The Pittsburgh Penguins have a veteran core of Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. Some teams have young cores that they build around, but the average age of the Penguins’ core is 37.67.

New head coach Dan Muse is walking into a team that replaced its coach but not one that’s been bad enough to rack up high draft picks and sport a young core of players who will grow and get better.

That doesn’t change much for Muse.

“I’ve reached out to close to 95% of all players under contract,” Muse said on Wednesday, according to Pens Inside Scoop. “We’re still finishing that part up. In regards to the veteran players, you’re always working with the leaders. Guys that have been in this organization for such a long time. You’re going to be leaning on them.”

Muse is a brand-new face in this organization, so he’s happy to have such longstanding players to lean on during a transitional period. Crosby has been with the team for 20 years. Malkin and Letang have both been with them for 19 seasons.

Muse is 42 and was the assistant coach for the New York Rangers before this, so he’s new to the team and barely older than some of his most important players.

Penguins GM reflects on new head coach Dan Muse

The Pittsburgh Penguins didn’t hire anyone familiar or known to the organization after moving on from two-time Stanley Cup champion Mike Sullivan. They went for an inexperienced, young, new head coach.

Muse has five years of coaching experience as an assistant with the Rangers and Nashville Predators. It was important to find the right person, according to GM Kyle Dubas.

“I thought it would have been a great disservice to the organization just to hire someone that either I know very well or that I’ve worked with in the past, without going through the proper process, especially given where we are and the unique nature of the job,” Dubas said, according to NHL.com.

“It became clear that he was somebody that was going to be extraordinarily well-suited to develop all of our players. Not just our young players, but all of them.”

Muse never made it past Division III college hockey, but he quickly rose through the coaching ranks in the NHL.