Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - The Pittsburgh Penguins got their guy in Kyle Dubas! Now the fun begins...

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

The Pittsburgh Penguins have done the thing! They have hired Kyle Dubas to be their President of Hockey Operations and they got the guy they wanted right from the start! For this episode, Hunter is joined by Doug Glattke of Penguins Twitter and Forechecking TV to discuss the crazy Thursday for the Penguins. They first get into their overall thoughts about the hire before diving into how he knocked it out of the park with the press conference. They analyze how Dubas seems to actually have a plan for the short and long-term future of this franchise while also looking at how Mike Sullivan is easily staying on as head coach. After that, the two discuss GM candidates and how Dubas is looking for someone "progressive." Who could that be? The two give a list of names that Dubas could look to interview and whether Jason Spezza will be coming before ending the show with what Dubas' first priorities should be. All that, plus much more, is on this episode of Locked On Penguins.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase.eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit is only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don’t miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go to FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable free bets that expire 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.

Well, Kyle Dubus is officially here. The Pittsburgh Penguins have hired him to be their president of hockey operations. For today's episode, Doug Glacky is here to join me to discuss everything regarding that move. Who will be the next GM? What will the first moves will be? All that plus so much more coming up right after this. 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 Lockdown Penguins podcast. I am your host, Hunter Hodes, and know to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, follow the show's Twitter, and owners for Penguins, and of course, thank you all so much for making this your first listen of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. This episode is brought to you by FanDwell Sportsbook. The official sportsbook of Lockdown, make every moment more.

You can visit FanDuo.com slash Lockdown today to get started. So as I introed, joining me is Doug Glacky of the Forechecking TV and on Penguins, And as I move that graphic out, that looks a lot better. Now we're going to discuss how patients paid off, who will be the next GM, and what the first moves are. But Doug, really appreciate you coming on. Is it look like this was going to be another silent Thursday? And then all of a sudden, boom, the Penguins' Twitter account tweets out

shortly before 11 a.m. Local time here in Pittsburgh that Kyle Dubas will be the president of hockey operations. You know, what was the first thing that went through your mind when you saw that notification? First off, I want to thank you for having me on. But my initial reaction was, you know, honestly, like the, of course this would happen when I'm at work. You know, like, because like my whole thing was like, I was off Tuesday and Wednesday. I was like, all right, let's just get this done Tuesday. We can just have all this fun, have my day Wednesday, whatever.

But yeah, my first actual thought, though, was like, finally, you know, finally that this is over whether, like one, or the other, whether we had them or we didn't. You know, because I feel like this has been something that's been going on for days now. And, you know, with how passionate you and I are, it was getting to the point where I feel like it was starting to drive us insane. No, yeah, for sure. And in the end, their patience paid off. They got the guy they wanted all along. Remember, it's been basically seven weeks since Ron Hextall, Chris Pryor, and Brian Burke were fired.

And right after that press conference, you saw, I believe it was Mike Stevens, who said, said, you know, I just been hearing rumblings that they will throw a bag at Kyle Dubus if he gets made available. I was like, oh, well, you know, I figured that would probably be the case. Don't know if he would take it. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. So he was the first one to really put that out there, Mike Stevens. So credit to him for that was seven weeks ago. And it took a little longer than some of us thought.

A lot of conflicting reports. Frank Saravali, Elliott Friedman, Mark Madden, various others. but in the end, they got their guy. And I'll get this half right because I thought he was going to be president and GM, but something must have changed during him or maybe I got something until that, that I guess, I don't know, something must have changed, I think. But he is the president of hockey operations. I watched that press conference today.

I learned more in 20 minutes about the modern NHL game and about hockey in general than I did in two years. that Ron Hextall and Brian Burke ran this team. I think that's honestly my biggest takeaway. It's easy to win press conferences, but I don't think it's easy to blow people away and have an entire fan base ready to go through a wall for you. And that's where I think the Penguins fan base is ready for right now.

