Kyle Dubas Is Open on Both Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell
Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell are productive forwards available for the right price, but Dubas seeks specific returns that have stalled negotiations.
Pittsburgh has spent this summer moving pieces around, and the two names that keep coming back to the surface are the two that have not moved. General manager Kyle Dubas is open to trading Bryan Rust and open to trading Rickard Rakell. The qualifier attached to both is the same one that has held every deal up so far: at the right price.
Rust is the more productive name and the easier one to move
Rust put up 65 points in 72 games in 2025-26, a pace just under a point per game, and he carries no no-trade protection of any kind. He is signed through 2028 at a cap hit of $5.125 million.
That combination is unusual. Most players with Rust’s production and term have negotiated some control over where they end up, and the ones who have not are typically either older or cheaper than this. A team calling Pittsburgh about Rust does not have to check a list first, and it is buying two more seasons after this one rather than a rental. Both of those things should push the asking price up, not down, which is part of why nothing has closed.
Rakell is the cleanest chip in the room
Rakell finished 2025-26 with 48 points in 60 games, a rate of eight tenths of a point per game, on a $5 million cap hit that runs through 2027-28. He is regarded as the cleanest trade candidate on the roster, and the reasoning is less about his numbers than about what surrounds them.
Pittsburgh’s veteran core comes with complications, whether that is contract structure, age, or a player’s own say in the matter. Rakell has fewer of them. He still holds real value, and what he does maps closely onto what contending teams shop for at this stage of a roster build: a middle-six scorer at a price that fits under a cap, on a deal short enough not to become somebody else’s problem in three years.
Dubas wants roster players, not futures
The detail that shapes both negotiations is what Pittsburgh is asking to receive. Dubas has prioritized young players who could step into the Pittsburgh lineup immediately, rather than draft picks or prospects who need development time.
That is a narrower request than it sounds. A contender giving up a young NHL regular is weakening the team it is trying to strengthen, in the same season, to acquire a forward it wants for that same season. Picks and prospects exist precisely because they cost a buyer nothing in the present. Ruling them out removes the currency most deadline and offseason deals are settled in, and it explains why two players this available have stayed where they are.
The timeline is the reason for the ask
Pittsburgh is in the middle of a reload rather than a teardown, and the shape of Dubas’s asking price follows from that. A team committed to a full rebuild takes the picks, banks them, and waits. A team that intends to be competitive sooner than that needs bodies who can play now, which is why the return has to be young and NHL-ready at the same time.
Neither Rust nor Rakell is a player Pittsburgh has to move. Both are productive, both are signed at reasonable numbers, and a market that will not meet the asking price simply means they open the season in Pittsburgh. The price has been set. Whether anyone pays it is the part still outstanding.
Reporting for this story draws on Pensburgh and The Hockey Writers.
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