As a sports fan, there is nothing better than having your favorite team in the Super Bowl. It is so to speak, sports nirvana.
Unfortunately, as former Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz frequently reminded me, you do not get something for nothing in this life. The cost of that Super Bowl glory is the interminable two week wait leading up to it. One minute you are celebrating the thrill of reaching the summit of the sports mountain; the next you are stuck in a two week abyss of no football.
Compounding the misery is the non stop dissection of the event by the various and bloated talking football heads; supplemented by a steady does of rumor, innuendo, and pointless gossip. Everyone and their mother is on TV or the internet with their own useless analysis and meaningless predictions. Let’s face it, the average human being is not equipped to handle 14 days of Deion Sanders, Keyshawn Johnson, and Steve Marriucci.
The oversaturation of pointless news and gossip reached a historic low point today when it was reported as breaking news that Ben Roethlisberger was seen drinking with teammates at a piano bar on Tuesday night. Unless Ben singing under the influence is consider a potential felony this is a total non story. Unless of course its Super Bowl week.
Maybe I’m just spoiled after three Super Bowl trips in six years but I frankly can’t stand it. Fortunately I have the perfect cure. It’s called Pittsburgh Penguins hockey.
The Penguins are doing a phenomenal job keeping my mind of the Super Bowl week abyss. Instead of being immersed in the endless minutia of Super Bowl week, I’m watching perhaps the gutsiest regular season performance in the history of our beloved hockey team. And I’ll be doing so right up through Sunday afternoon. Instead of eight hours of senseless pre game babble, I’ll be watching Disco Dan’s boys taking on the hated Washington Crapital’s in a matinee special.
By all accounts, the Penguins should be in free fall right now. In case you did not get the memo, they have played the last ten games without the world’s best player, a young fellow named Crosby, and the last five games without his superstar sidekick Evgeni Malkin. To up the ante on Tuesday night, Jordan Staal decided to go all Brent Johnson and punch out a Ranger forward, thus earning an early shower.
If I had told you after the winter classic that the Pens would be without Sid for ten games and Geno for five of those games, would you in any way, shape, or form believed they would earn 13 points?
I’m not above admitting that I would not.
With this performance, the current group has redefined the image of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Our boys have always been thought of as a run and gun, offensive skill team. They’ve never been considered a team that wins games with defense, physicality and grit. At least until now.
All of a sudden the Pens are winning games because Max Talbot and Matt Cooke are running guys all over the ice, Zbynek Michalek and Brooks Orpik are dominating the defensive zone, and Brent Johnson is punching out Ricky DiPietro. Okay, the last part is more of a bonus parting gift but you get the point.
And think, some idiot on this blog keeps insisting that this team has too many grinders and not enough scoring wingers. Blasphemy.
Anyway.
Two months ago, I wrote a blog overflowing with praise for the Steelers brilliantly gritty victory in Baltimore. The game was the classic embodiment of Steeler football. The team battling for 60 minutes through a brutally physical encounter and all but willing themselves to victory. It was men pushing themselves beyond the limits of human endurance for nothing more than one regular season victory. I was so fired up afterwards that I could not sleep until 3am.
I had nearly the same feeling after the Penguins gutted out a 4-3 win at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night without their top four centers (including Mark Letestu). Oh and after spotting one of the league’s best goaltenders a 2-0 lead. The Pens just refused to quit, right up to the point where a rookie with less than ten games of experience scored the game winning goal in the shootout. It was quite frankly a “Steeler-like” performance.
I love the Steelers and the Penguins but I sometime marvel at how different they are. Steeler football is so emblematic of Pittsburgh. It’s about brutal physicality (except when it angers Roger Goodell), hard work, and an overwhelming desire and will to win. It’s rarely pretty; a fact we were comfortable with long before Mike Tomlin clarified that style points do not matter.
The Penguins on the other hand have been considered a brilliantly talented, finesse team pretty much from the day they were raised to prominence by a quiet French Canadian simply known as Le Magnifique. Go back and watch Hockey Night in Canada’s coverage of Lemieux’s mind numbing playoff goal against Ray Bourque and Boston in 1992. The announcer sums up the perception of Penguin hockey perfectly when he asks, “Have you ever seen such finesse?”