Yeah, I mean, he hit it out of the park. You know, he hit all the right points in terms of, like, talking about what he's thinking in terms of team building, how it's okay to, like, work for me. work for the present and also build for the future at the same time. You know, I think it was also kind of soothing to hear him talk about how he's already working with Mike Sullivan. And that Mike Sullivan's going to be his guy. And, you know, I think the biggest line that made all of us want to run through the wall,

through a wall was the people have always wanted to bet against Mike Sullivan, Siddy Krosby, of Guinea Malkin and Crystal Tang. but I'm going to bet on them and build with them. And I was like, okay, like, this is, this is what we need. You know, this is obviously a very much welcome change compared to what we've been dealing with for the past two to three years since we went into the COVID stoppage. No, no, I agree for sure.

And he committed to the core right then. He committed the coach. That was honestly also one of my biggest takeaways from this press conference. Sometimes when a new hockey ops person comes in, they want to bring in their own coach. You saw rumors from Larry Brooks of the New York Post saying, like, oh, yeah, Mike Sullivan, if he's made available, it could be the New York Rangers head coach.

Yeah, that was put to bed today. Mike Sullivan is not going anywhere, nor should he go anywhere. I had my problems with him last season, but I think he's going to see a lot more eye to eye now with Kyle Dubis and whoever he brings in as a general manager, and we'll get into that coming up after this. commercial break, but I really do think they share a good vision. They've already talked about team building and a couple conversations that they've had,

they've had at least according to Kyle. And he is going to be this team's head coach for the foreseeable future. I also loved how he discussed just the holes on the team. He even said he wants to get deeper on the back end, even though Brian Duman's walking. He sounded like he wanted to make pretty decent changes to the blue line, which I've been banging the drum on this show, but you need to go out there and get a top four left-handed defenseman

for her to be someone to play with Crystal Tang. He talked about forward depth. That was an indirect slight, I think, at Ron Hextall because he did a really bad job filling out the roster. And then, of course, he touched on the goalie situation. He hit on all of the big question marks for this team going into next season. And it's no surprise that Tom Warner, John Henry,

and Dave Easton wanted to bring him on because I think he has a actual plan for attacking these deficiencies on the team. Yeah, and I think the biggest thing was like, my biggest takeaway was him talking about the defense. And I feel like whenever he did touch on defense, it made it sound like it's not just one move. It makes it sound like there might be two or three moves coming down the pipe

in his ideal vision to make this defense better. You know, I think you and I can always, we can always speculate on which guys those are. I think we both know which guys there's probably are, you know, Jan Ruta and potentially Jeff Petrie if you're able to get him to waive a no move. But, you know, the biggest thing is bottom six step. And that's one thing. I mean, you know, I'm a closeted leaves guy because of Kyle.

I've watched the Leafs because of Kyle. I love the process driven and the thought process that he puts into building teams. And, you know, one of the things that he did phenomenal, especially his last year in Toronto was building up that bottom six. You know, he had that bottom six so well built up that he could, on any given night, he just put random guys with Austin Matthews and those players were going to thrive with Matthews. Yeah.

And you can probably, you can probably mention more of those bottom six players than I can Doug. You know, I know, he brought him David Camp. He traded for St. Lafferty. You know, he had Michael Bunting, but, you know, he moved up to the top six very quickly, signed Zach Ashton Reese. he has done a really good job of finding those quality, cheap depth. Players, he also signed Kelly Yarncrook during his time there, Doug, if I'm not mistaken.

So that's his bread and butter. And I think you're going to see him have similar deals during free agency. I know they have a lot more cap space for this all season. You know, we can go into that a little later on. But that is his bread and butter. Those cheap free agent deals that can, you know, players can come in, scored, what, 9 to 10, 12, 15 goals a season. That was not Ron Hextall's bread and butter.

And I think for the first time in quite a long time, I'm very excited to see what this team will do on July 1 because they will have money to play with. They can make a decent splash if they wanted to, even though they probably won't because it's usually unwise to spend loads of money on July 1. You can still go out there and get some quality depth pieces to surround the court because those good players,

those elite players, they are in place. you just have to build around them, even though you're still kind of inheriting a mess a little bit. Yeah, and I think the whole approach to July 1 has to be to fill out the roster as reasonably as possible with the cab space you're given without truly spending the cap. That's just my opinion. Because my whole thing is, like, if you pocket cap space this year, you can also make a splash of the trade deadline if you want to,

which is something the penguins have not been set up to do for quite a while now, with the exception of the Ricard Raquel trade at the last second, a few, about a year and a half ago. You know, and honestly, like, we're to the point now, like where it's like, if you pocket camp space, with the core aging, you could go out and make a splash for a superstar. And that be your next wave with a Brian Rustin, potentially Jake Gensel if you're able to get him to agree to a contract extension.

