The Mike Johnston Watch has officially restarted. Indeed, in the wake of Saturday’s dismal 4-0 drubbing at the hands of New Jersey—one of the worst inflicted on a Penguins team in years—MJ may want to dust off his resume. Or deny any association with the team.
Talk about lifeless. The Penguins could’ve saved ownership some bucks by seeking a refund for their plane tickets and forfeiting the game. Which they pretty much did upon taking the ice.
Out-hit, out-shot, outhustled. A stinko effort in every way. Worthy of a player’s only meeting afterward.
“We didn’t compete,” Sidney Crosby said in an understatement of the highest magnitude. “We didn’t deserve to win.”
Evgeni Malkin agreed.
“We’re not playing right,” Geno said. “We’re not working hard. I know it’s tough right now. We’re mad at each other. We need to stop, look in the mirror and start working. We’re not working.”
Ron Burkle and Mario Lemieux can’t be pleased. They’re not shelling out top dollar for a high-profile core of Crosby, Malkin and Phil Kessel to watch them languish.
Heck, it’s as if the team’s goal is to score a goal. That just shouldn’t be. Not with the talent the Pens possess.
Nearing the quarter-pole of the season, Johnston and his staff are still groping for answers. As if the team’s paucity of production and anemic power play are part of some vast, unsolvable cosmic riddle.
They’d better find some solutions. Pronto. Even it means loosening the reins on the stars. After all, Lemieux didn’t amass 1723 career points by playing both ends of the ice. He cherry-picked, but plenty. Johnston needs to cut the erstwhile Two-Headed Monster—Crosby and Malkin—some slack instead of shackling them to a 200-foot game.
If he can’t, he needs to go.
It’s ironic that while our Penguins sputter the Devils overachieve. That’s because rookie head coach John Hynes has them playing spirited, aggressive hockey.
You remember Hynes. The fellow who squeezed the most from modestly talented Baby Pens squads for five years before being hired away by former Pens GM Ray Shero. Toiling anonymously right under our collective noses.
Just like Bobby Farnham, the spunky winger who pitchforked the Pens with the Devils’ third goal. A goal that sucked the life out of his former team and drew him even with Crosby in terms of production.
Back to our Pens. It’s true a coach can only do so much. However, responsibility for the Penguins’ shoddy play ultimately falls on Johnston and his assistants. MJ bought some time with the black and gold’s earlier turnaround. But make no mistake.
The clock is ticking.
Well with GM Rutherford mortgaging the future to win now( which I didn’t agree with ) even if MJ is fired, the same players are still in place and no matter how many times you polish a piece of poop, it’s still a piece of poop!!
Pen’s 4ever….
I agree 100 %. This team has a lot more issues than just getting a new Coach.Rutherford and Shero before him had this ” win now at all costs and let the future worry about itself “. Mario’s plan. Well that plan backfired and the future is here now and it ain”t pretty.
Sid got 2 goals, 7 assists,Geno has 4 goals and 8 assists in 17 games.
Kane has 13 goals and 15 assists and Benn has 12 goals and 13 assists in 16 games.Big difference in stats.Our guys are getting older and the young guns are taken over.The NHL is changing and we are being left behind.
But some believe if we just had a new Coach, we would magically be in the Cup Finals. Haha… Your just putting Lipstick on a Pig and trying to win the Miss America beauty contest.
I realize that there are some areas of concern with this hockey team. The coaching staff, the effort, the superstars,the lack of consistency. These things all lead into the biggest reason for their lack of success. Their inability to score on the power play. If they could just generate the offense that a power play with the talent that they have should. They would win more hockey games.
Yes, I think that they should be playing better. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that only the Canadiens and Rangers are having better seasons to this point.
C’mon boys, start scoring on the PP, and the fans will get back behind you.
Hey Horse, If it was just an individual player or two having trouble, that would be more of a player thing. This is pretty much the whole team. That would be coaches. Whether they are not motivating them, their system isn’t working, whatever, it is the coaches fault.
Not sure about just the Habs & Rangers having a better season. The Pens are in the very last wild card spot of the playoff race. There are only three teams in the entire league that have scored less goals & the Pens highest paid power play in the league is second to last with only Arizona being worst.
On a side note, the Penguins have a great puck moving, powerplay scoring defenseman in WBS that played half a season here last year. He has 3 goals, 10 points in 12 games. (he may or may not have a tiny drinking problem) Malkin leads the Pens with 12 points in 17 games.
He needs to go this experiment didn’t work
Alex Book
Hey, we have great puck possession guys… let’s play dump and chase. Hey, we have great goal scorers and play makers, let’s be the best defensive team in the league. Hey… I’m Mike Johnston, and I have no fucking clue where my own asshole is, but I’m told it’s where I store my head.
YEAH!!!!
On top of my kazillion problems I’ve noticed with the coaching staff, I have another. This staff was supposed to be able to make in game changes blah blah blah. Which was all crap from the get go. After watching the 36.5 million dollar Powerplay interminably fail for 3 weeks all of the sudden they decided that in between back to back games on a road trip was the best time to change it?
It is not just Johnston that needs to go. Tocchet and Jacques Martin should be sent packing. I usually like to have a suggestion for replacement coaches but I really don’t know what the coaching answer is right now, I just know the problem.
The WBS Pens just won an all time team record 10th game in a row. That is something to think about.
I hear ya’ Phil. Even when we were winning, we didn’t look all that good doing it. The Pens could easily be 7-10 instead of the other way around.
In my mind, a good coach should be able to adjust his style to fit the talent at his disposal. Not the other way around. With Johnston, you get the impression that he keeps trying to pound the proverbial square peg into a round hole. And it’s just not working.
