Penguins bring Hextall and Burke on board
Ron Hextall’s relationship with the Pittsburgh Penguins is complicated. His mandate as the team’s new general manager is not.
The Penguins hired Hextall on Tuesday to build a team capable of winning the Stanley Cup. Not in five years. Not in three years. This year.
It’s a level of pressure Hextall — whose father Bryan Hextall Jr. played for Pittsburgh in the early 1970s and who clashed with Mario Lemieux and the Penguins repeatedly during his lengthy run as the top goaltender for the Philadelphia Flyers — can live with.
“You’ve got players, (Evgeni) Malkin and (Sidney) Crosby and (Kris) Letang, we want to be as good as we can be right now with three of the best players in the world,” Hextall said Tuesday afternoon following a whirlwind courtship that began in earnest last week.
The 56-year-old Hextall replaces Hall of Famer Jim Rutherford, who resigned abruptly two weeks ago following a wildly successful stint in Pittsburgh that included winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017. Hextall’s father and Rutherford were teammates in Pittsburgh during the younger Hextall’s childhood, with Rutherford even loaning Hextall a goalie mask and skates and occasionally playing a little street hockey together.
Filling Rutherford’s shoes four decades later won’t be easy. Then again, Hextall won’t be doing it alone. The Penguins also lured longtime NHL executive Brian
Burke out of a cushy gig as a TV analyst to become Pittsburgh’s president of hockey operations. It’s a role Burke accepted following a nudge from Lemieux.
Burke actually consulted with Lemieux and team president and CEO David Morehouse during the general manager search. Talk eventually turned to Burke’s own interest in joining the organization in a role that will report directly to Morehouse. Burke wasn’t inclined to say yes. Except it wasn’t just anyone asking.
“Like I was happy with my life,” Burke, 65, said. “I liked living in Toronto ... (but) this is Cadillac class here. It’s not a run of the mill team, it’s not run of the mill ownership.”
No, it’s not, not with four Stanley Cup appearances and three championships since 2008. Pittsburgh is off to a sluggish 5-5-1 start this season, thanks in part to some goaltending issues and an injury list filled with defencemen like Brian Dumoulin and Marcus Pettersson. Still, Morehouse left little doubt about the franchise’s focus, even with Crosby, Malkin and Letang all 33 or older.
“I think (Hextall and Burke) along with coach (Mike) Sullivan are going to take us in a direction we’re used to being taken,” Morehouse said. “Nothing’s changed. We’re the Pittsburgh Penguins and we’re here to win.”