That's, that one is going to be very interesting to follow to see if he engages is Gensel's representatives this off season. One year left on that contract. Some people have said to me, just fans, I think. You know, he has to decide between Gensel and Rust. I don't know. I mean, you could use Brian Russ as a trade ship, but I'm not really sure if they are going to do that.

That's the whole discussion, I think, for another day. But overall, Doug, you know, just a great press conference. I'm legitimately excited going forward to see what he can do to turn this team around to get back and do a playoff a contender. And coming up after this commercial break, we're going to go into who the new GM could be because honestly they still don't have a general manager right now and Kyle Dubas touched on that a little bit during his press comments. But before we get into that, we do have to discuss the official sports betting partner of

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All right, I'm back here on this episode of the Locked on Penguins podcast. I am your host, Hunter Hodes. You know to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. follow the shows, Twitter, and once for Penguins. And, of course, thank you all so much for making this your first list in the day. We are free and available on all platforms. So, Doug, as I alluded to coming into this second segment, team does not have a general manager. Someone said to me today before the press conference, wouldn't be surprised if they don't, if they have a GM by Monday. I agree with them because I think this will be pretty quick. No, that's not what Kyle said during the

press conference. He said he's going to take on the GM duties for the next month. Restricted free agents. I'm sure to negotiate with the pending UFF. like Tristan Jari and Jason Zucker, which we'll probably get to a little bit later. And then he said after July 1, that's really when he's going to attack hiring a GM because he said that a lot of teams are not going to allow you permission to interview some of these other people. So with that said, who are you looking forward to seeing as a GM candidate or just potentially getting the job?

So I think obviously they need to cycle back to Matthew Darsh. You know, he's a guy who was in the running until literally the very last second, him and Steve Greeley of the Dallas Stars. You know, and as as for what Kyle said, like I feel like he wants somebody who's very like numbers and data driven, you know, to kind of work with him and play off of him a bit, which I think is a phenomenal idea. And at that point, you know, we heard Cam Lawrence name get. name drop today, which I like that. I'm looking forward to reading up and learning more about Cam Lawrence over the next followers me on Twitter, by the way. Shout out to you, Cam.

There you go. We love that. You know, and the other, I mean, another big one, you know, this is obviously hypothetical, but like, I think the dream scenario is to get Sam Ventura to come back. Or at least see if he's, like, open to the idea. You know, I think that it was a major mistake and a paramount mistake to have Sam, leave. You know, I thought that he was really, really good in his time here. You saw some of the stuff that he did,

you know, with contract extensions and other things, as well as like the drive into analytics. You know, I feel like, I feel like the, I feel like the organization as a whole doesn't take a step forward into the analytics world without the work that Sam Ventura did during his time in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I would like to see Sam get another look. He did great work here with the Penguins reporter Jason Krumanos is doing great work in Buffalo. I think you're going to see another pretty decent, robust search here. I think Kyle's going to talk to a decent amount of people. I do think they have the understanding that they talk to a lot of younger people during this process.

Elliot Freeman mentioned that during one of his podcasts where he said they could give people promotions in a way, depending on how they structure the front office. I think you're kind of seeing that right here. You brought up Cam Lawrence. He's done work with the Columbus Woojackets. he's based out of Pittsburgh. He was also one of the quote-unquote computer boys down in Florida for the Panthers helped them get Jonathan Marcheseau, Riley Smith, and Carter Verhege.

