NHL Hot Seat Radar 2023: Pittsburgh Penguins

Time will tell if the Pittsburgh Penguins' busy off-season under new GM Kyle Dubas will pay off. But Tristan Jarry is among those who must step it up, writes Adam Proteau.

We’re still in the midst of summer, but the NHL’s 2023-24 season is almost upon us, and THN.com’s series on the pressures facing NHL players, coaches, GMs and team owners is in high gear.

To that end, we’ve been working through the NHL’s teams in alphabetical order and pointing out one player, coach, GM or team owner per team as someone on the hot seat, facing serious pressure to put up positive results in the 2023-24 campaign or be placed in the team’s doghouse. A second person will go on the warm seat as someone not imminently about to be traded or fired but who may be on the outs sometime in the next year. A third individual will be on the cold seat, labelling them as someone quite likely to remain with their team for the long term.

There were many questions about the Penguins’ goaltending entering the summer, but those questions were quickly answered when the Pens (a) re-signed No. 1 netminder Jarry to a five-year, $26.875-million contract, (b) traded longtime backup Casey DeSmith to Montreal as part of the blockbuster Erik Karlsson deal, and (c) signed former Hurricanes and Red Wings netminder Alex Nedeljkovic to a one-year, $1.5-million contract to be Jarry’s backup.

The duo of Jarry and Nedeljkovic doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of opponents, as both goalies are coming off of subpar play from the 2022-23 campaign. Nedeljkovic should play more than the 15 games he appeared in last season, but Jarry is going to be under a microscope to justify his annual average cap hit of $5.375 million. Jarry has an improved defense corps in front of him, but in the highly competitive Metropolitan Division, the 28-year-old must pull his weight and give Pittsburgh’s potent offense enough room to win games. If he doesn’t, and the Penguins have to rely on Nedeljkovic to carry a big load, there could be trouble on the horizon.

We saw what happened last season when the Pens couldn’t drag their carcass over the finish line to secure a playoff berth, and the same scenario could take place in 2023-24. But if Jarry performs as hoped, the Penguins should be a post-season team.

Carter’s totals on offense dropped notably last season, as he generated only 13 goals (down from 19 in 2021-22) and 16 assists (down from 26) while averaging just 13:42 of ice time per game. Now 38 years old, Carter doesn’t look like he has much left to offer. 

The problem for the Penguins is they gave him a full no-trade clause in a contract that carries a cap hit of $3.125 million this season, according to PuckPedia. For that reason, there aren’t going to be many, if any, teams that line up to acquire Carter at this point in his career.

Carter is positioned to be a third-line forward, but if he continues to fade away, Pens GM Kyle Dubas and coach Mike Sullivan might choose to make Carter a healthy scratch and give his minutes to a younger player who’ll be part of the Penguins’ long-term future. Carter’s contract expires at the end of 2023-24, but the cold, hard reality of his ebbing status as a legit NHLer may take Carter off the ice sooner than he’d hoped.

Carter wouldn’t be the first player in his late-30s to hit the end of the line before he wanted to, and we can see the end of the road for him arriving sooner than later.

From the moment he became a Penguin in 2005, Crosby has occupied the Penguins’ cold seat in a way few NHL superstars do with their team. Now 36, Crosby is in the second-to-last year of his contract that has a $8.7-million cap hit. When it expires in the summer of 2025, Crosby will either sign a short-term extension or retire and become a first-ballot Hockey Hall of Famer as soon as he’s eligible.

Incredibly, Crosby posted 33 goals, 60 assists and 93 points last season, his best totals on offense since 2018-19. He also averaged 20:09 of ice time, the best total of any Pens forward in that category. 

Looking at his career totals – 1,190 regular-season games played, 952 assists and 1,502 points – it’s easy to see why Crosby has been and will continue to be so revered, inside and outside of Pittsburgh. He’s a one-man wrecking crew, and there’s no circumstance in which Dubas and the Pens will move on from Crosby. He’s a Penguin for life, and he served notice last season that he’s still got a lot left in the tank.