Top surprises in 2024 for the Penguins
Looking back on some of the most surprising moments the Penguins had in 2024
As another year prepares to close down, we look back on some of the more surprising moments for the Penguins. Some were good surprises, some were not. This isn’t a countdown or ranking, it will go (mostly) as the year did.
The blunder of all blunders
In what would be, mercifully, their final trip to Arizona State to play an NHL game, the Penguins left a lasting memory of shame on January 22nd. The goalie was pulled on a delayed penalty. Kris Letang made a back-pass in his own zone to start the unfortunate series of events. Evgeni Malkin made a split second decision to not receive the pass on his forehand and instead opt to use one hand on his stick and start crossing over to pick up speed while on his backhand.
The puck scuffed off Malkin’s stick and got directed into the net. To make matters worse, the on ice officials botched what should have happened next in a man power situation.
Well that wasn't supposed to happen pic.twitter.com/3JrbVEmZPM
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) January 23, 2024
That goal took the wind out of Pittsburgh’s sails, they would go on to lose 5-2 to the Coyotes. In many ways it was fitting of the 2023-24 season for the Pens, being up a player or in power play mode wasn’t just about missed opportunities and failing to score — it was too-often actively harming their chances to win games. Nothing said that better than the unfortunate and shocking own goal.
Mullets for all!
Jaromir Jagr got his jersey retired by the Penguins on February 18th. It was long overdue and could be considered a surprise in and of itself that such a ceremony actually happened based on his busy schedule as player/owner of his team in Kladno and his ever mercurial on-again-off-again relationship with the Pens.
As part of the celebrations for the jersey retirement, the players skated with mullet wigs. That was more fun than surprising but then seeing Jagr take the warmup in full gear (but sans bucket, naturally) on his own jersey retirement game has to be a first.
There were signs of this might have happened, Jagr took a few twirls in practice with the team the day before, but what a pleasant surprise to see the legend on the ice with the team one more time. I was half-expecting Jagr to start the game on Sidney Crosby’s right wing when the puck dropped for real.
Jake Guentzel trade
Looking back on it now, it seems a forgone conclusion that there would be an inevitable divorce between Jake Guentzel and the Penguins. But in the early parts of 2024 the mindset was different and the concept of trading away an impending free agent as a seller was still alien. The Pens had not been in a true seller’s position since all the way back in 2006 when they sent Mark Recchi to Carolina for futures, it was still assumed by most until almost a few weeks before the March 8th trade was inevitable that Pittsburgh would keep Crosby’s best winger and conduct business as usual.
In many ways, the Guentzel trade was the unofficial changing of gears for the Pens. Just a few months before, GM Kyle Dubas swung for the fences with the Erik Karlsson addition, they signed Tristan Jarry and Ryan Graves to big, longterm contracts, added Reilly Smith. It was a classic way to gear up and try to take another run in the traditional way.
Trading Guentzel showed that part of the team’s lifecycle in the Crosby era is completely over. Whether or not management wants to term the process as a rebuild, they started the rebuild process in earnest that day, and would continue to do so over 2024 in collecting bad contracts and extra draft picks.
Divisional trade barriers disappear
Chalk it up to more teams being willing to work with the Penguins now that they’re not a contender, or the changing personalities of the general managers or maybe a little of both but the landscape of trades is changing. For most of the 2000’s the Pens made almost no trades of significance with their division rivals.
In 2024 alone, the Pens:
- traded Alex Nylander to Columbus for Emil Bemstrom
- dealt away Chad Ruhwedel and Reilly Smith to NYR in separate trades
- handed the biggest prize at the trade deadline to Carolina
- sent Lars Eller back to Washington
Aside from perhaps the CBJ deal due to its minor ramifications, these types of trades to these teams weren’t happening with any sort of frequency when Pittsburgh was a top team from 2007-22. Now, as surprising as its been instant, they’re common place once again. That’s probably a good thing for the Pens, if a team like Washington is offering the most/right price for a player, collect the goods and move on.
The final existing trade barrier might be to see when Dubas can complete a deal with the Brendan Shanahan-led Toronto Maple Leafs club that had an acrimonious ending.
Second round success
Devoid of a first round pick from the Karlsson trade, and unable to recoup it in the Guentzel deal, the Pens appear to have made the most of drafting from a deeper spot with the 44th and 46th overall picks.
At 44, the Pens took defender Harrison Brunicke. It was a curious pick (some would say reach) based off pre-draft rankings, but pre-draft rankings were slow to recognize the massive curve in Brunicke’s development. He shocked the world coming out of no where to come within a whisker of making the Penguins out of training camp. A wrist injury prevented him from making Canada’s World Junior team this year. But the Pens got a good one brewing there.
Picked at 46, Tanner Howe did make the Canadian WJC team, perhaps in a key role. Compared to a Matthew Tkachuk/Brad Marchand type of smaller player with hands and feistiness for days, Howe is turning heads.
No one knows for years if draft picks pan out to contributing NHL players, but the surprise instant rise of both of Pittsburgh’s picks in the lower levels has caught attention.
Sergei Murashov signs on
You never know, especially these days, when Russian NHL draft picks will actually head over. It’s taken many years for players like Kirill Kaprizov, Igor Shesterkin and Ilya Sorokin to get free of contractual hurdles and make the jump. It didn’t end up taking Sergei Murashov near that long.
Drafted by the Pens in 2022, Murashov, 20, wasn’t seeing a lot of upward mobility for his career in the Yaroslavl organization. As a top team in the KHL, they had more veteran and proven goalies blocking his way. Murashov became a free agent, leading him to decisions. He could stay with his team, decide to join a new KHL team or make the jump to the Pittsburgh organization.
His first move was to come to Penguin summer development camp, in a last minute decision that the Pens were happy to scramble and accommodate. It went well and by the end of the month Murashov was under contract with Pittsburgh.
That courtship went from 0-60 really fast, and a few years quicker than expected.
The prospect trade out of no where
Usually by August 22nd there’s almost nothing newsworthy happening in the NHL world, with teams and players resting or preparing for the next year but little else.
Not so this year, Pittsburgh came out of no where to land top prospect Rutger McGroarty from Winnipeg. In a one-for-one swap, the Pens sent their most heralded prospect in Brayden Yager to the Jets.
The future of those two will be watched closely over the merits of if such a move was a good idea or if the Pens should have held pat.
Sullivan survives?
Whether this is or should be a surprise is up for a healthy debate, but another year has come and gone and Mike Sullivan remains as Penguin coach. There were a couple of rock bottoms where realistically a team in a different situation could have easily fired their coach in January, April or November given the downs that the Pens endured and how disposable coaches are.
And yet, whether it’s popular or not, Mike Sullivan is not disposable in the eyes of Pittsburgh brass. They clearly think he is the right person for the job and have never outwardly shown anything but respect and admiration for the bench boss. Even when times have been toughest and the outlook was bleakest, Sullivan has stuck around and the team has trudged along. Whether it was the late-season surge in March/April or the current 7-2-1 record as 2024 draws close to and end, the team has responded just enough to stay within the margins of respectability.
As such, Sullivan is going on being with the team for a full decade from his Dec. 2015 hire date, one of the biggest surprises of all for any NHL coach to demonstrate so much staying power.
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Feel free to chip in with your most surprising moments, actions or decisions by the Penguins in 2024.