Tim Benz: Jake Guentzel trade, Steelers' QB quandary shine light on difficult Pittsburgh sports reality

Jake Guentzel was traded away from the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Metropolitan Division rival Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday. In return, general manager Kyle Dubas got one established NHL forward in Michael Bunting. The rest of the return was three prospects (Ville Koivunen, Vasily Ponomarev and Cruz Lucius) and conditional first-round and fifth-round picks in the 2024 draft.

Moving a former All-Star before the end of his contract for mainly organizational futures is the most direct indication yet that the Penguins are trying to restock for the long term. This despite having so much salary-cap room and roster space tied up in Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson.

It’s hard to call it a rebuild when so many pillars appear to be staying put. But general manager Kyle Dubas is giving it a shot. There certainly isn’t much in the Guentzel return to suggest the Penguins are looking to improve the team right now.

As that deal was transpiring up at PPG Paints Arena, the sun was setting on yet another day of speculation over what the Steelers will do over with their quarterback situation.

“Are they really going to sign Russell Wilson now? What about trading for Justin Fields? I thought they were just gonna run it back with Kenny Pickett and Mason Rudolph. How much is Kirk Cousins really going to cost?”

Of course, down in Bradenton, Fla., there is the usual heaping amount of “This is the year! No, seriously, this time we really mean it. This is the year” optimism for the Pirates.

At least with the Pirates everything has been clean. They built up a contender for three years through 1992. Everybody left. Yada, yada, yada, 30 years of losing. Then they built up another contender for three years from 2013-15. Everybody left. Repeat cycle, presumably, for the next couple of decades.

We know the drill.

With the Steelers and Penguins, it’s different. They’ve been stuck in the middle for a long time. The stark reality, though, is that neither organization has bottomed out yet.

Unless that’s currently happening with the Penguins — something I’m not entirely ruling out.

Given what the Guentzel trade signals for the Penguins and what the QB situation is like for the Steelers, those days may be coming.

The Steelers have already gone seven years without a playoff win, a record-long cold spell for the franchise in the post-Immaculate Reception era. The alarming part of that is Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was under center for four of the first five years of this drought.

The Steelers went 20 years in between the retirement of Terry Bradshaw and the drafting of Roethlisberger. We’re only two years removed from Big Ben, and the Trubisky-to-Pickett-to-Rudolph-to-TBA carousel is already looming as a long-term morass. It’s not Cliff Stoudt-Mark Malone-David Woodley-Bubby Brister territory yet, but it sure does smell familiar.

My kingdom for Neil O’Donnell Jr.!

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At least Malone and Bubby managed to sprinkle in an AFC championship game berth and another playoff win in 1989 to break up the trip through the desert. These Steelers just leave us thirsty every year come playoff time, and I don’t see an oasis on the horizon.

As for the Penguins, the Mario Lemieux-Jaromir Jagr era effectively ended after 2001. Jagr was traded after that year’s trip to the Eastern Conference final. Alexi Kovalev, Robert Lang and Marty Straka soon followed.

Then they slogged through “X Generation” for a year or two, got a work stoppage, a salary cap, then hit a few home runs in the draft with Marc-Andre Fleury, Malkin and Crosby. Badda-bing, badda-boom, it’s 16 straight years of making the playoffs.

Now it looks like a second consecutive year of missing out on the playoffs after the initial weaning off success with four consecutive first-round defeats from 2019-22.

There was no confusion following that last NFL playoff gasp in 1984 and the subsequent removal of the last pieces of the Steel Curtain. It was gonna get dark around here for a while on football Sundays. But then it got better in the early 1990s.

There was no confusion when Jagr and the K-L-S line said goodbye. All “X Generation” was going to mean was an “X” next to the Penguins’ name in the standings for “playoff elimination” until they won the lottery.

Which, soon enough, they did in 2005.

As for the Pirates? Well, Francisco Cabrera and Sid Bream are still household names in Pittsburgh for a reason.

But with the Steelers and Penguins, it feels like both are in a constant state of denial over how long they’ve been detoured off the path to playoff success, with no roadmap to get back on it.

Unfortunately, like every other road in Western Pennsylvania, the one they are currently traveling is filled with nothing but congestion, potholes and detours.

Listen: Tim Benz and Seth Rorabaugh talk hockey, the state of the Penguins, Jake Guentzel and the trade deadline.