Talking the 2025 NHL Draft with Kyle Dubas and Wes Clark

The Penguins enter the 2025 NHL Draft with two first-round picks (11^th and 12^th), 11 total selections, and a lot of assets over the next three years that will play a key role in returning the franchise to contention as soon as possible.

“It's exciting. I mean, the team hasn't picked this high in a long time,” said Kyle Dubas, Pittsburgh’s President of Hockey Operations and GM. “It's the start of a massive opportunity for us to grow and evolve and really build the team back into a contender again.

“Whether it's using the draft capital to find excellent players that are going to be part of the Penguins for a long time, or move the draft picks out to acquire proven players, we'll explore all of that.”

Dubas knew the size of the job ahead when he joined the Penguins two years ago. He has since built out a scouting staff ready to tackle the challenge, with most of the group new to the organization.

That includes Vice President of Player Personnel Wes Clark, who has held this role for about a year, overseeing the club’s amateur, professional, and college/European free agent scouting departments.

Dubas and Clark have known each other for around two decades. They worked together in Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto, and now Pittsburgh, where they are currently camped out in the Draft Room presented by Lenovo.

“The biggest opportunity was to work alongside Kyle Dubas again, and (assistant GM) Jason Spezza,” Clark said. “There’s great familiarity over the last number of years, and actually, my entire career has been with Kyle. So, lots of alignment philosophically and (with) the way that we attack things, being process driven.”

Dubas praised Clark’s ability to identify talent and then successfully combine that with all of the other necessary factors.

“You're dealing with a lot of unknowns and multiple pieces of information that you're trying to put together, ultimately searching for convergence – whether it's through the area scouts, the data, the vetting, the character and the makeup,” said Clark, who ran the NHL Draft for the Maple Leafs from 2021-24. “And there's always an opportunity to get someone that you love. So, the amateur stuff's very fun.”

Clark singled out the area scouts for the work they did in that regard, “since we're at a point now where we need to collect as many good hockey players as we can,” he said.

The Penguins want players who are tremendously competitive, first and foremost. They also need to be extremely talented.

“I would say in the past, those priorities flipped,” Dubas said. “Early on in the time in Toronto, and after going through a few years of it, I think just in learning from various mistakes, we sort of started to flip that around. That's where we're focused now.”

“Ultimately, we want guys that are going to impact winning,” Clark said.

Dubas went and watched virtually every player that Clark and his staff felt were high priority, especially as the range became clearer in February and March, and the trade deadline passed. Ahead of the NHL Draft Lottery on May 2, the goal was to see guys in the range where Pittsburgh could land.

“We went from anywhere from fourth to 13th, 14^th... and after the lottery, we ended up picking 11^th. So, I've seen all the players live a lot in that range,” Dubas said. “But in the end, I've got such a comfort with Wes that I'll support whatever he thinks is best.”

Both Dubas and Clark said gaining the Rangers pick at 12^th overall didn’t change the approach at all, since it immediately follows Pittsburgh’s own selection. The Penguins now have six picks in the top-100, and will make at least one selection in all seven rounds of the draft.

“In a perfect world, every pick would make it, all those picks would contribute to a team that wins the Stanley Cup,” Dubas said. “That's sort of the optimal thing that you're shooting for. It's very unlikely that that happens.

“So, you're trying to return 2, 3, 4 players from every class, and I used to just focus on, can they be NHL players or not? Now, it's can they be NHL players that can help us win? So, the draft is an exciting time to be able to add that.”

This year’s draft will be held over two days: Friday, June 27, at 7:00 PM ET (Round 1, live on ESPN, ESPN+, Sportsnet, TVA Sports) and Saturday, June 28, at 12:00 PM ET (Rounds 2-7, live on NHL Network, ESPN+, Sportsnet and SN1).