The Pittsburgh Penguins have fired assistant general manager Jason Karmanos after three years in the role with the club, the team announced Monday.
"We would like to thank Jason Karmanos for his contributions to the organization over the past six years,” said executive vice-president and GM Jim Rutherford in a press release.
“I have been evaluating our hockey operations department, and this is the first part of the process to re-organize our group.”
Sam Ventura, the club's director of hockey research and co-founder of the hockey analytics website war-on-ice.com, will assume Karmanos' duties in the interim.
Karmanos, who previously served as the Penguins' vice-president of hockey operations, spearheaded the team's revamped use of hockey analytics. He is a long-time associate of Rutherford, working alongside him in various roles across 15 years as an executive for the Carolina Hurricanes.
In another announcement Monday, the Penguins revealed the hiring of former defenceman Trevor Daley as a hockey operations advisor, who will assist Rutherford in player evaluations at the NHL and AHL level.
"First, I would like to congratulate Trevor on an incredibly successful 16-year career," said Rutherford.
"In addition to being a Stanley Cup Champion with us, he left us with a great impression due to his professional demeanour and quiet leadership qualities. Those traits, along with his desire to want to learn about the business side of the NHL, made him a great candidate to join our staff."
The two-time Stanley Cup champion, 37, recorded 309 points in 1,058 NHL games split between the Dallas Stars, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings and Penguins. The Toronto native was a key acquisition by Pittsburgh in 2015-16 as it won back-to-back Cups.
The moves come amid an off-season of change for the Penguins. They shipped out two-time Stanley Cup-winning goalie Matt Murray, re-acquired Kasperi Kapanen, allowed Justin Schultz to walk in free agency and parted ways with assistant coaches Sergei Gonchar, Jacques Martin and Mark Recchi, among other moves, after falling to the Montreal Canadiens in the qualifying round of the playoffs.