That’s not to suggest in any way that the Pens are not tough. Ulf Samuelsson was tough. Rich Tocchet was tough. Ryan Malone played a playoff series with a broken nose. We know all about the likes of Cooke, Brooks Orpik and Mike Rupp. Hockey players frequently play through injuries that would keep a good accountant in bed for weeks (hypothetically).
That said, when you think of the Steelers, you think of Jack Lambert or James Harrison, covered in blood and driving some poor running back through the turf. When you think of the Pens, you think of Lemieux’s Jagr, Crosby, and/or Malkin undressing some poor defensemen and humiliating the likes of John Casey, Andy Moog, or whatever AHL caliber goaltender is suiting up for Philadelphia.
Steeler fans prefer a 7-3 victory behind a dominant defense to a 40 point, 400 yard passing explosion. Penguin fans prefer that same 7-3 score, with Crosby and Malkin tallying 5 points each. It’s a shocking dichotomy in our sports preferences.
At least until now.
I pointed out last season that the Pens have become one of the toughest teams to play against in hockey. It’s not just because of Deryk Engelland dropping the gloves two out of three nights. It’s because of fast, physical forwards who pummel defensemen on the forecheck. It’s because of big, strong and mobile defensemen taking out guys in the defensive zone. Heck, even our back-up goaltender is tough.
And did I mention that the Penguins are the top penalty killing team in the NHL? The Pittsburgh Penguins? What next, the New Jersey Devils in last place?
This is not necessarily new, it’s just that nobody noticed until the team’s two offensive superstars went on the shelf. The Penguins are not scoring nearly as much without 87 and 71 but they have not changed their system one bit. They continue to dominate on the forecheck resulting in a huge disparity in zone time. They continue to choke off scoring chances when the puck is in their defensive zone (without trapping by the way). And offensively they are now opportunistic. Not a word frequently used to describe Penguin hockey over the last 25 years.
The result is some of the grittiest hockey in Penguin history. The gold standard to me remains games six and seven of the Stanley Cup finals against Detroit two years ago. That said, this is a close second and it’s being accomplished with $17.5 Million of all world production in the press box. I don’t know that I’ve ever been prouder of our boys.
Dan Bylsma has risen to another level as a coach. And let’s be honest, he set the bar pretty high to begin with. I hate to poach quotes from Mike Tomlin but I can almost picture Bylsma telling his injury riddled team, “the standard is the standard.” Of course it does not hurt that Marc-Andre Fleury is playing perhaps his best hockey ever; and has to just to stay ahead of Johnson.
Let me be clear on this. As impressive as this run is, the Penguins are not going deep in to the post season without a healthy Crosby and Malkin. And I still think the team needs one more offensive winger to win a cup. You need grit in the NHL but you also need guys who can put the puck in the back of the net. Alas, that’s a subject for another day.
For now, I’m just enjoying this remarkable display of Steeler style hockey from the Pens. The fact that it keeps Keyshawn off my television for the better part of the week is just an added bonus.
Showing posts with label Zbynek Michalek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zbynek Michalek. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The De-Evolution of the Pittsburgh Penguins
While most of the sports world was watching the latest incarnation of college football’s pretend national championship, I was enduring the Penguins second third period collapse against Boston in two months. The epic break down brought back painful flashbacks, though not so much to the previous incarnation in November.
No, I was flashing back to the late 1980s, or just about the time Sidney Crosby entered the world. In those days the Pittsburgh Penguins were plain and simply Mario Lemieux. If he did not dominate, the Pens did not win. If he did not play, the Pens did not have a chance.
We always understood that if the Pens were going to be more than a hockey carnival act, they needed to develop a core of great players around Lemieux. That process started in 1987 with Paul Coffey and continued as a spectacular array of stars and roll players were added over five seasons. Even with that, the Penguins evolved in to a true championship team only when they were good enough to win without Le Magnifique. They did that for half of the 1990-91 season and four critical playoff wins in the 1992 Cup run.
It’s a testament to Lemieux’s remarkable brilliance that we actually believed he could single handedly carry those mid 80s teams to Stanley Cup glory. Mario’s presence made a fairly mediocre team look playoff caliber on almost any given regular season night. We should not lose site of that reality as Crosby rekindles a Lemieux like dominance two decades later.
We are currently witnessing what might be called the de-evolution of the Penguins. The Penguins of early 90s slowly became less and less dependent on their superstar. The Penguins of the 2010s are slowly becoming more and more dependent on theirs. Witness their inept offensive performance without Crosby over the last three games.