While I was a sometimes critic of Dan Bylsma, there was no denying our stars thrived under him. And everybody looked like they were having fun. Nobody (including MJ) looks like they’re having fun now. Indeed, everyone looks perpetually tight and grim—like they’ve been forced to suck on a case of lemons. Hardly conducive to developing any kind of creative flow or rhythm. Which the Penguins most assuredly lack.
Like you, I don’t know who the Pens would get as a replacement. When rumors started swirling about three weeks ago that Johnston might be replaced, the only name I heard was Brent Sutter, who coached with some success at New Jersey and Calgary (.584 PTS%). Others who might be available? Randy Carlyle and Ron Wilson, although I don’t think either would be a very good fit.
In the end, JR might be better off promoting Mike Sullivan from Wilkes-Barre (al a Bylsma in ’09) as you suggest. The Baby Pens are thriving under him. And he does have some success as an NHL coach (first place finish with the Bruins in ’03-04).
Ironically, his playing career stat line reads a lot like Bylsma’s.
If the Pens decide to move, they need to do it soon. You get the feeling that the core players are really starting to chafe under Johnston.
Rick, maybe the core group is part of the problem as well. Remember,everyone complained about Disco Dan and demanded a change.Well as the old saying goes”be careful for what you wish for”. You got a change all right…..Now a lot of fans wished they had Dan back. We all have such short memories.
One point I want to add,is that the media reported that after the Devils game,the players had a meeting among themselves.Geno came out and said that the team is not happy with each other.Not working together. I do not ever remember a time when a super star player came out and implied that the Team was not happy with each other. If that is true, and I believe that is the truth, it is now time for a new coach.Replace all of the coaches as Phil said. Clean house and start over. 20 games into the season and this is happening? Not good.
Also I would trade one of our super stars. I do not care which one. Make a real change.Package up some of the dead wood on the roster at the same time.Get some young talent in return. You need a center man,a winger and at least one d- man in the trade. ( Taylor Hall,Darnell Nurse,Leon Draisaitl and a first round pick or maybe a Nick Bjugstad, Jonathan Huberdeau, Aaron Ekblad and a first round pick.) That kind of impact trade.
Other wise, a new coach will have the same old horses and nothing will change.With a new offensive style of coaching you might get an extra goal a game if you open up the play,but with this group of players you could also get 2 more scored against you.Especially with this d corps. They are not physical enough to handle the big boys and Letang and Crosby can get thrown off their game by continuous checking.
Otherwise it will be a long winter for all of us.
Thanks…
Hey Jim,
Amen about the short memories. I was one of the people who carped about the lack of structure under Dan Bylsma. Now? I’d take him back in a heartbeat. I’ve caught a couple of Buffalo games, and the Sabres look upbeat and energized. The way we used to look.
Be careful what you wish for, indeed …
I don’t know if it’s time to trade a superstar just yet. Honestly, I think a coaching change is the first order of business. See how the team (and stars) respond, and go from there.
In terms of the players you’d like to acquire, you certainly have a keen eye for young talent. But I think we need to keep in mind our potential trading partner’s perspective, too. Would you really want to part with a rising young (and cheaper) player to acquire, by all appearances, a fading (and expensive) former superstar with a lot of mileage on him? And pick up some dead wood, to boot? I don’t think many teams are apt to bite on that …
Conversely, if you’re the team trading a superstar, you want to be sure you get value in return. Remember when we traded Jaromir Jagr to the Caps? We got Kris Beech, Ross Lupaschuk, and Michal Sivek.
None of those guys panned out.
Well said.. Maybe I am a bit over zealous in my wanting to get new talent…. The proper words should be “the right talent”.
thanks
Believe me Jim, I’d love to have any or all of the kids you mentioned … 🙂
It’s just that I don’t think their current teams would be too anxious to part with them … 🙁
Hey Rick,
All good stuff, as usual. I’m late to the table here, and have the hindsight of last nights win against the Wild, which was nice, but we aren’t crowing yet. It’s a long road back, and who knows which Pens team comes down the runway Thursday?
Lots of press, of course, about Malkin’s statements after the New Jersey embarrassment, and the usual spin from the Pens PR machine. Regardless of whether Malkin understands the English language or not, he got it right. The only way this team gets fixed is on the ice, by the players themselves. New coach, old coach, no coach… It doesn’t matter. As a professional hockey player, in the NHL, you don’t get paid to like the coach, you get paid to play a game you claim to love, and play it to your full potential. Anything less than that is inexcusable no matter who’s behind the bench.
Hey 55 on Point,
Always nice to hear from you. And thanks for the compliment … 🙂
I was really dismayed at the team’s abysmal “effort” (if you can call it that) against the Devils. Every team plays a bad game once in a while. Unavoidable over a grueling 82-game schedule. But to basically just roll over onto your collective backs as a team and kick your legs up in submission?
Humiliating. And inexcusable.
Switching tracks, I continue to have mixed feelings about Mike Johnston. On one hand, every time he has his back to the wall he impresses me with his response. I like the way he called the team out after the New Jersey debacle. I also like the fact that he doesn’t seem to be concerned about job security. Or winning pretty. As I’d written in an earlier post, MJ’s got character. And that’s a very underrated and at times … underappreciated … attribute.
At the same time, you simply can’t have your core players languishing the way they are. Sooner or later, a coach has to be held accountable for that. At least to some degree. And I continue to scratch my head over some of his personnel decisions. Why Adam Clendening has only dressed for only two games is beyond me. The kid has some ability. For goodness sakes, he needs to play.
Same with Plotnikov. I know he’s been a bit of a disappointment. But he can’t score from the press box.
Turning the page, it was great to watch the Pens bounce back against the Wild. And even better to see Malkin break out with a 4-point game. He seems to be taking charge and, perhaps, emerging as the team’s true leader.
Now if we could just get Sid off the schneid …