Dan Bylsma's Last Shot

The Stanley Cup finals started last night with a truly sensational game between Chicago and Boston.  Recency bias and hyperbole make for a bad combination so I’ll resist the urge quantify its greatness.  Suffice to say it was the kind of game that drives many of us to believe that there is nothing better in sports than post season hockey.  For me it had everything; everything except the Pittsburgh Penguins.

That is ironic because yesterday marked the 4 year anniversary of arguably the greatest game in Penguins’ history.  Their gut wrenching game 7 victory in Detroit was perhaps the seminal moment for a franchise that has enjoyed far greater success than it’s credited.

In the aftermath of their elusive third championship the club’s future potential seemed boundless.  A once in a generation assemblage of young stars had matured to full potential, winning a Stanley Cup well before their time.  The general manager was locking in those stars on manageable long-term contracts.  And for the first time in their history, they seemed to have the perfect head coach to steer the ship.  There was every reason to believe that cup celebrations would be the norm for this group.

And yet as the finals kicked off last night the only Penguin discussion we were contemplating was Ray Shero’s emphatic endorsement of Dan Byslma as his coach for next season.  It’s a worthwhile debate, especially since I considered Disco Dan’s continued employment an even money proposition at best when I awoke on Wednesday.

Taken in a vacuum, one can just as easily conclude that Bylsma is or is not responsible for the Pens crash and burn performance against Boston.  His supporters state that he cannot be blamed for the sudden and complete disappearance of the team’s offensive stars.  His detractors state that he must be held accountable for the club’s lackluster play and lack of composure in the first two games of the series; and for getting swept with perhaps the most talented roster in the NHL.  Both arguments are accurate to a point.

I made it clear on Monday that my biggest issue with Bylsma was consistent lack of discipline shown by his team over the entire playoff run.  It manifested last year against Philly. And it manifested on several occasions before the conference finals; most notably with the inexcusable short-handed goal the Pens allowed to Ottawa in the waning seconds of game 3.  But it was never more brutally obvious than in the first two games against the Bruins. 

The Penguins ardently refused to make the smart simple plays necessary to succeed this time of year.  As noted in Monday’s blog, I’ve watched Chicago’s defensemen repeatedly defuse pressure in their own zone with simple bank passes of the boards.  In contrast the Penguins have Kris Letang, the Brett Favre of NHL defensemen, constantly trying to stickhandle through pressure or worse yet, throw blind backhand passes up the middle of the ice.   

At any given moment, the players are responsible for not executing properly.  When the same issue continues unabated for two years it falls primarily on the coach.

Given that, Bylsma should not be evaluated in the vacuum of one series; rather by his overall body of work.  And that is an eminently complex affair, as Bylsma’s track record is emminently complex. 

If it were simply the juxtaposition of regular season success against playoff disappointment it would be an easy call.  It’s not.  Not when the same coach who oversaw four consecutive post season flame outs also lead one of the great championship runs in NHL history.  Not when this year’s loss, as disappointing as it was, occurred in the Eastern Conference Finals.

This situation best parallels Bill Cowher and the Steelers, circa January 2005.  The franchise was at a crossroads after Cowher’s 15-1 team was blown out of Heinz Field by New England in the AFC Championship game.  It marked the 4^th time in 14 years that Cowher’s team lost an AFC title game at home.  And it continued a confounding trend of regular season dominance followed by playoff collapse.  At that time there was fairly compelling, albeit circumstantial evidence that Cowher simply could not lead the Steelers to a championship.

The Steelers stuck it out with Cowher in 2005 and he ultimately delivered.  In so doing they established their franchise as a model of organizational stability.   That is in stark contrast to the Penguins who for most of their history have treated coaches as interchangeable parts.

So I salute the Penguins for once embracing stability over chaos.  I salute them for finally accepting the possibility that the players should be held accountable as much if not more so than the coach.  This is very much a new concept at the New Energy Barn and would seem to indicate a maturation of the organization.  It’s also a testament to the coaching street cred Bylsma earned though winning that championship in 2009.         

I do wonder however if the Penguins are standing not so much behind Bylsma as they are Sidney Crosby (and to a lesser degree Evgeni Malkin).  This is an organization with a track record of terrible coaching decisions made solely to appease their superstars.  How else do you justify firing Scotty Bowman for Eddie Johnston or in any way, shape, or form hiring Ivan Hlinka?  Given that history, and Mario Lemieux’s current ownership percentage, it’s not beyond consideration that Bylsma’s greatest coaching asset is that he keeps Sid the Kid happy.

