Pens’ secret runs deeper than Sid
Perennial contenders resourceful wonders with repeat in reach
There must be more than a few NHL teams, or at least their owners and executives, that look at the Pittsburgh Penguins and wonder: Why them and not us?
Why has the City of Pittsburgh been blessed with six visits by the Penguins franchise to the Stanley Cup final over the past 26 years, while other profitable, stable clubs haven’t had anywhere near that kind of success?
Philadelphia. Washington. The Rangers. Montreal. Boston. Calgary. San Jose. Minnesota. Vancouver. Even Toronto. Why Pittsburgh and not those clubs? It’s not as if the Penguins have continuously run a brilliant operation for the past quarter-century. No, the Pens were bankrupt, almost moved to Kansas City, have had their attendance dip below 12,000 per game this century and have at times been among the NHL’s worst teams. Pennsylvania has certainly grown as a hockey centre in which elite players are developed, but it’s not Minnesota or Saskatchewan.
The Penguins have certainly not had perfect luck, either. Cancer and concussions have robbed them of superstar players at times. The Pens have made terrible errors with players, coaches, contracts and managers, just as many as those teams listed above, or even more.
Yet next week the Penguins find themselves in the Stanley Cup final. Again.
Does it always just come down to the fact that in the early 1980s they tanked and landed Mario Lemieux, and then in 2005 an unusual lottery scheme handed them Sidney Crosby while the Anaheim Ducks got Bobby Ryan?
Maybe. Having two of the top 20 (top 10?) players of all-time surely helps.
But it’s more than that. Lemieux spearheaded a star-studded team to championships in 1991 and 1992. The Pens were smart enough to take Jaromir Jagr in 1990 after Quebec instead chose Owen Nolan, the Canucks preferred Petr Nedved, Detroit called out Keith Primeau’s name.
Philadelphia believed Mike Ricci was a better bet to be a star.
On top of Lemieux and Jagr, the Pens layered stars such as Paul Coffey, Ron Francis, Tom Barrasso, Larry Murphy and Joe Mullen, spending money they really didn’t have at times, to build a spectacular team.
The Crosby era, meanwhile, has included Evgeni Malkin, but has also taken place at the same time the NHL moved to a salary-cap model, limiting the amount teams could spend on payroll. They won a Cup with head coach Dan Bylsma, then fired him unceremoniously, made a mistake by replacing him with Mike Johnston, then hit the correct button with Mike Sullivan.
In an era in which there are no longer great teams because of the cap, the Pens have found themselves in the Cup final four times in the last nine years because they’ve been as resourceful as any other club in terms of finding useful players at low cost. From Pascal Dupuis to Conor Sheary, the Pens have found ways to help players find their game in Pittsburgh.
In the end, there is no great moral to this story. The Penguins aren’t the Packers of the 1960s, or the Yankees of the Derek Jeter era, or the Lakers with Magic, or the Islanders that won four straight Stanley Cup.
They haven’t always been a great franchise, or even a good one, or even a solvent one.
But they seem to know how to find their way back to the top.
A Stanley Cup final against Nashville seems fitting in some ways as the Predators, in similar fashion, have defied the odds just to survive in Tennessee while fighting off those who would have moved the franchise elsewhere before it was able to become “Smashville.”
You can’t say the Predators did everything right to make it to their first Cup final because, well, they didn’t. In fact, of the 16 playoff qualifiers, they had the 16th-best record this season. Unlike the Penguins, they don’t have a franchise player per se, but they have a lot of very, very good ones, from Pekka Rinne to Roman Josi to Filip Forsberg, and P.K. Subban has given the Preds some swagger. Sure David Poile and Co. have patiently drafted and developed, but so has St. Louis without similar rewards.
This Nashville squad isn’t a great team, and neither are these Pens. But you don’t have to be to win it all in the NHL anymore.
Once, we thought of the Stanley Cup champion as the best team in hockey for that season, and almost always that team’s roster was filled with hall of fame talent. Nowadays, while that might sometimes be the case, most of the time it isn’t. The Presidents’ Trophy goes to the best team in the regular season, and the Cup goes to the winner of the postseason tournament.
Winning the Cup is now about getting hot at the right time, not necessarily about being the best team in the league in October, in January and in June. The salary cap and three-point games have squeezed NHL teams closer than ever before to the extent that there’s little or no difference from the 16th seed to the first seed in the postseason.
Does this explain why Pittsburgh hockey fans have enjoyed more wonderful memories in a quartercentury than most NHL towns?
Not really. The Pens, it would seem, have been lucky at the right times and as opportunistic as any franchise in the sport. They took Jagr when four other teams didn’t. They fired Johnston and hired Sullivan when GM Jim Rutherford had a gut feel that his team, sitting 12th in the Eastern Conference, was much better than it seemed. Rutherford then traded for Phil Kessel, deemed as untradeable as any player in the game by many experts.
Now, the Pens have a chance to become the first team in 20 years to repeat as Cup winners. Indeed, they’re favoured to do so after fighting through a lot of injuries and twice facing elimination.
The Penguins have surely earned another Cup final berth. But that won’t stop many other teams from wondering: Why them and not us? Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.