.

I just think I would like to see some more offense down there. I mean, if you want to talk about a move he's made, I don't like the term on the Ryan Graves contract. I think it's a little too long, if he plays well throughout, I'm going to be made to look like an idiot. So I guess that's one small thing. I guess I don't like. Yeah, and with the Graves contract, I am a little uncomfortable with the term,

but overall, the number on it is good because barring another global pandemic, which knock on wood, lucky rabbit's foot, whatever superstition you've got to have doesn't happen. We will see a pretty heavy rising cap. So it gets better as the contract goes on so long as he doesn't fall off of a cliff.

But yeah, I mean, overall, like, if I have complaints at this point about what he's done, it's nitpicking. It's just it's trying to, I don't want to say look at a masterpiece because, you know, still some moves that could be made, some improvements. But it's looking at an overall really quality body of work and trying to poke holes into it. next one it kind of transitions right into this uh it sticks with the question from our buddy mike he asks is dubus actually batting a thousand with trades signings and hirings or was hextall just so bad that basic competence seems like genius to us i think it's more of the latter to be honest yeah i mean i look at it like playing blackjack at the casino and going cold yeah everything Hextall did just didn't work. And there were things that I will say with hindsight,

you know, being 2020, yeah, you look at it now and you're like, oh, that was dumb. But like at the time, you could see justification and reasoning for it. But as I wrote about plenty of times with Penguins' perspectives on KDCA, they were hoping. It was, it was these longer shots. You were hoping this long shot paid off rather than going for certainty and that really killed them down the stretch. I agree. And again, I do think it's probably more of the latter because you're seeing an actual plan put out there by Kyle Dubus in this front office. Now, if you compare that to Ron Hextall, who kind of just threw crap at the wall and hope it, you know, stuck, this is obviously seems like a home run or a,

A home run, yeah, I think a home run higher is the way of looking at or just like a massive upgrade. You know, you know that meme where you see a picture, you see the upgrade picture, and then you see the other picture. That's where I think this is when you go from Hextall to Kyle Dubus. Now, I don't know if Kyle Dubas is batting a thousand this off season. I would kind of put him at, you know, that, you know, 950 range, you know, 920 to 950, you know, 90 to 95. It's like you're writing a paper, right? and your teacher takes off a couple of little points just because she doesn't want to give a 100 to just one or two things in the class.

But still, 92, 95, that's going to up your grade pretty significantly, significantly, excuse me. So that's how I see it for this all season at least. Yeah, it's been, he's hit all the right notes. You know, we'd like to see, like we said, and we've said it a million times. Would we like to see more offense in the bottom six? Of course we would, but you got to pay a premium for that, and he didn't have a ton of flexibility. Would we have liked better situation in gold?

Yeah, but there really wasn't anything out there that they could get without massively subtracting from their roster. What I love to have given Winnipeg a call and made a trade for Connor Hellebuck. Of course I would. But we've seen with the way Winnipeg is structuring their offseason, even though Hellebuck doesn't want to return, they're not willing to send guys out for pennies on the dollar. you have to provide them about you. So of the available moves that he's had to make, I think he has made the best or closest to the best decision

to improve this roster and get them back in the playoffs and maybe take one more shot at going to Lord Stanley's Gass. That's, I think everyone in this city can only hope for that one, just to get that fourth one. Are there any other questions you want to hit here? I mean, this one is actually interesting. What addition to the bottom six do you think will make the biggest impact throughout the year.

I'm going to go Drew O'Connor if they don't sign Tomas Tatar. I'm really high on him heading into the year. If he can put together a double-digit goal campaign with, you know, around 25, 30 points, that would be awesome. I think there's a lot of untapped potential with him for a full season in the NHL. I'm really bullish on him. If I had like a plan B, in this case, I'm going to go with Nolachari, I think. I was going to say we kind of did this one before.

Yeah, that's true. Noel O'Charly, wow, I butchered that name. Noel Achari. And the other one I said before was Alex Nealander. It's put up a shut up time for him. Right. He's probably going to get some top six time with the injury to Jake Gensel. So it's really time for him to prove not that he's a star,

not that he's the next big thing, just that he's a consistent NHLer who can put up some okay numbers, play in your middle six, and be a full-time. contributor. Right. I agree. I think it's time for him to show what he can at camp. I mean, if he has a great camp and a great preseason, I think he's definitely going to take some top six minutes to start the era. And I liked what he did in the short samples that he had this past season, playing on Afghani Malkins' wings should have had a couple more goals in my opinion. Had a really nice goal against the Red Wings late in the year. I'm intrigued about him. I'm not, again, I'm not part of this little synth fan club that I know some people are part of when it comes to Nealander, but I'm

fascinated to see what he can do given his age, given his sample size in the HL, all that good stuff. For sure. Well, I think that's going to about do it for us here on this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Thank you always for listening. And call us the 2017 Penguins because we're going back to back. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Patrick Damp.

That's Hunter Hodes. This is the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.