I’m not saying definitely that is the case, but I cannot rule it out, especially when Bylsma’s extension precedes Malkin’s by just 24 hours.  We learned from the Johnston and Hlinka debacles that hiring coaches solely to placate superstars is a recipe for post season disappointment.  It’s even greater a concern when you factor in that Crosby, as much as anybody in the organization need to step up his post season performance going forward.  That is not going to happen if the head coach is in his pocket.

Regardless, the decision is made and Bylsma is staying, at least for one more year.  I am neither endorsing nor disputing it for all the reasons mentioned above.  I’m not yet convinced that Bylsma is the problem or the solution to this team’s ills.  That said, results speak for themselves and Bylsma’s window is clearly inching towards closure.

I will say this.  The Penguins cannot trot out the same coach, same system, and same players that have endured four consecutive playoff failures.  Most coaches would not survive such a run; especially when the last two were catastrophic in nature.  The team has refused to embrace the most critical components of playoff hockey success in spite of giving continual lip service to doing just that.  This means either that Bylsma is failing to deliver the message or the players are failing to receive it.  By hitching his wagon to the head coach, Shero is essentially stating the latter.

This means Shero absolutely must make personnel changes in the offseason.  He must deploy a better and more committed group of defensive players around 87 and 71.  He must find players who will embrace the need for structured and disciplined hockey, even when playing with superior offensive talent.  And he probably needs to accept that it is financially untenable to keep Letang or Marc-Andre Fleury on the roster at this point.

Even assuming such changes, Bylsma still needs to get the message through to his star players.  The Blackhawks have proved throughout the playoffs that a team with high end talent can be successful in the post season by playing the right way.  Doing it against Boston last night further crystalized the point.  Bylsma has been given one last shot to get that message across.  If he fails, it will likely be his last.

Penguins Post Mortem, Toughness and Discipline Needed

I read an absolutely stunning statistics in Dejan Kovacevic’s column in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review last Friday.  He pointed out that through the first three games of the series against Boston; a span including nearly 11 full periods of hockey, the Penguins generated THREE rebound shots on Tuukka Rask. 

That’s not a misprint...THREE rebound shots.  And one of those came off the stick of noted sniper Craig Adams.

I sensed that this was the case just watching the first three games so I focused in on it in game 4.  Other than the Penguins' desperation flurry at the end of the game, I do not recall a single rebound shot the entire game.

There will be an infinite amount of post mortem analysis this summer on the Penguins latest post season melt down.  Multiple theories will be posited, multiple scapegoats served up.  All will have some measure of validity but to my way of thinking, you need not look beyond that mind numbing rebound statistic as the starting point. 

From a micro standpoint it tells you that the Penguins had basically zero net front presence in this series and that the Boston defense, specifically Zdeno Chara dominated the Pittsburgh forwards.  I think that’s a pretty fair assessment when you consider the Penguins scored just 2 goals the series, after potting 47 in the first two rounds. 

It’s also a good explanation for why Rask appears to have suddenly morphed in to the greatest goaltender in NHL history.  Some will suggest the Pens once again got beat again by a hot goaltender, a theory I categorically dismiss.  Pretty much any top line NHL goalie is going to look that way when they are not dealing with screens, deflections and second chances.  Quite simply, the Penguins made Rask’s job far too easy.

From a macro standpoint, it tells you the biggest problem the Pittsburgh Penguins have as a team.  Namely, they are not tough enough.

Let me be clear on this, every member of that team is tougher than 99.9% of society at large.  I’m not questioning their heart or manhood.  Most people would not survive one day of what these warriors go through in the Stanley Cup playoffs. 

That does not change the fact that relative to the other ELITE teams in the NHL, the Penguins are simply not tough enough.  They play too much of a finesse game, in a league that no longer tolerates finesse.  We can argue until the end of time whether that’s the makes sense; I personally find it astounding how hard the NHL works to prevent its stars from being stars.  Regardless, we have to deal in reality.

Toughness has always been a prerequisite for post season success.  With the possible exception of Carolina in 2006, speedy perimeter skill teams do not win Stanley Cups.  As talented as the 2008-09 Penguins were what always stands out in my mind is how hard they battled in the finals against Detroit, especially in the last two games.

But in today’s NHL, toughness it’s more important than ever.  Even with all the changes introduced to maintain speed and flow in the game, the teams that succeed in the post season are the toughest to play against.  Defensive systems are more advanced than ever and talent and strategy is simply not enough to beat them.  You have to flat out work or better yet, out battle teams to beat them.

I simply did not see that compete level from the Penguins in this series, even in games 3 and 4.