So he's also very knowledgeable when it comes to hockey. I could see them even looking internally as well. This might be a little bit of a long shot. Maybe Katarina Wu, who is there as one of their analytics people. I think maybe she could get a look. I think if you want to go outside of that to go to like some more analytics people, people. Michael Blake McCurdy is also very good. I think there's, I don't know how likely that is, but I do think there's a at least a small chance that he could get an interview for this because

he does great work in the analytic community. You mentioned Matthew Darsh. I think he's awesome. But obviously, Doug, we have to discuss. Brandon Pridham, assistant John manager of Toronto Maple Leafs. Kyle Dubis is right-hand man there, did a lot of the salary cap work. Nick Kiprios and Justin Boren were discussing this a lot on their show today on Sports Night when I was tuning in I think if Kyle were to interview him and like him the most and offer him the job

even though he's there under Brad Tray Living right now I think it would be it would be hard for him to turn down because that's a promotion Yeah you know and I think the whole thing that we're going to see come out in the next couple of days is

Will Tree Living even want Brandon Prittam in his front office, you know, or in that role per se. You know, I think that with, with Brandon Pridam, it's a lot of just seeing how things move and shake in Toronto as they go through this transition. You don't. But I'm all for Brandon Pridim coming over. I think that outside of Matthew Darsh, it's probably the most realistic and most possible, like most likely option. you know and obviously this guy probably will not go into a GM role but I would not be surprised to see if he's open to moving out of Canada. I would not be shocked to see Jason Spetsa join this front office in some capacity as well.

I actually expect Jason Spezza to join the front office. At least that's what Elliot and Jeff Merrick we're talking about on the Jeff Merrick show today. Spetsa loves Kyle Davis and it was very Evan during their time in Toronto. All I ask if Spetza comes to Pittsburgh is if Sid just is to remind us. and how he schooled him back in 2010 behind the net. That's all I need. That's just, I'm going to mess around a little bit, but I think he is also a good talent evaluator.

I think you'd make for a good assistant general manager here. Another name who I think could get consideration for it, but also could come here overall from the Maple Leafs, is West Clark. He's the director of amateur scouting their assistant director of player personnel. He is basically running their whole draft right now in Toronto. At least that's what I was reading earlier today. and they were discussing during the least press conference.

He is a dubus guy. So I really think he could get consideration, if not for that job, for an assistant job. Yeah. And I think that's another thing that, like, we will talk about and touch on at some point in the coming days is there's so much work for Kyle to do just day one from the jump in terms of the hockey ops department. because your director of pro scouting and director of amateur scouting are Hextall and Chris Pryor guys, you know. Carrie Huffman and Nick Pryor. Yes. And you got to get them out.

You know, got to get Brett Hextall out. Got to get Kerry. I think Carrie Huffman's son is also in the front office. I literally looked on the site today to see like what they had for their scouting team. And it's terrifying. like there's a lot of work to be done like there's so much to be done there no for sure and you know that's actually what we're going to discuss coming up right after this is you know the first move that Kyle is going to he's got Ron Hextall left an absolute mess behind him and it's not going to be easy for Kyle

to get out of some of these deals, but I think you can definitely get out at least one of them, and we're going to be discussing that coming up right after this break. All right, we're back here in this episode of the Locked on Penguins podcast. I'm Hunter Hodes. That's Doug Glacky.

The Doug, you know, on the right-hand corner here, you know, the first moves for Kyle Dubus, now that he's here, I think the first one you've got to do is buy out McCau-Granland. We've been, I've been discussing this on my show periodically throughout the off-season. and Kyle said this earlier today. The two kind of flow pretty similarly.

Kyle mentioned how they have $20 million in cap space. He got pretty excited about because it's very rare when the Penguins have that much cap space going into an offseason. He talked about maybe being a bit more aggressive, maybe making a splash. But you can definitely do that to a bit of a higher degree if you get an extra $4 million cap space by buying out my Kyle Granlin.

Buy out stink. Everyone knows that. but Kyle didn't acquire this player. I think he can look at the stats and you can look at the eye test and see that he doesn't hit Mike Sullivan's system. I think this has to be his first move. Yeah. Like it has to be something that as soon as the buyout window opens, like if Elliot

Friedman or Darren Dregor or Pierre LeBron are not tweeting like the moment it opens, Mikhail Granland, Pitt. on buyout waivers today. Like that sums up. Like something's wrong. You know, this is a guy that, you know, a lot of people in the fan base probably believe was acquired as an active retaliation on the end of Hextall and Pryor.

You know, he had all that cap space, missed out on some players they were rumored to be looking at. And then they would have rather had J.T. Miller's contract in this one. Not saying something. which is insane to think about. But, you know, the whole thing is like you buy out Grandland. And then, you know, moving forward from there, I mean, you look at your defense, you know, you can easily save $2 million from moving Yan Ruta and committing that money to playing Mark Friedman. That's also true.