To be honest, I’m not shocked by this development. The Crosby-less Penguins are being exposed for what they are, a team with way too many grinder forwards and not nearly enough scorers. The problem is compounded because neither Evgeni Malkin or Jordan Staal is playing anywhere near their ability offensively. Staal’s performance is partially excusable considering he is still recovering from injury. Geno’s continuing struggles are admittedly much harder to understand and significant part of my de-evolution theory.
Regardless, the Pens are fighting an uphill battle offensively. Watching these games without Crosby it’s not hard to understand why. No fewer than nine of the 12 forwards playing are 3rd or 4th line caliber. And that charitably assumes that Staal is a legitimate top six offensive forward which he has yet to conclusively demonstrate. You could reasonably argue that Malkin is the only top six offensive talent in the line-up right now.
This is the risk of building the team’s offense primarily around two superstars. Lose either one of them and the team takes a step backward. Lose Crosby and it’s a giant step.
To be fair, there was no way the Penguins were going to continue to play at their November and December level. A slip was inevitable with or without number 87. The team was playing close to perfect hockey, driven primarily by Crosby’s brilliant play during his 25 game scoring streak. Crosby’s work was as impressive an extended performance as I’ve seen in the NHL since Lemieux was last making a mockery of the game a decade ago.
And it was in no way sustainable.
It is not feasible in today’s NHL to win a Stanley Cup on the back of one superstar, no matter how incredible he is. Defensemen are too good and defensive systems are too strong. A team that depends offensively on one player is destined for an early playoff exit.
Its one thing to score eight goals on a random Wednesday night in January against Tampa. It’s quite another to score three or four in an elimination game at Philadelphia.
We’ve already seen Detroit and sadly Montreal contain or even shut down Crosby in a seven game series. Only once were the Penguins able to overcome this, in the 2009 finals. That occurred in large part because Malkin was performing as brilliantly as Crosby at that time. Notwithstanding that we have rarely seen that version of Geno over the last year and a half; it remains unreasonable to expect two players to continually carry this offense.
I’ve suspected this all season but it was masked by the team’s success and Sid’s other worldly play. Seeing the Penguins without Crosby has crystallized it in my mind. This team simply does not have enough offense to win a Stanley Cup. Every team needs a Max Talbot and a Matt Cooke to win a Stanley Cup; but you can’t win one with nine of them.
Now more than ever, I’m convinced that we will not see another Cup parade in the Burgh unless Ray Shero acquires a desperately needed scoring winger. I’m not talking about another Chris Kunitz, Ruslan Fedotenko or heaven forbid Alexie Ponikarovski. I’m talking about a player who is legitimate 30 goal scorer, whether he plays with Crosby or not.
It’s amazing to see what Crosby has done playing with Kunitz and Dupuis. Imagine what he could do if Dupuis were replaced by a legitimate sniper. Or perhaps Kunitz could drop down and give Malkin the power forward he’s been lacking since Ryan Malone took his talents to Tampa. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that Geno’s inconsistency started about the time he lost any semblance of a scoring winger to play with.
It would help matters if Staal could reach the next level offensively. Unfortunately through his 5th season, Staal has yet to consistently demonstrate elite offensive ability. He’s too young to write off in this category, especially given his injury, but with each passing year I’m less convinced he will be more than a 20 goal, 50 point guy.
That’s not a criticism of Staal, a truly elite two way talent. He brings tremendous value as perhaps the most dominant third line center in the game. That’s not the same as suggesting the Pens can move forward expecting him to be their third offensive pillar. I still hope Staal and Malkin can forge some offensive chemistry together but there has been little evidence of that so far.
Which further enforces the desperate need for Shero to find that scoring winger.
I give Shero credit for the remarkable job he did rebuilding the Penguins defense this offseason. I initially questioned the need to sign both Michalek and Martin as an excessive use of cap space. Seeing how good the Pens can be with those two plus Orpik and Letang at their best has put those questions to rest. That said, and with all due respect to Bobby Orr, teams in today’s NHL do not win championships on the backs of their offensive defensemen.
