PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Penguins fired general manager Ron Hextall, director of hockey operations Brian Burke and assistant general manager Chris Pryor on Friday after the club failed to reach the playoffs for the first time in 17 years.
The decision to part with the club's leadership came a day after a wildly uneven season in which Pittsburgh went 40-31-11 and finished ninth in the Eastern Conference to end the longest active postseason streak in major North American professional sports.
Fenway Sports Group owner John Henry and company chairman Tom Werner said in a joint statement that “the team will benefit from new hockey operations leadership.”
They added they “believe in our core group of players and the goal of contending for the Stanley Cup has not changed.”
Hextall and Burke were hired in February 2021 shortly after the abrupt midseason resignation of former general manager Jim Rutherford, who built a team that won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017.
The duo was tasked with keeping together a core that includes franchise pillars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. While Hextall did manage to sign Malkin and Letang to team-friendly deals last summer, the majority of the decisions to build around the club's core backfired.
Pittsburgh struggled to generate much offense outside of its top two lines and received little help from its defensemen outside of Letang and Marcus Pettersson. Goaltending also became an issue, as injuries and inconsistent play at the position cost the Penguins dearly in the 2021 and 2022 playoffs.
The search for a new general manager will begin immediately, with several members of the club's American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes Barre/Scranton taking over day-to-day operations in the interim.
Pittsburgh's longtime head coach Mike Sullivan will also assist during the transition, a sign the club has no intention on moving on from Sullivan, who signed a contract extension last fall that will run through the 2026-27 season.
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Will Graves, The Associated Press
