Mark Madden: Seeing former Penguins succeed in playoffs puts spotlight on Ron Hextall's mistakes

Defenseman John Marino had two assists and was plus-4 in New Jersey’s Game 7 victory over the New York Rangers. Marino and the Devils play Carolina in the NHL playoffs’ second round and have a good shot to beat the banged-up Hurricanes.

Marino is 25. The Penguins traded him to the Devils last offseason in what was basically a salary dump, creating cap room to get defenseman Jeff Petry from Montreal.

Petry is 35 and plays like it. That’s not meant in a good way.

Defenseman Mike Matheson, 29, went the other way in the Petry trade. His mobility fits the Penguins’ style more than Petry’s attributes, which are mostly akin to being a stand-in for Terry Kiser in “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Defenseman Ty Smith, 23, came to Pittsburgh in the Marino trade. He’s small, but he has got wheels. He made the NHL’s All-Rookie Team in 2021. But Smith spent the season with the Penguins’ Wilkes-Barre/Scranton farm team because, it was said, his cap hit of a mere $863,333 was too much. Which seems hard to believe.

Petry is signed for two more years at a cap hit of $6.25 million. Now that’s too much. It’s $150,000 more than Kris Letang’s cap hit.

That’s a microcosm of how deposed GM Ron Hextall so thoroughly screwed the Penguins. The franchise will bear the brunt of his mistakes for years to come.

The Penguins were old. Hextall made them older. The Penguins prefer to play fast. Hextall made them slower. He committed the team to damaging contracts.

The chain of events mentioned can’t be corrected. Petry has a 15-team no-trade list, and who would want him?

Marino was far from perfect with the Penguins. He had an excellent rookie season in 2019-20 but never matched that level in the next two campaigns.

But Marino was plus-21 with New Jersey this season. He’s displaying speed, hockey IQ and precise puck-moving skills.

You don’t ditch legitimate young talent. The Penguins did. New Jersey benefited. The Devils also provide Marino far superior context, i.e., they’re a much better team.

Related:

• Tim Benz: Plenty of worthy goats, sacrificial lambs after Penguins' elimination - but no room for sacred cows
• Mark Madden: GM Ron Hextall deserves blame for Penguins' goaltending disaster
• Analysis: A stunning lack of support for veteran stars torpedoed Penguins' season

A lot of ex-Penguins have done well since leaving.

But it’s easy to read too much into that.

For example, winger Jared McCann scored 40 goals for Seattle. But he never would have done that with the Penguins. McCann never would have cracked the Penguins’ top six or the top power play. (Maybe he should have. Bryan Rust never has scored 40 goals. Or 30.)

Seattle has a good, deep team, built along the lines of Vegas in the Golden Knights’ expansion year: Four second lines. Somebody was going to score 40 or thereabouts. McCann did.

That’s not knocking McCann. He’s good.

There’s also no disputing that keeping McCann (or winger Brandon Tanev, also with Seattle) instead of the rapidly disintegrating Jeff Carter when the Kraken conducted its expansion draft in 2021 was the move to make. Not that Seattle would have taken Carter. Protecting him was insane.

Yet another ruinous Hextall mistake.

The Penguins don’t yet have a new GM. It’s not an attractive job. It’s an old, fading team. Eight contracted players have no- or limited-movement clauses. Mikael Granlund might as well have one: He’s got two more years of a $5 million cap figure, and he’s terrible.

Toronto won its first-round series, so Kyle Dubas will stay there. Tampa Bay director of hockey ops Mathieu Darche wisely will wait for a better opportunity. Ex-Chicago GM Stan Bowman seems informally blackballed by hockey for his role in not properly addressing the Blackhawks’ sexual assault scandal in 2010. Bowman won three Stanley Cups, but that doesn’t matter.

Fenway Sports Group will hire somebody safe like Brad Treliving (ex-Calgary GM) or Marc Bergevin (ex-Montreal GM) or an analytics guru like Carolina assistant GM Eric Tulsky.

The new GM, upon accepting the position, will sit down at his desk, consider the roster, look at the team’s contracts and wonder what the heck he’s gotten himself into.

But there are only 32 of those jobs.