The Penguins have one truly movable chip in Alex Goligoski and he will likely be part of any deal. We can debate how good Goligoski is or is not. I continue to see him Ryan Whitney part II but I recognize this is not a consensus opinion. What we can not debate is that Kris Letang has made Goligoski expendable and that Gogo is the one Penguin who could legitimately attract a top caliber forward without breaking up the team’s core. Of course another forward will have to be thrown in for roster and cap considerations.
It’s easy to look at the Penguins strong play in November and December and conclude that I’m panicking over three bad games. I assure you that is not the case. The goal of this Penguin team is the Stanley Cup, nothing less. Crosby and Malkin (at his best) can carry this team to a 110 point regular season and the second round of the playoffs but not all the way to the cup. Not with this supporting cast of forwards. For the Penguins that would be considered a staggering failure.
I’m comforted that Ray Shero knows this and is patiently waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. I’ve developed a tremendous amount of faith in his ability to recognize and address his team’s needs. With some general managers I would be concerned about over valuing Goligoski or putting too much credence in the Pens strong early season play. I truly believe Shero sees beyond that to the bigger picture.
Of course it will be easy to forget all this when Crosby returns. The team will start scoring and winning again leading to the easy conclusion that they are fine as long as he’s in the line-up. And they are, for 82 games and two rounds of the playoffs. What will they do if Babcock, Zetterberg and the Wings show up in the finals to clutch and grab Sid in to submission? What will they do if Sid slumps? What will they do if he gets hurt as Lemieux did in 1992?
No, I was flashing back to the late 1980s, or just about the time Sidney Crosby entered the world. In those days the Pittsburgh Penguins were plain and simply Mario Lemieux. If he did not dominate, the Pens did not win. If he did not play, the Pens did not have a chance.
We always understood that if the Pens were going to be more than a hockey carnival act, they needed to develop a core of great players around Lemieux. That process started in 1987 with Paul Coffey and continued as a spectacular array of stars and roll players were added over five seasons. Even with that, the Penguins evolved in to a true championship team only when they were good enough to win without Le Magnifique. They did that for half of the 1990-91 season and four critical playoff wins in the 1992 Cup run.
It’s a testament to Lemieux’s remarkable brilliance that we actually believed he could single handedly carry those mid 80s teams to Stanley Cup glory. Mario’s presence made a fairly mediocre team look playoff caliber on almost any given regular season night. We should not lose site of that reality as Crosby rekindles a Lemieux like dominance two decades later.
We are currently witnessing what might be called the de-evolution of the Penguins. The Penguins of early 90s slowly became less and less dependent on their superstar. The Penguins of the 2010s are slowly becoming more and more dependent on theirs. Witness their inept offensive performance without Crosby over the last three games.
To be honest, I’m not shocked by this development. The Crosby-less Penguins are being exposed for what they are, a team with way too many grinder forwards and not nearly enough scorers. The problem is compounded because neither Evgeni Malkin or Jordan Staal is playing anywhere near their ability offensively. Staal’s performance is partially excusable considering he is still recovering from injury. Geno’s continuing struggles are admittedly much harder to understand and significant part of my de-evolution theory.
Regardless, the Pens are fighting an uphill battle offensively. Watching these games without Crosby it’s not hard to understand why. No fewer than nine of the 12 forwards playing are 3rd or 4th line caliber. And that charitably assumes that Staal is a legitimate top six offensive forward which he has yet to conclusively demonstrate. You could reasonably argue that Malkin is the only top six offensive talent in the line-up right now.
This is the risk of building the team’s offense primarily around two superstars. Lose either one of them and the team takes a step backward. Lose Crosby and it’s a giant step.
To be fair, there was no way the Penguins were going to continue to play at their November and December level. A slip was inevitable with or without number 87. The team was playing close to perfect hockey, driven primarily by Crosby’s brilliant play during his 25 game scoring streak. Crosby’s work was as impressive an extended performance as I’ve seen in the NHL since Lemieux was last making a mockery of the game a decade ago.
And it was in no way sustainable.
It is not feasible in today’s NHL to win a Stanley Cup on the back of one superstar, no matter how incredible he is. Defensemen are too good and defensive systems are too strong. A team that depends offensively on one player is destined for an early playoff exit.
Its one thing to score eight goals on a random Wednesday night in January against Tampa. It’s quite another to score three or four in an elimination game at Philadelphia.
