Status quo remains theme for Penguins
Last season, after the Penguins were eliminated in seven games by the New York Rangers in the second round of the NHL playoffs, the team made major changes. General manager Ray Shero and coach Dan Bylsma were fired and replaced by Jim Rutherford and Mike Johnston. The roster was overhauled.
“It’s not just about this season,” Penguins CEO/president David Morehouse said at the time. “We’ve had five consecutive seasons of underachieving hockey in the playoffs.”
Now, after the Penguins were knocked out Friday night by the
Rangers in five games in the first round, the team largely will stay with the status quo. Rutherford and Johnston will be back, Morehouse said Saturday. So will Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin at another significant hit to the club’s salary cap space.
“We will start next season with two of the best players in the game, one of the best goaltenders and a defenseman who was the best in the league before he was injured,” Morehouse said of Crosby, Malkin, Marc-Andre Fleury and Kris Letang.
“That’s a pretty good place to start. We want to add speed and youth, but we like where we’re at. We’re still in good shape.”
Some will tell you Morehouse is delusional. I say Morehouse is right. Tearing everything apart again and starting over makes no sense. It’s easy to say Rutherford and especially Johnston should be fired. Detroit coach Mike Babcock is a free agent-inwaiting, and many fans are begging the Penguins to take a run at him. But Babcock is expected to get a huge offer to stay in Detroit or go to Toronto or Philadelphia. He won’t be worth it. Check out his NHL record. It’s not any better than Bylsma’s.
“Ron [Burkle] and Mario [Lemieux] have never given any consideration to replacing our general manager or our coach,” Morehouse said.
“The coach never had a chance to coach his team. The injuries started in training camp and never let up. We had a player diagnosed with cancer. We had another with a blood clot. We had five guys with the mumps. And that was before the regular hockey injuries.”
The injuries peaked right before the playoffs when Letang and Christian Ehrhoff went out with concussions, joining Olli Maatta (shoulder surgery) in the press box.
“You have to look at reality,” Morehouse said. “I don’t know if any team in the league would win without three of its top four defensemen.”
The Penguins defense will be strong next season if Letang and Maatta are healthy. The problem is finding goal-scorers. The team scored just eight goals in the five games against the Rangers, losing, 2-1, in all four of its losses. Their one young homegrown forward — Beau Bennett — was a disappointment all season.
It’s easy to say Malkin should be traded. I said it to myself Friday night after watching him do nothing against the Rangers again. He had no goals and no points in the series.
Malkin is infuriating because he has so much talent, yet disappears at times in games. He picked a bad time to be invisible against the Rangers. He finished the season with no goals in 15 games and no points in 10. Bad back or not, that’s inexcusable.
But a Malkin trade would be difficult for two reasons. One, like Crosby, he has a no-trade clause in his contract. And two, getting equal value in return would be nearly impossible. Think Jaromir Jagr for Kris Beech, Ross Lupaschuk and Michal Sivek.
Morehouse said Penguins ownership has “no interest” in breaking up the Cros by-Malkin duo.
The Penguins will get salary-cap relief when Ehrhoff and Paul Martin leave as free agents. They could use that money to bring in a better-quality forward or two. That will be Rutherford’s challenge.
It’s hard to completely evaluate Rutherford’s work because of the injuries and illnesses. His trade for Patric Hornqvist was a really good one. But his other deals? Not so much. David Perron, Daniel Winnik and Ben Lovejoy failed in the playoffs.
Rutherford also mismanaged the salary cap, forcing the Penguins to play with just five defensemen late in the season. “We’ve always been a team that spends up to the cap, even going over it when we have injuries,” Morehouse said. “Jim was trying to make our team the best it could be. He couldn’t have anticipated the injuries to [Letang and Ehrhoff]. We took a gamble. It didn’t work out.”
Burkle and Lemieux remain “fully committed” to winning, Morehouse said. There has been speculation one or both might be interesting in selling the team.
“Nothing has changed. It’s just like always,” Morehouse said. “This is still one of the best franchises in the league. We still have a sellout streak that’s eight years in the making. We still have the No. 1 television ratings. We still have a very supportive fan base.
“Obviously, we’re extremely disappointed that we didn’t go deeper in the playoffs. But it’s not easy. The defending Stanley Cup champions [Los Angeles Kings] didn’t make it. Boston didn’t make it. We got in, but we didn’t get the job done. It’s hard to succeed with the kind of injuries we had …
“Ownership and Jim believe in our core group. We’re not far away. Our belief is we can get back quickly to where we need to be.” Delusional? No.