{"id":194146,"date":"2025-09-02T12:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/194146\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T12:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:56:13","slug":"more-updates-on-the-penguins-potential-ownership-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/194146\/","title":{"rendered":"More updates on the Penguins\u2019 potential ownership change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman provided more updates on the potential sale of the Penguins by Fenway Sports Group in a 32 Thoughts podcast episode<\/a> recorded during the NHL\/NHLPA European Player Media Tour in August.<\/p>\n

Friedman initially reported<\/a> that the Hoffmann family, who are based in Florida and currently own the ECHL\u2019s Florida Everblades, had \u201cemerged as a serious contender\u201d to buy the Penguins.<\/p>\n

He added more news about the potential sale around the 33-minute mark of the Aug. 22 episode of his podcast with Kyle Bukauskas.<\/p>\n

Friedman said at the time he had believed the Penguins would get sold the previous week\u2014 that is, between Aug. 18 and Aug. 22\u2014 at a valuation of 1.75 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s real, no matter what anyone says. This is real, and we\u2019ll see if it gets closed in the near future\u2026 they\u2019re very serious about it,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n

Friedman continued: \u201cYou know, I had some people ask me about Kyle Dubas. I don\u2019t think this will affect Dubas at all. I think he\u2019s going to stay on in his current roles, from what I\u2019m hearing. Someone asked, \u2018Do you think it\u2019ll change the direction of the team?\u2019 And there\u2019s nothing I\u2019ve heard in the days since this first came out that convinces me that their plan is changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman went on to share an interesting take on the potential sale. He said some unidentified sources had told him FSG\u2019s reported consideration of selling the franchise just under four years after making the purchase should lead to a reevaluation of Ron Hextall\u2019s tenure as general manager.<\/p>\n

Hextall took control of the team between 2021 and 2023. A year after he was dismissed, almost no players<\/a> he had brought into the organization remained on the Penguins roster. But Friedman said some people believed Fenway had hurt Hextall\u2019s chances of success by hesitating to pull the trigger on a rebuild:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYou know, I got a couple of interesting calls in defense of Ron Hextall. I had a couple people reach out and say that, if Fenway Sports does sell the team, that there should be a bigger conversation into how Hextall\u2019s GM term went. I had people who really defended him, saying that when Hextall was hired, it was before Fenway bought the team.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cHextall was hired under the idea of, the team was going to get rebuilt. And then, when push came to shove\u2026 the plan changed. And they just felt that it should be known that what he was hired to do and what he got instructed to do when the moment came were two very different things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now that rebuild is fully underway under Dubas, and Friedman indicated that won\u2019t change regardless of who owns the team during the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n

The Penguins were reportedly valued at $900 million when FSG purchased<\/a> a controlling stake in November 2021, Pierre LeBrun<\/a> reported for The Athletic. Being able to nearly double that valuation in just four years could be a motivating factor in FSG potentially considering a sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman provided more updates on the potential sale of the Penguins by Fenway Sports Group in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":194147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[834,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-194146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-general","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115134816850280178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}