We’ve already seen Detroit and sadly Montreal contain or even shut down Crosby in a seven game series. Only once were the Penguins able to overcome this, in the 2009 finals. That occurred in large part because Malkin was performing as brilliantly as Crosby at that time. Notwithstanding that we have rarely seen that version of Geno over the last year and a half; it remains unreasonable to expect two players to continually carry this offense.
I’ve suspected this all season but it was masked by the team’s success and Sid’s other worldly play. Seeing the Penguins without Crosby has crystallized it in my mind. This team simply does not have enough offense to win a Stanley Cup. Every team needs a Max Talbot and a Matt Cooke to win a Stanley Cup; but you can’t win one with nine of them.
Now more than ever, I’m convinced that we will not see another Cup parade in the Burgh unless Ray Shero acquires a desperately needed scoring winger. I’m not talking about another Chris Kunitz, Ruslan Fedotenko or heaven forbid Alexie Ponikarovski. I’m talking about a player who is legitimate 30 goal scorer, whether he plays with Crosby or not.
It’s amazing to see what Crosby has done playing with Kunitz and Dupuis. Imagine what he could do if Dupuis were replaced by a legitimate sniper. Or perhaps Kunitz could drop down and give Malkin the power forward he’s been lacking since Ryan Malone took his talents to Tampa. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that Geno’s inconsistency started about the time he lost any semblance of a scoring winger to play with.
It would help matters if Staal could reach the next level offensively. Unfortunately through his 5th season, Staal has yet to consistently demonstrate elite offensive ability. He’s too young to write off in this category, especially given his injury, but with each passing year I’m less convinced he will be more than a 20 goal, 50 point guy.
That’s not a criticism of Staal, a truly elite two way talent. He brings tremendous value as perhaps the most dominant third line center in the game. That’s not the same as suggesting the Pens can move forward expecting him to be their third offensive pillar. I still hope Staal and Malkin can forge some offensive chemistry together but there has been little evidence of that so far.
Which further enforces the desperate need for Shero to find that scoring winger.
I give Shero credit for the remarkable job he did rebuilding the Penguins defense this offseason. I initially questioned the need to sign both Michalek and Martin as an excessive use of cap space. Seeing how good the Pens can be with those two plus Orpik and Letang at their best has put those questions to rest. That said, and with all due respect to Bobby Orr, teams in today’s NHL do not win championships on the backs of their offensive defensemen.
The Penguins have one truly movable chip in Alex Goligoski and he will likely be part of any deal. We can debate how good Goligoski is or is not. I continue to see him Ryan Whitney part II but I recognize this is not a consensus opinion. What we can not debate is that Kris Letang has made Goligoski expendable and that Gogo is the one Penguin who could legitimately attract a top caliber forward without breaking up the team’s core. Of course another forward will have to be thrown in for roster and cap considerations.
It’s easy to look at the Penguins strong play in November and December and conclude that I’m panicking over three bad games. I assure you that is not the case. The goal of this Penguin team is the Stanley Cup, nothing less. Crosby and Malkin (at his best) can carry this team to a 110 point regular season and the second round of the playoffs but not all the way to the cup. Not with this supporting cast of forwards. For the Penguins that would be considered a staggering failure.
I’m comforted that Ray Shero knows this and is patiently waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. I’ve developed a tremendous amount of faith in his ability to recognize and address his team’s needs. With some general managers I would be concerned about over valuing Goligoski or putting too much credence in the Pens strong early season play. I truly believe Shero sees beyond that to the bigger picture.
Of course it will be easy to forget all this when Crosby returns. The team will start scoring and winning again leading to the easy conclusion that they are fine as long as he’s in the line-up. And they are, for 82 games and two rounds of the playoffs. What will they do if Babcock, Zetterberg and the Wings show up in the finals to clutch and grab Sid in to submission? What will they do if Sid slumps? What will they do if he gets hurt as Lemieux did in 1992?
Without another elite offensive player, they will lose.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Saying Goodbye to the Sarge
Every once in awhile in sports, a free agent defection or trade really gets to me. Even when I know it’s inevitable.
I was pretty sure Sergei Gonchar’s days in the Burgh were numbered when the Pens announced a contract extension for Kris Letang last spring. My belief strengthened each time Ray Shero commented about impasse between the two sides and I was all but certain after the Pens ill fated, but harmless acquisition of Dan Hamhuis last week. And yet with all that in mind, I still felt a tug in my heart this afternoon when I read that Sergei was officially a Senator.
