Dubas’ offseason gambles pay off early for Penguins

So far, so good for the Pittsburgh Penguins, thanks to some of their new faces.

Over the offseason, general manager Kyle Dubas went out and made sure that the 2025-26 season wasn’t a fluke. He acquired forward Nick Robertson from the Toronto Maple Leafs, signing him to a two-year contract, as well as locking down fellow scorer Ville Koivunen to an eight-year contract extension.

Some of Dubas’ moves were a little eye-opening to some, but early returns on his investments are solid. The Penguins burst out of the gate with a 7-0 thrashing of the rival Philadelphia Flyers in their season opener on Wednesday night, with Robertson scoring twice and Koivunen finding the back of the net as well. Center Hendrix Lapierre, who came to Pittsburgh from the Washington Capitals, also picked up two points in the win.

On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton discuss how the Dubas’ work over the summer came to fruition in Game 1 of the new campaign.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I also really applaud kind of how Kyle Dubas has handled this. Like, he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Of course, you want to keep this team competitive. Crosby, Letang, and Malkin are there, but you also need to keep an eye towards the future. How do you keep an eye towards the future if you don’t have draft picks and all of that stuff? Well, you go take some young reclamation projects from other teams. Look how well it worked with Egor Chinakhov last season. They get him extended this summer. You go look at picking up Nicholas Robertson, who’s 25 from Toronto. You bring him in. You can give him a bit more opportunity than maybe he was getting with the Maple Leafs. … Hendrix Lapierre, again, former first-round pick. You scrape him up from Washington, bring him in. Filip Hallander is another example of like a young player that you bring in. You give him some opportunity. You never know where it’s going to go. So, I really applaud Duba for taking a chance on some of these young players. That yeah, maybe they’re scratch tickets. Yeah, maybe only, you know, 25% of the gambles you take are really going to work out. But if you trust your pro scouting, this is how you get young talent injected into an organization without having picks in the top 10. You take some risks.

Carter Hutton: I think that’s doing this with two young goalies at like controllable numbers right now. I know they’re both going to be RFAs come next year with Silovs and Murashov, but then you look at that third line, and I agree with you. You know that contract came out, and you think about the money that they got in front of, and if this third line has a good year, and he plays into his way where he can be in Lapierre, he’s easy money right now… That third line is a $6 million line. I think if you look at any other competitive teams, there’s not that kind of money spread throughout the lineup.

It’s opportunity, it’s timing, it’s putting guys in the right situation. … If you’re Nick Robertson, you’re kind of a top six guy. He’s always been in that Toronto lineup where it was really hard to be a top-six guy with the depth they have. Now, he’s in a situation where at his number where he’s at, he can produce, and I think that’s why Dubas needs a lot of credit here.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…