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The Athletic Pittsburgh unveils how incompetent and disliked the Hextall-Burke duo was in PIT

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Marc the Habs Fan

Marc the Habs Fan

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I know we can't post full articles from the Athletic but wow, this is one hell of an article,



Some snippets:

Hextall first irritated Malkin late in the 2021-22 season by offering a short-term contract extension to his agent, J.P. Barry. In the offseason that animosity built as weeks passed without a follow-up conversation from Hextall. On June 17, Hextall told Barry that the team’s offer was “take-it-or-leave-it,” and the next day Burke used those words to characterize the negotiations during multiple media interviews. Not surprisingly, Malkin, a sure Hall-of-Famer, went from annoyed to insulted.
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Malkin was fine with what he read. The sticking point was his bruised feelings.

“They not think I good player,” Malkin wrote in a text message to Crosby.

“They not want me,” Malkin texted to Letang, who had stepped up efforts to console Malkin after signing his deal.

Malkin wanted to stay in Pittsburgh, but he no longer trusted either Hextall or Burke. Crosby and Sullivan intervened. Each spent hours on the phone with Malkin as July 11 became July 12. Careful not to tell him what to do, Crosby and Sullivan implored Malkin to “not worry about those guys” — Hextall and Burke — when making a final decision.
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“Hexy and Sully don’t talk,” said a team employee who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak about team officials. “It depends on what side you’re on whose fault that is. Sully has more people on his side.”
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Hextall traded Teddy Blueger during the same trip. In the middle of a dinner with the players’ fathers, arranged by Crosby at Bern’s Steakhouse in Tampa, Blueger learned via social media that he had been dealt to Vegas. He and his dad abruptly left the restaurant. Crosby rushed to console his now former teammate and after a few minutes returned to the dinner. “That’s not how we do things in Pittsburgh,” he said. Crosby remained mostly quiet the rest of the night.
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And my favorite:
Three months after finalizing the purchase of the Penguins in January 2022, FSG executives held organizational meetings inside the Water Street Marriott, a waterfront hotel within walking distance of the Florida Aquarium and Tampa Riverwalk.

The executives asked to see Morehouse’s and Hextall’s plans for the business and hockey departments, respectively. Morehouse detailed team finances and waning ticket revenue in a PowerPoint presentation, but Hextall was caught off-guard by the request and said the hockey plan was in his head. Ordered to put it on paper, he scrambled that afternoon, hand writing his ideas on a legal pad, transferring them to a Word document and printing out a couple of pages in the hotel’s business office.
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Hextall is obviously a Flyer 4 Life going undercover.

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Let me preface this by saying Hextall was terrible, don't know how much involvement Burke had, but if it was any, Brian Burke in 2023 was probably bad: this is a hit piece obviously orchestrated by someone still in the Pens org. Just yesterday James Mirtle (who was friends with Dubas) put out a piece laying into Shannahan. There are 2 sides to every story and I give stuff like this little weight.

Also 2 of the stories don't even seem that bad (as an outsider)?

Pens haven't won a round in half a decade, not sure why Sullivan is untouchable?

And is Malkin's extension worth it? Seems like the play in Pittsburgh should be to blow it up, but they obviously want this group to keep sneaking in.

That's why I thought Dubas was more likely to end up in Ottawa than Pit. While Hextall did terribly, it seems like a tough situation: remain competitive while aging and also making moves to bring in assets for the future. Very interested to see how the next guy fairs.
 
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Not sure why things between Sullivan and Hextall were so icy considering that silly extension they signed before the season even started. It's amazing to me how often so called professional sports organizations management structures break down because of big egos.
 
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Bounces R Way said:
Not sure why things between Sullivan and Hextall were so icy considering that silly extension they signed before the season even started. It's amazing to me how often so called professional sports organizations management structures break down because of big egos.
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The article indicated Sullivan went right to ownership and it was them and not Hextall that inked the extension.

So essentially there was a massive power struggle all year. The vision changed and they didn't have the right management in place for the new vision.

Not defending Hextall because he did a shot job but it's incredibly hard to do a job when you have the coach and players circumventing you and going to ownership. It won't be easy fo whoever goes in next to really do things unless he's unboared with Sully and his players all of which seem to hold more power then they should.
 