You would have to get someone to take him. I think someone would probably take Ruda. Two years left on that contract, $2.75 million. Bottom pairing guy. It's not too terrible. I don't even know if you would need to attach a sweetener to that. No, I think that he's the most realistic, like, guy that they need to dump off, that they can trade and actually get something of a return for him.

That would make sense. I have seen Jeff Petrie throwing around there. I'm of the opinion that you would probably need to attach a sweetener to get rid of his 6.25 million. I'm not really sure how Kyle feels about him. And, well, I mean, I'm not really sure how he feels about anyone. except most of the core players. Now he's only a few hours into the job, for God's sake. But, you know, Petrie, I have some people say that the defensive market's not that good,

so maybe you can get a team to take him on. Maybe, I mean, you can maybe entice the ducks, maybe entice one of those other bad Western conference teams. I don't know. I'm just throwing themes out of here. The sharks, maybe, something like that. I don't know. The Ducks are just the first team to come to mind.

But then if you do trade P. as I said in all my previous episodes, you have to replace him. And then if you have to replace him, you also have to replace Brian Dumlin, who is manning the top pairing. Those are two top four spots. Not easy to do in today's game, but he did say he wants to make a splash there. And I think whether it's via free agency or trade, he's going to go out and get someone very good to play with Crystal Tank.

That was one of Mike Sullivan's wish list on what it was on Mike Sullivan's wish list, excuse me. During the trade deadline, he wanted them to go out and get Jacob Trickwin, per Josh Joey and Rob Rossi. And when he didn't want to give up draft picks for some divine reason, they didn't end up doing anything defensively except getting Demetri Kulokov, who just didn't do much of anything, to be honest. So that's going to be very fascinating as well.

And then, of course, goal-tending. He touched on that. I forget which reporter asked during the press conference, but he really discussed Tristan Jari in detail. He discussed this Re-Ageant class, the trade market. That's his big thing coming over, man, that people just don't fully trust him on is the goalies. Jack Campbell, Elias Samsonoff, Matt Murray,

even before Jack Campbell, what's your read on the goalie situation for how he's going to handle that? this is like like you said this is the only thing that i'm kind of i'm not going to say worried but i'm curious about you know goaltending situation in toronto has not been pretty um since he's been hired you know and i think i i want to give kyle a benefit of the doubt in terms of cap situation in toronto light years different than cap situation in pittsburg we already said that he's going to have about 20 million dollars to work with could potentially have more or if he's able to move out some contracts,

pulls the trigger on a Kyle Gremlin buyout. You know, and I think, you know, I don't know. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility where if you can get Jari on like a one-year, prove-a-deal, you can bring him back. But in that situation, you're also setting yourself up for another scenario where you're going to have to move Casey to Smith

and you're going to have to go get a legitimate 1A, 1B goalie to run with JAR. because the biggest thing with Jari is like a lot of these health issues you could easily say are from playing 60-something games a year. You know, if you can lessen that workload and let him just work on himself, odds are he's probably going to go back to form men and be healthy. You would think, and I agree with you, if you do bring Jari back, whether that's a two to three-year deal, two years, maybe 3.5, 4 million per.

You're right. You can't run to Smith back. I know he makes only 1.8 million. And that's fine for a backup. But with that tandem, you can't sell that to the fan base. This would be the second big hockey ops person to come in to run that tandem back since Jen Rutherford really just put that in motion before he resigned. Just can't have that.

You would have to move to Smith, get a draft pick in return, and then get that 1A, 1B. someone who can play 40, and not even, maybe, 35, 40, 41 games, something like that, just because you don't know if Jari is going to stay healthy. Because the more DeSmith plays, the worse he plays. Because you saw it so many times this season, right? Looks like he's going to run away with that starting job. Few good games in a row. Oh, bad game goes back to Jari.

