Mark Madden: A user's guide for Penguins GM candidates

If you’re one of those who might get the Pittsburgh Penguins GM job, here’s a user’s guide:

• Be the boss. The Penguins haven’t won a playoff series since 2018. They need your ideas. You don’t need theirs. Insist on having complete power over personnel and input on coaching. You’ll be treading sludge otherwise.

• You can’t be the boss. Coach Mike Sullivan is signed through 2027. Fenway Sports Group loves him. Sullivan is going to do what he wants.

• Make a big trade. (If that’s pursued, winger Jake Guentzel is likeliest to exit.) If it shocks the dressing room and fan base, it was the right move. Change is badly needed.

• You can’t make a big trade. The coach and dressing room don’t want that. Guentzel’s contract is up after next season. So Guentzel will get signed for too much and too long. Same probably applies to goalie Tristan Jarry, against all logic.

• Move forward. Eight no-movement clauses and the organizational notion that this group can still win keeps you from burning it down. But don’t sacrifice more future. That would be done in vain. If you sacrifice more future to win now, you won’t win now. You later hit a grotesque, 1984-level of rock bottom. Then you get fired.

• You can’t move forward. The Penguins kept their core three together with the expectation of winning now. That’s next to impossible. But that’s the pursuit.

You may notice some mixed signals.

The illusion of still contending is annually fueled by excuses and what-ifs.

• If Jarry doesn’t implode, the Penguins beat the New York Islanders in the 2021 playoffs.

• If Jarry isn’t hurt, the Penguins beat the New York Rangers in the 2022 playoffs. (In ’21, Jarry blew it. In ’22, Jarry was badly needed. Yes, I see the contradiction.)

• This season, Florida edged the Penguins by a point to get the Eastern Conference’s final wild card. Now the Panthers are just a win away from the Stanley Cup Final. That could be the Penguins! (Except it couldn’t. Jarry isn’t Sergei Bobrovsky. Heck, Bobrovsky wasn’t Bobrovsky until recently. The Penguins don’t have a Matthew Tkachuk, or any remote degree of playoff-style physicality.)

This column makes the Penguins look bad and disheveled. That’s not the intent, though I’m doing a good job of it.

The Penguins have, until recently, been a tremendous organization. FSG still seems to be finding its feet with hockey, but their track record for winning with the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC is excellent.

But FSG needs to see the Penguins and everybody involved as they are. Right now, they don’t.

As for who gets the job, ex-Toronto GM Kyle Dubas is the best candidate. Carolina assistant GM Eric Tulsky is the Lite version of Dubas. Both fit the analytical bent that FSG usually pursues. (There’s reportedly a mandate from FSG to greatly expand the Penguins’ analytics department no matter who gets hired as GM.)

By the way, Tulsky is a Philadelphia native. Let’s hope he wouldn’t be another saboteur planted by the Flyers like Ron Hextall was.

Tampa Bay director of hockey ops Mathieu Darche seems like another good choice. Same goes for Jason Botterill, the former Penguins assistant GM now filling the same role with Seattle. But Botterill’s level of interest is said to be uncertain.

Botterill was with the Penguins from 2007-17. He has a clearer view of the organization than most. If he doesn’t want the job, that says something.