PITTSBURGH — Here's a hot take: The Pittsburgh Penguins could actually be pretty good this season.

Here's a hotter one: Given the pedigree and paychecks of their top eight players or so, plus the pedigree and paycheck of their head coach, they should be pretty good. They do not deserve the benefit of low expectations.

What if their best players simply play to their talent level?

What then?

This team should have made the playoffs comfortably last season and would have if not for a power play that was so hideously tragic that nobody would have blamed coach Mike Sullivan for resigning in disgrace.

It was, in fact, one of the more embarrassing units in franchise history and maybe hockey history given the talent level on hand. The 1983-84 Penguins, the team that lost on purpose to secure Mario Lemieux, the team that finished an 80-game season with 38 points, had a better power play — by five percentage points — than a unit that featured Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel (for several months) and Erik Karlsson.

If the Penguins merely fix that problem, they should be a playoff team. But there's more — and it's all quite realistic.

They need their $27 million goalie to play to his talent level, the level that has earned him two All-Star bids in the past four years. It's not like we have never seen Tristan Jarry play great hockey.

They need their two supremely talented defensemen, one of whom won his third Norris Trophy just 370 days ago, to play like stars that are making a combined $18 million. Why is that unreasonable?

They need another excellent season from Marcus Pettersson, who is as good as any No. 3 defenseman in the Eastern Conference and is in line for a big payday, and they need some semblance of competency from $27 million bust Ryan Graves.

How could this be the same guy who went plus-40 one year in Colorado and plus-34 in New Jersey?

They need Crosby to again be Crosby and Malkin to recapture some form of his best self (and maybe move to wing), plus Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell to play to their combined salary of $10 million (Rust delivered last season; Rakell decidedly did not, perhaps on account of a shoulder injury).

They need decently paid and perfectly capable veteran role players such as Lars Eller, Kevin Hayes and Noel Acciari to fulfill their roles and a few younger players, notably Drew O'Connor, to inject life into the lineup (and that might include Anthony Beauvillier, who has four seasons of at least 18 goals to his credit and is only 27 years old).

This isn't Miracle On Ice stuff we're talking about here. It is merely the idea that a majority of your players would deliver on reasonable expectations.

Dubas spoke last week about "pivoting" from where this club has been. I guess that means the Penguins are now more in the business of collecting draft picks than relinquishing them. OK, great, but the majority of his actions indicate that he remains intent on winning now. He just traded for a 32-year-old role player (Hayes) and apparently is chasing a 32-year-old, top-six winger (Vladimir Tarasenko). He's also accumulating second-round picks, but that's hardly the story here.

I mean, I don't remember headlines attached to Ron Hextall getting a third-round pick for Teddy Blueger, do you?

If the Penguins aren't big players in free agency this summer, it's because Dubas went wild last summer. He committed tens of millions of dollars on several multi-year deals. You can't just extricate yourself from that. Dubas was all in. That's what you have to be when you have Crosby.

In keeping with that philosophy, Dubas should have signed Jake Guentzel, who went for a less-than-projected annual salary to Tampa Bay, but that's ancient history now. At least they got the kind of player they needed in the abrasive and subtly skilled Michael Bunting, another who must deliver on his deal ($4.5 million).

The other quote from Dubas that stood out was this: "I wouldn't deem it a success if we got into the playoffs next year by a point."

I would. I'm betting Crosby and Sullivan would, too. It sure beats missing the playoffs by a point. I kind of thought this year's theme would be, "Let's get back to the playoffs by any means necessary."

I thought getting to the playoffs was the whole idea here.

That could change if Dubas breaks out a machete and chops his roster in half. In the meantime, let's not pretend this is a rebuild of any kind. Not yet. Not even close. The Penguins of Dubas and Sullivan don't deserve that excuse heading into the season.

They don't deserve the benefit of low expectations.

(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.