I can’t really explain this but over the last five years, Gonchar has become one of my favorite Penguins of all time. There is a quiet, simple professionalism about how he does his job that I really admire. Excepting one truly out of character moment in Minnesota last year, I truly can not remember an on or off ice outburst from him, even after absorbing a grossly negligent cheap shot from the Great 8 that nearly knocked him out of the 2009 playoffs.
What I do remember is a remarkable two way defensemen who never got enough credit for what he did at either end of the ice. I remember a guy who was known for his offense but was every bit as critical for his defense. I remember how Pittsburgh, in a fit of hockey naiveté and impatience almost ran out of town during the waning dark days of Patrick and Edzo in 2005. There in lies another bit of gratitude we owe the world’s angriest French Canadian who saved Gonchar’ career in the Burgh by installing of all things…a system.
I said this before and I’ll say it again. No Gonchar, no cup. It’s that simple.
To be clear, I fully endorsed signing Letang, who at a very young age has become a terrific two way defenseman. Moreover, I don’t think the Pens directly prioritized Letang over Gonchar. I think Sergei dictated the situation. At 36 years of age, he was not going to tank a year of guaranteed money or give a home town discount; no matter how much he enjoys playing with Sid and Geno.
I devoted two separate blogs last year to the Gonchar dilemma. I suggested that it might be the most difficult decision Ray Shero has faced as general manager of the Pens. I’ll take it a step further and say the next few days could go a long way towards determining whether the Penguins continue to compete for Stanley Cups during this four year window.
And I stand by this comment that I’ve written in multiple blog entries. Over the last four years, Sergei Gonchar was the most underrated player in the national hockey league.
The Pens were quite literally a different team without Gonchar in the line-up. Their overall record, goals for, goals against, and power play percentage were remarkably better with Gonchar in the line-up. We’re not talking about small margins here either, the numbers were astounding. The Pens were basically a 500 team without Gonchar and a Stanley Cup champion and two time finalist with him.
None of which erases the fact that Gonchar is 36 years old and showing initial signs of decline in his game. He’s had significant injury issues the last two years and his performance against Montreal in the playoffs was, to say the least, underwhelming (which leaves him in good company with about 18 other players). Gonchar could have a fabulous season this year in Ottawa but if he starts to decline the following year it’s a problem. The Senators either have enough cap space or are desperate enough to take that risk. The Penguins do not and are not.
Offensive defensemen tend to fade when they get above 35. Niklas Lidstrom is a freak of nature but most others simply can not maintain their game that long. Look no further than Scott Neidermyer who retired this year at 36 (robbing the NHL of perhaps its single greatest playoff beard). I can argue with conviction that Gonchar is critical to the Pens success and they will struggle to replace him. Alas the Gonchar they need may not exist anymore. Time waits for nobody in professional sports.
So I will concede that from a logical, intelligent, numbers driven position, the Penguins probably made the right move. Emphasis on probably. Still, I can’t help but think that a little bit of their heart and sole, not too mention a good bit of their transition game just skated north of the boarder.
Give Ray Shero credit for not getting left at the alter. He made an aggressive move first with Hamhuis and then to sign Zbynek Michalek. Even as I'm set to publish this, rumors are floating around about the Pens signing Paul Martin. Martin is a solid player and I’ll be writing a full blog on Michalek just as soon as Filoni tells me who he is. That being said, neither is likely to replace Gonchar’s offense.
That task will fall to Letang and/or Alex Whitneygoski. I continue to marvel at Letang’s offensive potential but I also question whether he will ever fully realize it. It’s not a crime if he continues to improve defensively but never becomes a Gonchar style power play QB, but the potential is clearly there. For better or for worse, the same is true for Gogo but as you may have guessed, he is already giving me intensely painful Ryan Whitney flashbacks. We need to see some significant improvement to buy off on him in Gonchar’s role.
That being said, it’s time for both players to sit at the grown-ups table. Gonchar’s presence in the line-up allowed each to dip their feet in the pool without diving in. Letang could get away with being a second point man and Goligoski could get away with turning the puck over 20 feet in front of MAF. Those days are now over. If the Pens want to get reacquainted with Lord Stanley’s Cup in the near future, one or both has to take a major step forward in their development. It should surprise nobody that my money is on Letang, or neither, over Gogo.
