MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Penguins cap remarkable turnaround with Cup title
When Mike Johnston was fired and Mike Sullivan was named Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Dec. 12, the team was in ninth place and heading nowhere.
Exactly seven months later, the Penguins carried the Stanley Cup around SAP Arena as NHL champions.
The Penguins took advantage of goals by Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang and Patric Hornqvist to down the San Jose Sharks 3-1 and complete one of the more impressive in-season transformations in NHL history
by winning the franchise’s fourth Stanley Cup. Pittsburgh previously won in 1991, 1992 and 2009.
The connecting piece of all four championships is Mario Lemieux, who was a Pittsburgh player for the first two titles and the owner for the last two.
“This means a lot to the city and the franchise,” Lemieux said. “We are going to have a little party tonight.”
Penguins captain Sidney Crosby didn’t score in the Final, but he was highly visible and was named the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP. He had 19 points in the playoffs.
Jim Rutherford changed about 70% of the roster after accepting the general manager’s job two summers ago.
Besides changing coaches midseason, Rutherford also traded for Trevor Daley, Carl Hagelin and Justin Schultz during the season. He also promoted younger players such as Bryan Rust and Conor Sheary.
“What we liked about Jim Rutherford is that he said ‘rebuilding,’ ” Penguins President David Morehouse said. “He just went out and reloaded.”
Rutherford’s plan was to make the Penguins faster and grittier in the postseason, and he accomplished both of his objectives.
All of Pittsburgh’s postseason opponents had difficulty dealing with the team’s speed. While the emphasis has been on how fast the Penguins are offensively, it is Pittsburgh’s quickness on the forecheck and backcheck that causes the most trouble for opponents.
The Washington Capitals and Tampa Bay Lightning both said they had no time to make plays with the Penguins always bearing down on them.
The Sharks, a high-quality offensive team, couldn’t generate more than 26 shots in any of the six games during the Stanley Cup Final.
“This team had a big core group who wanted to win,” Penguins center Matt Cullen said. “We cared. We cared a lot.”
The Final looked close, with all the games decided in the third period or overtime before Sunday’s Game 6. But the Penguins were the stronger team throughout the series. They scored first in five of the six games, and the Sharks managed to take a regulation lead only once in six games.
In Game 6, the Sharks tied the score at 1 at 6:27 of the second period, but the Penguins regained the lead 1:19 later when Letang fired a shot that hit goalie Martin Jones’ blocker and squeezed under his arm for a goal.
The Penguins were challenging to play against, which has not been the case in recent years.
The Sharks might have been sharper in net, but that was their only advantage in the series.