The Penguins just handed Tommy Novak a three-year extension at $4.65 million a year starting in 2027-28, and the backlash at Kyle Dubas is not some online fever dream. It is the correct first reaction when a 29-year-old middle-six forward with 42 points and a career high of 45 gets locked in through age 33 while Sidney Crosby’s window keeps shrinking.
Novak played all 82 games last season. He was the only Penguin who did. He put up 16 goals and 26 assists at roughly 14:17 a night, added five power-play goals, and then contributed two assists in a six-game first-round loss to the Flyers. That is useful depth. It is not $4.65 million useful once the current deal’s $3.5 million AAV expires.
Forty-Two Points Is Not a $4.65 Million Floor
I keep coming back to the age curve and the money. The extension does not begin until 2027-28. Novak will be 30 when the new money hits and 32-33 when it ends. His career line through last season sits at 65 goals and 94 assists in 285 games. Solid. Completely ordinary for a third-line pivot who can slide up. Faceoff win rate last year was 42.9 percent. That is not a guy you are paying to win draws in the last two minutes of a one-goal game.
Dubas and Jason Pridham started talks a couple of weeks before the announcement and got it done fast. Novak made the logic plain from his side: “I think for me … this is somewhere that I really wanted to be. To go into the year and just, you know, not thinking about it and just focusing on the best hockey I can, I think it’s valuable for me. I also see it as a good deal and a lot of money for me.”
Of course it is a good deal for him. The market for 40-point forwards who play every night is soft. Paying the premium to remove that market from the equation is the part that has Penguins fans grinding their teeth. This mirrors the pattern that has dogged several aging-core teams: over-index on familiarity and availability, under-index on surplus value. The 2019-21 Maple Leafs version of Dubas did the same thing with complementary pieces that looked fine in isolation and then clogged the cap when real upgrades became available.
Muse Sees the Glue. Cap Sheets See the Drag.
Head coach Dan Muse said during the season, “I don’t think he’s nearly appreciated enough… We appreciate him.” I believe Muse. Novak can play with skill. He described the fit with Evgeni Malkin and the speedier linemate he called “Chinny” in clean terms: “I think ‘Chinny’ has so much speed that I feel like me and ‘Geno’ are more pass-first players and he’s easy to hit when he’s flying. So I think my role is just to try to do the best I can on both sides of the puck and make plays when they’re there.”
That is real scheme value. Playmaking through the middle, secondary power-play usage, zero games missed. The Penguins acquired him from Nashville at the 2025 deadline with Luke Schenn for Michael Bunting and a fourth-rounder, and he helped end a three-year playoff drought. Those are facts. They do not automatically justify taking a player who just produced at a $3.5 million level and bumping him 33 percent for his age-30-to-33 seasons.
Novak himself flagged the risk. “I feel like throughout my career has been maybe some streakiness and, hopefully, obviously everyone goes through stretches like that, pucks are going in and pucks aren’t, but just keeping a level head.” Streaky 40-point scorers on the wrong side of 30 are the exact profile that turns into dead cap when the next wave of free agents hits or when a true top-six rental becomes available at the deadline.
The Opportunity Cost Is the Real Contract
What this deal actually buys is certainty. What it costs is flexibility in the seasons when Crosby, Malkin, and the rest of the core will need actual difference-makers around them, not another reliable 14-minute guy. Pittsburgh already knows what Novak is. He told them he has “another step I can take.” Maybe. The numbers say the safer bet is that 42 points in 82 games is the mean, not the floor.
I do not hate Novak. I hate the allocation. Dubas just spent future money to reward past durability on a player who was already under team control for one more year. That is how windows close quietly: not with one catastrophic signing, but with three or four of these that leave you $4.65 million short of the winger or defenseman who actually moves the needle in May.
The Penguins appreciated Tommy Novak enough to pay him like a building block. The rest of the league will keep treating him like a complementary piece. That gap is the entire backlash.