Taking the realities of the salary cap world out of the equation, the one and only good thing about losing Gonchar is that it's forcing the Pens to reshape their roster a bit. You do not overhaul a team that’s 12 months removed from back to back Stanley Cup finals but you also can’t stand pat forever. The defense clearly needed a rebuild after last year's mediocre performance and Shero seems fully intent on providing it. Good for him. As we learned in 1992, even championship teams have to keep evolving.
Alas, that's a discussion for another day.
For now, let's just take time to give the Sarge his due for five brilliant season's in a Penguin uniform. The Gonchar signing truly is the best move Craig Patrick made during his ten year, Penguin sponsored, on the job retirement (unless you count not tripping Sidney Crosby on the podium at the 2005 draft). For my money, his name belongs in the pantheon of Penguin greats, albeit one step below the legends (Lemieux, Jagr, Crosby, Malkin, Barrasso, etc).
Gonchar was this generation’s Larry Murphy. A guy who did so many things right on an off the ice and rarely got the credit he deserved. He was every bit as critical to this team’s success as Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Staal, maybe more so in some cases. I truly hope Penguin fans understand and respect that and give Gonchar a standing ovation when he makes his first trip to new energy barn. I beg of my fellow Penguin supporters, no Hossa treatment for the Sarge.
So for now, let’s take time out to say thanks to the Sarge. Thanks for being the one Penguin defenseman who could break a forecheck in the 2007 playoffs. Thanks for being Geno’s translator and NHL mentor. Thanks for logging 25 minutes a night, often against the other team’s top forwards, and yet always taking second fiddle to 87 and 71. Thanks for playing through injury in both the 2008 and 2009 playoffs including Ovie’s cheap shot. Thanks for staying calm and delivering key power play goals when we needed them.
To paraphrase the immortal Don Corleone, we wish you the best of luck in Ottawa Gonch, so long as your interests do not conflict with ours. The Penguins must now start the difficult task of replacing you in the line-up. The rest of us can focus on learning how to pronounce Zbynek.
I was pretty sure Sergei Gonchar’s days in the Burgh were numbered when the Pens announced a contract extension for Kris Letang last spring. My belief strengthened each time Ray Shero commented about impasse between the two sides and I was all but certain after the Pens ill fated, but harmless acquisition of Dan Hamhuis last week. And yet with all that in mind, I still felt a tug in my heart this afternoon when I read that Sergei was officially a Senator.
I can’t really explain this but over the last five years, Gonchar has become one of my favorite Penguins of all time. There is a quiet, simple professionalism about how he does his job that I really admire. Excepting one truly out of character moment in Minnesota last year, I truly can not remember an on or off ice outburst from him, even after absorbing a grossly negligent cheap shot from the Great 8 that nearly knocked him out of the 2009 playoffs.
What I do remember is a remarkable two way defensemen who never got enough credit for what he did at either end of the ice. I remember a guy who was known for his offense but was every bit as critical for his defense. I remember how Pittsburgh, in a fit of hockey naiveté and impatience almost ran out of town during the waning dark days of Patrick and Edzo in 2005. There in lies another bit of gratitude we owe the world’s angriest French Canadian who saved Gonchar’ career in the Burgh by installing of all things…a system.
I said this before and I’ll say it again. No Gonchar, no cup. It’s that simple.
To be clear, I fully endorsed signing Letang, who at a very young age has become a terrific two way defenseman. Moreover, I don’t think the Pens directly prioritized Letang over Gonchar. I think Sergei dictated the situation. At 36 years of age, he was not going to tank a year of guaranteed money or give a home town discount; no matter how much he enjoys playing with Sid and Geno.
I devoted two separate blogs last year to the Gonchar dilemma. I suggested that it might be the most difficult decision Ray Shero has faced as general manager of the Pens. I’ll take it a step further and say the next few days could go a long way towards determining whether the Penguins continue to compete for Stanley Cups during this four year window.
And I stand by this comment that I’ve written in multiple blog entries. Over the last four years, Sergei Gonchar was the most underrated player in the national hockey league.
The Pens were quite literally a different team without Gonchar in the line-up. Their overall record, goals for, goals against, and power play percentage were remarkably better with Gonchar in the line-up. We’re not talking about small margins here either, the numbers were astounding. The Pens were basically a 500 team without Gonchar and a Stanley Cup champion and two time finalist with him.
