Penguins bet on veteran core
Offseason moves aside, season hinges on Crosby, Malkin, Letang
One of the longest offseasons in NHL history was one of the busier ones for Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford.
Virtually every component of the team was tweaked in at least some way. Rutherford overhauled the coaching staff with all new assistants. He added a winger to the top-six in Kasperi Kapanen. He remade the third defensive pairing by acquiring Mike Matheson and Codi Ceci. The bottom-six added several new role players in free agency. The front office got a shake up with the firing of assistant general manager Jason Karmanos and Patrik Allvin’s promotion into that role.
But in an offseason of change one element of the team remained untouched: The core.
Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are the only three players on the roster who have been part of all three recent Stanley Cup runs. On a Rutherford-led team that’s faced plenty of turnover in the last few seasons, they remain the three constants keeping an ever-evolving team photo in focus.
“They’re all future Hall of Famers,” Rutherford said in a phone interview with the Post-Gazette. “They’ve had great success in Pittsburgh. They still have a lot of good hockey in them.”
Few would argue those first two points. Hall of Famers? Sure. Great success in Pittsburgh? Absolutely.
The third one — that they still have a lot of good hockey in them — is where there’s debate. There are two ways to look at it.
On one hand, with Crosby and Letang at 33 and Malkin at 34, it’s impossible to ignore the omnipresence of Father Time’s forecheck. Crosby is coming off a season marred by injury, sandwiched between a pair of four-game flameouts in the playoffs. Letang’s decision-making might be getting worse with age, as his giveaway rate has increased in each of the last three seasons. And Malkin is coming off a postseason in which he failed to record a single even-strength point.
On the other hand ... It was just two years ago that Crosby finished second in Hart Trophy voting. With his unparalleled hockey IQ and well-documented obsession with the game, he’s the kind of player who will evolve when the time comes — the same way Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant did it in the NBA.
“To me, he’s still the best player in the league when you look at the overall game,” Rutherford said. “A lot of people just look at points. A player gets 100 points or they’re in the top 10 in scoring, they identify them as the top players. But I don’t see anybody playing the allaround game and bringing what Sid brings game-in and game-out.”
Malkin may have slumped in the postseason, but in the regular season only five players were as productive as Malkin’s 1.35 points per game — Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin, David Pastrnak and Nathan MacKinnon. Not surprisingly, they finished in the top five in Hart Trophy voting.
While the fact that Malkin received two votes for the Selke Trophy was a surprise — and almost comical, honestly — he did play some of the best two-way hockey of his career to top it off.
“I’d like to see him carry over what he did last year,” Rutherford said. “He came in determined. He was in good shape. He looked really good.”
And finally, Letang continued to set new benchmarks for Penguins defensemen. He became the first Pittsburgh blue-liner to record 400 assists and earned the nod for his sixth career All-Star game, most of any Penguins defenseman. This came while playing significant chunks of the season alongside Jack Johnson in place of his regular partner Brian Dumoulin.
With former Penguins assistant coach Todd Reirden back in the fold to work with the defense and Dumoulin back from injury, there’s reason to believe those giveaway stats might pivot in the other direction.
“I think it’s more about playing him in the right number of minutes in the right situations,” Rutherford said. “It’s hard for a coach when you’re looking down your bench in important parts of the game to bypass Kris Letang. Then at the end of the night you look and you say, ‘He played 27 or 28 minutes.’ And that continues game, after game, after game.
“With Dumo coming back and healthy and being able to play with Tanger, we know Tanger will be ready to play. He takes good care of himself. He wants to win. I expect him to continue to play at a high level for a few more years.”
Together, Malkin ($9.5 million), Crosby ($8.7 million) and Letang ($7.25 million) will eat up more than 31% of the Penguins’ $81.5 million salary cap space. While it’s the players at the bottom of the roster that often become the scapegoats, the reality is that the successes or failures of this season should be placed most squarely on the shoulders of the core.
As the NHL eyes a possible mid-January return and the long, busy offseason winds down, maybe it’s true that the Penguins’ championship window has closed. Or maybe it’s propped open just enough for Crosby, Malkin and Letang to squeeze in one more shiny, 35-pound trophy.
Who can say for sure? Either way, it appears the move that Rutherford didn’t make will have the greatest impact on how the 2021 season unfolds.