Solid, that is. Same thing happens again. If you good games in a row, oh, goes back to Jari because he sunk again. you just you can't have that on your conscience if you're Kyle Davis no you know and with the whole moving to Smith thing like I think that we will gladly take that extra close to two million dollars in cap space like that's that's a lot for them to work with in terms of finding a goaltender you know and I think with if you're able to get Jari on like a one or two year deal where he's making the same cap hit if not higher you can maybe go make a splash at the goaltending position like I

I know that we're not used to having a goal tending tandem that's making upwards of like seven to eight, maybe nine million dollars. But like if you can go out and get somebody like UC Soros for a reasonable return where it's not going to blow your cupboard out of the water, do it. I would love to go out and get UC Soros or Connor Hallibuck, Opersheet, Jeremy Swamen. That's the dream right there. And, you know, maybe Dubus is bold enough to do it. You know, we'll have to see. last thing I did want to touch on before I let you go. You didn't really discuss this during the press conference,

but Jason Zucker, I think they're going to have to start that negotiation in some capacity pretty soon, month until free agency. I think it will engage his agent. What do you do with that one? See, this might be the one where this has to be his first difficult decision to make,

you know, simply because like they committed to Raquel, they've been committed to Rust. You know, they're hopefully getting themselves in a position where they commit to Jake Gensel, on top of what they've already committed to the core, you can't have another 30-plus-year-old player making upwards of $5 million against your salary gap at the forward position. No, I mean, you can't.

I mean, I would offer him a short-term deal two, three years, four point five, five million. I think that's probably tops. I don't think you can go more than that. I think that might be just his final offer. and if he doesn't take that, you have to move on. And there are good options out there via trade that you could probably go out there and get. There's Tyler Bertuzi on the free agent market, which, I mean, I went on the around the 4-1-2 guys. I compared it into a very, very, very, very mini version of Matthew Kachuk where he's just a total past, can score, has a great first pass, good defensively.

It was great with Boston when he came over from Detroit. Oh, yeah. It would be really the only free agent option that would be looking at, but he's also getting a good. going to be probably looked at by about 1,500 different teams in terms of term and money. So that might be a little of a pipe dream. I think they would maybe have to trade for someone in that regard. But I think those are just really the first main moves that he's going to look at. I know people are going to ask about Jeff Carter.

People, he's stuck with him. I'm sorry. Poor Kyle Dubas cannot do anything when it comes to Jeff Carter. Even if they buy him out, they don't get any salary cap relief. He is going to be here for this next season. And that's that. Yeah, your best bet with Carter is to put him in such a low event, fourth line role alongside other players that are very, very good at driving possession

in a bottom six role and just hope for the best. And I think Kyle is also smart enough to not make, not assemble the team where Jeff Carter has to play center. Oh, for sure. I think, yeah, go ahead. I think switching him to back to wing will help him, at least along enough where it's not a complete liability, 95% of the Knights is being rostered.

I agree. And if you can have maybe Ryan Paling center him on the fourth line and maybe add, I don't know, Drew O'Connor down there, something like that, you can probably have that work. Because I do think Kyle is going to be assigned, Drew. He's the kind of player that Kyle likes, especially because he's played well this season. So that would be interesting. Again, Carter's not going anywhere.

wing is probably a better position for him at this right but this is just a taste of what Kyle Dubas is going to have to do for this season last thing though I do think you might see a Colorado avalan structure where you have Joe Sackett Chris McFarland like something like that for Kyle Dubus and whoever he brings in I think that might be the blueprint for what they're looking for here but Doug I really appreciate you coming on this has been great long you tell everyone where they can find your work especially with your podcast that I know you're doing on Friday and then where they can follow you on Twitter. Yeah.

Obviously, my Twitter is down below. Follow me on Twitter at Doug underscore Glacki. Follow my show's Twitter at Forechecking TV and subscribe to Forechecking TV on YouTube because we're going to bring it back. We're going to record tomorrow night. And we're just going to hit the ground running now that things are set up the way that we've all been hoping that they would be set up. Yeah. man there's going to be a lot of content to come on that show and then of course on the locked on

on penguins podcast i'll have another episode for you all Friday afternoon i am actually heading back down to my parents house i have a wedding to go to this weekend so i'm either going to have this recorded right before i leave and post it from here or i'll be recording down at my mom's house on one of my laptop so you can check for the episode throughout the afternoon but it'll probably be sometime you know between early into mid-afternoon but again thank you all so much for listening slash watching. Really appreciate it. I'll be back with another episode for you all on Friday.