Such commitment is absolutely possible from a high end skill hockey team.  It’s why the Chicago Blackhawks are in the Stanley Cup finals in spite of playing arguably the NHL’s toughest defensive team in the 3^rd round.  The LA Kings makes you work for every inch of open ice.  You cannot beat a team like that without talent but that talent must be willing to sell out 100% every night to do so.  Chicago matched LA’s work ethic, physicality and defensive presence throughout the series.  Ultimately their high end talent came to the forefront and made the difference in games 4 and 5.

The Penguins superior offensive talent makes them nearly invincible in the regular season; because most teams on most nights do not raise their work ethic to the same level they do in April and May.  They looked just as invincible in the first two rounds thanks to fortuitous match-ups with teams that gave their super skilled players an abundance of open ice to work with.  The problem was that when Boston forced them to earn their ice, they came up woefully short.

It took the Pens two embarrassing home losses before they realized how tough they would have to play in the conference finals.  And even when they figured in out in game three, they still demonstrated an alarming lack of net front presence and/or ability to win battles.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about Jarome Iginla being used improperly by Dan Bylsma.  What I have not heard enough of is how many times Iginla was knocked off the puck and/or lost a one on one battle in the offensive zone.

I also have not heard nearly enough about the frequent net front fly byes from Neal, Kunitz, and Morrow that were far too often the norm in this series.  For all the criticism of Evgeni Malkin, he fired 21 shots in 4 games and created numerous grade A scoring opportunities.  How many times did a Pittsburgh player skate right past a rebound Malkin created?  The Penguins simply had zero net front presence to finish it off. 

To that end, I put as much if not more blame on the Penguins power forwards and grinders than I do on the Crosby, Letang, and Malkin.  If you think I’m off base on this, consider that the Blackhawks are going to the Stanley Cup finals even though Jonathan Toews has just one goal in the post season.  Consider how critical Max Talbot, Matt Cooke, Tyler Kennedy, and even Miro Satan were to the Pens cup run in 2009.

Physicality was not the only issue; lack of discipline was every bit the concern.  Going back to the Islanders’ series I was bothered by the mind boggling number of defensive zone turnovers by the Penguins, especially Kris Letang.  I heard the Pens talk over and over about making smarter simpler plays.  And yet there was Letang in game 2, right after a critical penalty kill, making a horrendous and amateurish turnover that lead to a game changing goal.  The play was awful enough at face value; even worse when you consider the payoff for success was a potential Brooks Orpik breakaway.

That kind of mental error, which we saw over and over again, is inexcusable at this level.  I blame the players for failure to execute but also the coaching staff for not getting the message through.  Again, I concentrated on how the Blackhawks defense played game 5 against Los Angeles.  The Chicago backline is every bit as skilled as the Penguins and yet time after time after time they made smart simple clearing plays off the boards.  Credit the players but also credit Coach Joel Quenneville for getting the message through on how the team had to play.

If Bylsma is unemployed before next season, the lack of discipline repeatedly demonstrated by his players will be the primary reason.  What Ray Shero has to decide is did Bylsma fail to get the message across or does he have players who are unwilling to accept it?  That decision will determine whether Bylsma returns and/or Kris Letang gets the monster contract extension required to keep him in the Burgh.

Either way, it will make for a long and difficult offseason.  I refuse to call a final four appearance a complete failure but it’s unquestionably a disappointment.  As a result, the franchise is at a critical cross road.  Their problems are eminently fixable.  The question is how…and with whom.

The End of the Line for Marc-Andre Fleury

Over the years I’ve been a passionate supporter, and defender of Marc-Andre Fleury.

That has not always been easy given the legion of Fleury critics amongst both Penguin fans and the local and national media.  There were many who chose to blame Fleury for every Penguin ill while downplaying or even ignoring his contributions to their success.  I never understood it; especially when you combined Fleury’s track record of victories with his eminently likeable personality.

So let me start off by acknowledging what should be but is not assumed to be obvious; Marc-Andre Fleury was a critical component to the Penguins success over the past seven years.  More to the point, he was a critical component of back-to-back Stanley Cup finals runs and the franchise’s elusive 3^rd championship in 2009.  His game 7 saves on future hall of famers Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Lidstrom are rightfully considered the stuff of legend.

He was part of the foundation; a core superstar.  There was every reason to believe he would mind the nets in the Burgh for another decade.  And as we sit here today; I see it as unlikely he will be a Penguin next month.

Simply put, Marc-Andre Fleury is playing himself right out of Pittsburgh.

Another concession to the obvious; goaltending is fairly low on the list of reasons the Penguins were man handled by Boston in game 2.  Before we get to Fleury or Tomas Vokoun, a good hard look needs to be taken at Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin, and just about every other front line player on the roster.  The head coach and general manager are hardly above scrutiny either.