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surixon said:
The article indicated Sullivan went right to ownership and it was them and not Hextall that inked the extension.

So essentially there was a massive power struggle all year. The vision changed and they didn't have the right management in place for the new vision.

Not defending Hextall because he did a shot job but it's incredibly hard to do a job when you have the coach and players circumventing you and going to ownership. It won't be easy fo whoever goes in next to really do things unless he's unboared with Sully and his players all of which seem to hold more power then they should.
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Ah yeah that makes sense. Don't have an Athletic sub anymore.
Penguins are probably in for some tough years ahead.
 
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Yeah, this entire article seems like a friend of Sullivan's trying to boost his friend and downplay someone said friend didn't like. Reading between the lines a bit, it sounds surprisingly like what happened in Philly: Hextall was hired with one remit, that remit changed because ownership decided they wanted to go in a different direction than the original plan, and Hextall wasn't flexible enough/willing to acknowledge that he wasn't fully in charge, clashed with that new vision, and was out on his ass.

I want to know what would happen if Hextall was given control of a team that genuinely did want to rebuild, and was willing to actually commit to that plan. He's tried to do it twice, and in both stops, was told "actually, don't" halfway through. Might still be a disaster, based on some of his other flaws, but he doesn't appear to have ever actually been allowed to do the thing he was hired twice to do.
 
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Hextall being dead-set in his ways, Hextall overvaluing expensive fringe players, and Hextall favoring complacency is exactly who he was in Philadelphia. It's no surprise he was the same way in Pittsburgh too.

Nothing in this article is surpsising. It's history repeating itself.
 
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WaitingForThatCab said:
Oh, somebody got fired, time to leak as much dirty laundry as you can to the press.

Hextall sucked, but spare me the part where he's a buffoonish cartoon villain two days after you can him.
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Those two clowns, I mean journalists, have been whining about Hextall and brown-nosing Sullivan for years. Considering they apparently disliked Hextall mostly for his secretiveness, one has to wonder how many of the events alleged to have happened in this article actually did happen. Hextall was a bad GM, no doubt, but the way Yohe and Rossi speak of Sullivan is downright embarrassing:
He might as well have been the Winter Classic’s unofficial mayor during the Penguins’ three days in Boston. The Winter Classic was more than a homecoming for him. It was an appreciation of his life’s work.
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ucanthanzalthetruth said:
And is Malkin's extension worth it? Seems like the play in Pittsburgh should be to blow it up, but they obviously want this group to keep sneaking in.
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Yes. 100% yes. Player legacies matter. I don't want to see 87, 71, or 58 playing in another city.

There are some fans that want to rush into the rebuild as though that guarantees anything. We could be Buffalo for the next 20 years depending on how the lottery balls bounce.

The rebuild will happen when it happens. No need to rush into it. And no need to get rid of legacy players to rush into it.

The east is really f***in good and the Pens might be collecting lottery picks soon even with this core still in place.
 
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ucanthanzalthetruth said:
Let me preface this by saying Hextall was terrible, don't know how much involvement Burke had, but if it was any, Brian Burke in 2023 was probably bad: this is a hit piece obviously orchestrated by someone still in the Pens org. Just yesterday James Mirtle (who was friends with Dubas) put out a piece laying into Shannahan. There are 2 sides to every story and I give stuff like this little weight.

Also 2 of the stories don't even seem that bad (as an outsider)?

Pens haven't won a round in half a decade, not sure why Sullivan is untouchable?

And is Malkin's extension worth it? Seems like the play in Pittsburgh should be to blow it up, but they obviously want this group to keep sneaking in.

That's why I thought Dubas was more likely to end up in Ottawa than Pit. While Hextall did terribly, it seems like a tough situation: remain competitive while aging and also making moves to bring in assets for the future. Very interested to see how the next guy fairs.
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I’m a Liverpool fan (FSG owned) and I’d say Dubss is exactly a FSG fit. They’ve used modified money ball in Liverpool ( obviously baseball too) and Dubas’ approach and background will fit. I’d expect though that they’ll ultimately have a back room team aligned with that approach.

They moved too fast in Liverpool and made mistakes as a result, which is why I think they’ve taken their time to understand the NHL properly before making big changes.
 
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