Dubas Said "Pivotal." The Injuries Already Answered Him.
Kyle Dubas did not mince words on opening day. This is a "very pivotal season" for the group — his phrase, his emphasis, his warning. When a general manager uses language like that publicly, before the first real game has been played, he is not motivating his players. He is telling you something about what happens if they fail. And what Dubas was telling Pittsburgh is that the Crosby-Malkin era does not have the luxury of another transition year.
The problem is that the injury cascade unfolding in front of him has already turned "pivotal" into something closer to "precarious." Bryan Rust — 37 points in 42 games last season, one of the few players who could take a shift off Crosby's shoulders — is on injured reserve before opening night. Ben Kindel, the second-year center who was supposed to be the bridge between the aging core and the next wave, is week-to-week. Andrei Kuzmenko, signed in July to add left-wing punch, has stepped away from the team entirely following a family tragedy. Lizotte, Brazeau, Kuzmenko, Graves — the names keep stacking up. This is not a depth chart anymore. It is a casualty list.
What makes this genuinely alarming is the structural context beneath the injuries. Even at full strength, this roster had three pronounced holes entering camp: center depth beyond Malkin, defensive depth beyond Korczak, and right-wing depth beyond Rakell. Those were not soft concerns — they were the defining weaknesses of an offseason that moved Mantha out and bet heavily on youth and one-year additions to fill the gaps. Now Rakell himself is mired in a conversion drought, generating shots but finding almost nothing behind them over his last ten games. When the team's most reliable secondary scoring option on the right side goes cold, and the players behind him on the depth chart are producing almost nothing, the margin for error does not just shrink. It disappears.
Malkin's situation sharpens all of this. He is 40 years old, signed to another one-year deal after a summer of uncertainty, and Dubas has made clear he will not keep running this negotiation on a rolling basis. Malkin told reporters he still loves the game — and I believe him — but love does not resolve the structural question Dubas is actually asking. The question is whether this team, right now, with this roster, can make a playoff run meaningful enough to justify building around Crosby for another cycle. The 2025-26 season ended at 43-43. The year before that was 34-48. The trajectory is not encouraging.
History offers a useful frame here. The late-era Penguins teams of the early 2020s were not bad teams — they were teams that kept finishing in the playoff conversation without finishing in the playoffs, burning assets on short-term fixes while the core aged. Detroit did the same with Zetterberg and Datsyuk a decade earlier, extending the window one year at a time until the window quietly closed and the rebuild was more painful for the delay. Pittsburgh is not there yet. Crosby at 1.15 points per game over 47 games last season is still an elite player. But elite players do not win in the NHL without a functional supporting cast, and right now Pittsburgh is opening a season with a supporting cast that is missing on every line.
My declaration is this: the Penguins will not make the playoffs this season unless at least four of the players currently on injured reserve return and contribute before December. That is not a pessimistic take — it is arithmetic. The center depth behind Crosby and Malkin is threadbare. The defensive depth behind Korczak drops off immediately. The right wing beyond Rakell is unproven. And Kuzmenko's absence, however understandable and however temporary, has left the left side relying on Nicholas Robertson and Elmer Soderblom to carry minutes Robertson has never carried at this level. Dubas called this season pivotal. He was right. He just may not have known how quickly the roster would make it feel like a crisis instead.