None of which erases the fact that Gonchar is 36 years old and showing initial signs of decline in his game. He’s had significant injury issues the last two years and his performance against Montreal in the playoffs was, to say the least, underwhelming (which leaves him in good company with about 18 other players). Gonchar could have a fabulous season this year in Ottawa but if he starts to decline the following year it’s a problem. The Senators either have enough cap space or are desperate enough to take that risk. The Penguins do not and are not.
Offensive defensemen tend to fade when they get above 35. Niklas Lidstrom is a freak of nature but most others simply can not maintain their game that long. Look no further than Scott Neidermyer who retired this year at 36 (robbing the NHL of perhaps its single greatest playoff beard). I can argue with conviction that Gonchar is critical to the Pens success and they will struggle to replace him. Alas the Gonchar they need may not exist anymore. Time waits for nobody in professional sports.
So I will concede that from a logical, intelligent, numbers driven position, the Penguins probably made the right move. Emphasis on probably. Still, I can’t help but think that a little bit of their heart and sole, not too mention a good bit of their transition game just skated north of the boarder.
Give Ray Shero credit for not getting left at the alter. He made an aggressive move first with Hamhuis and then to sign Zbynek Michalek. Even as I'm set to publish this, rumors are floating around about the Pens signing Paul Martin. Martin is a solid player and I’ll be writing a full blog on Michalek just as soon as Filoni tells me who he is. That being said, neither is likely to replace Gonchar’s offense.
That task will fall to Letang and/or Alex Whitneygoski. I continue to marvel at Letang’s offensive potential but I also question whether he will ever fully realize it. It’s not a crime if he continues to improve defensively but never becomes a Gonchar style power play QB, but the potential is clearly there. For better or for worse, the same is true for Gogo but as you may have guessed, he is already giving me intensely painful Ryan Whitney flashbacks. We need to see some significant improvement to buy off on him in Gonchar’s role.
That being said, it’s time for both players to sit at the grown-ups table. Gonchar’s presence in the line-up allowed each to dip their feet in the pool without diving in. Letang could get away with being a second point man and Goligoski could get away with turning the puck over 20 feet in front of MAF. Those days are now over. If the Pens want to get reacquainted with Lord Stanley’s Cup in the near future, one or both has to take a major step forward in their development. It should surprise nobody that my money is on Letang, or neither, over Gogo.
Taking the realities of the salary cap world out of the equation, the one and only good thing about losing Gonchar is that it's forcing the Pens to reshape their roster a bit. You do not overhaul a team that’s 12 months removed from back to back Stanley Cup finals but you also can’t stand pat forever. The defense clearly needed a rebuild after last year's mediocre performance and Shero seems fully intent on providing it. Good for him. As we learned in 1992, even championship teams have to keep evolving.
Alas, that's a discussion for another day.
For now, let's just take time to give the Sarge his due for five brilliant season's in a Penguin uniform. The Gonchar signing truly is the best move Craig Patrick made during his ten year, Penguin sponsored, on the job retirement (unless you count not tripping Sidney Crosby on the podium at the 2005 draft). For my money, his name belongs in the pantheon of Penguin greats, albeit one step below the legends (Lemieux, Jagr, Crosby, Malkin, Barrasso, etc).
Gonchar was this generation’s Larry Murphy. A guy who did so many things right on an off the ice and rarely got the credit he deserved. He was every bit as critical to this team’s success as Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Staal, maybe more so in some cases. I truly hope Penguin fans understand and respect that and give Gonchar a standing ovation when he makes his first trip to new energy barn. I beg of my fellow Penguin supporters, no Hossa treatment for the Sarge.
So for now, let’s take time out to say thanks to the Sarge. Thanks for being the one Penguin defenseman who could break a forecheck in the 2007 playoffs. Thanks for being Geno’s translator and NHL mentor. Thanks for logging 25 minutes a night, often against the other team’s top forwards, and yet always taking second fiddle to 87 and 71. Thanks for playing through injury in both the 2008 and 2009 playoffs including Ovie’s cheap shot. Thanks for staying calm and delivering key power play goals when we needed them.
To paraphrase the immortal Don Corleone, we wish you the best of luck in Ottawa Gonch, so long as your interests do not conflict with ours. The Penguins must now start the difficult task of replacing you in the line-up. The rest of us can focus on learning how to pronounce Zbynek.
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