That does not change the fact that the Marc-Andre Fleury we once knew seems long gone, at least when the season becomes best 4 out of 7.  What remains is a goaltender with zero post season confidence, one that seems incapable of making even the most basic saves on a consistent basis.  It’s a stunning and perhaps unprecedented fall for an elite Pittsburgh athlete in my lifetime.

Fleury’s issues are not about physical ability and I think we all know it.  There are few goaltenders in hockey as athletically gifted as MAF; a point he continually demonstrates with superior regular season play.  Fleury’s critics like to point out the overall talent on the Penguins or his comparatively pedestrian statistics (excluding wins of course).  In so doing, they conveinently overlook the Penguins often lackadaisical approach to defense.  Does anybody truly believe that Brian Elliott would post a 1.95 goals against average playing for this team?

No, Fleury’s current post season issues are unequivocally between the ears.  His confidence seems to come undone after a bad goal or two and once it does his entire game breaks down. I’m not talking about struggling to control rebounds or giving up the occasional soft goal.  I’m talking about a goaltender that seems to lose even the most basic constructs of his position in the post season.  When you juxtapose that against his regular season play and early career playoff success, it’s impossible to come to any other conclusion.

The irony is that this is the exact criticism Fleury faced during the early part of his career; even though it was totally unfounded by the results on the ice.  I wrote an impassioned defense of Fleury after he lead the Penguins to the 2009 Cup pointing out that but for one bit of bad luck at the World Junior Championships, there was nothing in his actual resume that substantiated his reputation as a big game flake.  Fleury’s performance from 2006-07 through that 7^th game in Detroit was exemplary; especially given the team’s aforementioned aversion to strong defensive hockey.

You could make a convincing argument that Fleury’s post season play was trending downward in 2010 and 2011; although I maintain he played better in the hopeless Tampa series than he gets credit for.  In both the Montreal and Tampa series there was at least a debatable premise regarding Fleury’s level of culpability.  You could argue accurately that he was not the reason the Pens lost either series; but just as accurately that he did not consistently raise his level to be the difference maker.   I would distill it down to this; he was part of the problem in those losses but by no means the root of it.  

The issue the last two years is that the quality of his post season work is no longer debatable.  He’s gone from trending downward to a complete train wreck.  His play has become indefensible; in spite of meager efforts from his coach and teammates to do just that.  Keep in mind this critique is coming from an unabashed Fleury fan; one who was often branded an apologist in my persistent battles with his critics.

To be fair, the Penguins played HISTORICALLY bad defense in front of Fleury in last year’s loss to Philly.  They broke down first and he follow suit with a meltdown of his own.  This year he collapsed of his own volition, even if the team’s defensive work against the Islanders was less than inspired.  Vokoun’s strong performance in relief made that abundantly clear. 

My opinions about Vokoun’s abilities are also a matter of public record on this blog.  I’ve never thought him better than a second tier starter, if that.  Fleury at his best is the superior goaltender.  So it should not be taken lightly when I state that for better or for worse, Vokoun should be the only option the Penguins consider in goal the remainder of the post season, however long that should be. 

That is exactly how I expect this to play out. 

Dan Bylsma is smart enough not to bury a popular and accomplished veteran in the media and thus tends to downplays Fleury’s struggles at every turn.  In reality, I believe he’s lost all confidence in MAF, an issue no doubt compounded by concerns about his own jobs security.  No matter Bylsma’s public disposition on the topic or the journalistic meanderings of Puck Daddy and others, I cannot fathom that Fleury will start another game; barring injury to Vokoun.  The hope is that the team rediscovers its form and that Vokoun for lack of a better term can “Osgood” them to a championship.

I truly believe that last night was Fleury’s last shot.   In a game where the situation was already bleak he was given one last opportunity to resuscitate his game. The hope was that Fleury would rediscover his 2008/2009 post season form; or for that matter his 2013 regular season form, either of which is a better option than Vokoun.  Instead Fleury emphatically reaffirmed Bylsma’s decision to take away his net with another very shaky effort.

In the bigger picture, Fleury’s time in the Burgh is likely at its end.  The team as currently constructed is in the heart of their championship window.  They cannot support a goaltender who in back-to back years has demonstrated a profound inability to perform in the post season; let alone one who takes $5 Million annually off their salary cap.  The issue is magnified against the specter of another disappointing post season finish and the team’s imposing future contact obligations.  Kudos to Ray Shero for having the foresight to hedge his bets this season with Vokoun but realistically, he’s not the long-term answer either.

Fleury will land on his skates; he’s too talented not too.  And a new, lower pressure environment might be exactly what he needs to rebuild his fragile confidence.   I hope it happens for him, I just do not see it happening in the Burgh.