Ugly GM endings not a new thing
So you think the oncehappy marriage between Jim Rutherford and the Penguins ended poorly on Wednesday?
That was nothing compared with the Penguins’ breakup with Craig Patrick, the greatest general manager in team history, maybe the greatest in Pittsburgh sports history.
Yes, Patrick inherited Mario Lemieux. That’s not a bad way to start. But Patrick still performed magic. He hired Badger Bob Johnson, Scotty Bowman and Herb Brooks, drafted Jaromir Jagr, Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney
Crosby and Kris Letang, traded for Joey Mullen, Larry Murphy, Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson and Rick Tocchet and signed Bryan Trottier and Sergei Gonchar as free agents. Patrick was directly responsible for the Penguins’ Stanley Cup-winning teams in 1991 and 1992 and at least partially responsible for their Cup wins in 2009, 2016 and 2017.
But Patrick, a Hall of Famer, wasn’t retained after the 2005-06 season after four consecutive last-place finishes. Ownership was a mess during much of his time with the team and eventually went bankrupt. Patrick took the fall.
So much for being the best at what you do.
But not even that divorce could rival the one between Art Rooney Jr. and the Steelers. Rooney and assistants Bill Nunn and Dick Haley, as well as Chuck Noll, built the Steelers into a dynasty in the 1970s, winning four Super Bowls. Their 1974 draft class of Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster and their freeagent signing of Donnie Shell — five players who made it to the Hall of Fame — is regarded as the best draft class in NFL history.
But Rooney, son of Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr., was fired in January 1987. Maybe you remember how it went down. Rooney was fired by his brother, Dan, with the blessing of their father. You might imagine the family gatherings that followed.
The point is hardly anyone in sports — player or executive — gets to go out on his or her terms. For every Jerome Bettis, who parked the bus in Detroit and retired after the Steelers won Super Bowl XL, there are multiple Troy Polamalus, who feel cast aside prematurely and leave with bitterness. For every Joe L. Brown, who built World Series champions with the Pirates in 1960 and 1971 before calling it a wonderful career, there are multiple Rutherfords and Patricks.
We’ve seen it here many times.
I think of former Pirates general manager Harding Peterson, whose trades for Tim Foli and Bill Madlock pushed the team over the top to the 1979 World Series title. He was fired during the 1985 season when mediocrity and the Pittsburgh Drug Trials embarrassed the organization.
I think of former Steelers director of football operations Tom Donahoe, who constructed a Super Bowl team in 1995 and made the greatest trade in franchise history when he acquired Bettis on NFL draft day in 1996. He left the organization after the 1999 season after losing a power struggle with Bill Cowher.
I think of former Penguins general manager Ray Shero, who built a Cup team in 2008 and a Cup-winning team in 2009, strategically hiring Dan Bylsma to replace Mike Therrien at just the right time in February 2009. He was fired after the 2014 season after both he and Bylsma grew stale.
Kevin Colbert and Ben Cherington are on the clock now.
Cherington still is relatively new to the Pirates job, although he’s already undertaken a massive rebuilding project. I like to think he’ll eventually be successful, but I have my doubts because of the owner who hired him.
Sports owners just don’t come worse than Bob Nutting.
Colbert, with the Steelers since 2000, is nearing the finish line. Overall, he has done a marvelous job, winning a Super Bowl with Cowher in 2005 and another with Mike Tomlin in 2008. But lately? Like Tomlin, Colbert can’t avoid being linked to the lateseason collapses the past four seasons and the fact the team has just three playoff wins since its most recent Super Bowl trip after the 2010 season.
Colbert, like Rutherford — who built two Cup-winning teams here and did it in consecutive seasons — ultimately will be remembered as a winner who did terrific work. But that hardly guarantees a happy ending.