Can the Penguins be Fixed?

I’ll open this post with a statement worthy of Captain Obvious. Our Penguins are in trouble. They’ve lost three in a row, four out of five, and eight of their last 13. Since a scintillating overtime triumph over Winnipeg on October 26, they’re 9-11-2.

Coach Mike Sullivan has tried everything in his power to snap his troops out of the doldrums. He’s preached, beseeched and surely kicked some fannies, while juggling lines with the adroitness of a circus performer. He’s tried everything short of switching his forwards to defense and vice versa. Nothing’s worked.

General manager Jim Rutherford’s been patient, resisting the urge to make changes simply for the sake of change. But the team is spinning its wheels. And the clock on the season is ticking down, while precious points slip away.

If ever a hockey team appears to need fixin’, it’s our Pens. The question is, how to proceed.

Here are a few divergent approaches. Each with its rewards and pitfalls.

Blow It Up

As the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. After a brilliant 10-year run that included three Stanley Cups and four trips to the Final, have our Penguins finally exceeded their shelf life? Has the mix grown so stale that it can’t possibly be resuscitated?

If so, perhaps it’s time to blow the team up and undergo a full-scale rebuild. Under the scorched-earth approach, just about everyone save for Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel and Matt Murray would be fair game.

Notice I didn’t include such mainstays as Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin in the protected group.

Peddling superstars like ‘Geno’ and ‘Tanger’ is a dicey proposition, roughly akin to a black art. But such moves could potentially provide the Pens with an influx of young talent and/or draft picks, as well as some much-needed salary cap relief.

It’s a high-risk approach for sure, one with a precipitous downside. Misjudge the return, and in one fell swoop you can kiss the present and future fortunes of your hockey club goodbye. Just like in 2001, when we dealt Jaromir Jagr to Washington for Kris Beech, Ross Lupaschuk and Michal Sivek. A trade so heinous in nature, so destructive in effect, that it ushered in an era of despair and misery equaled only by the ‘dark times’ alluded to by Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars.

Retool

Our Pens obviously are a flawed hockey team. Even Sullivan said so. Are we a lost cause, doomed to early tee times, or a savvy trade or two away from regaining contender status?

History points to the latter. In March of 1991, a talented Pens squad was teetering on the edge of the playoff picture. Then GM Craig Patrick swung ‘The Trade’, propelling us to our first Cup.

The following season, a squad stacked with seven Hall-of-Famers (Jagr will soon make eight) went 5-15-4 over a two-month span, unthinkable given the talent on hand. Patrick pulled off another blockbuster, and the Pens recovered to snatch a second-straight Cup.

We were in a similar spiral just two short years ago. Rutherford rescued the team with a series of bold, under-the-radar acquisitions (Trevor Daley, Carl Hagelin and Justin Schultz)–not to mention some prescient call-ups from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton–that reaped huge dividends.

Could a measured approach to change work again?

Stay the Course

We all dreamed of a three-peat. I know I did. Yet lurking beneath the surface was an undercurrent of fear. Fear that our beloved boys would surely suffer the effects of a Stanley Cup hangover…that dreaded confluence of fulfillment and satisfaction tinged with mental and physical fatigue that turns many a champion into an also-ran.

Heck, Rutherford admitted in a recent article for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he fully expected the team to experience some struggles early on.

We’re not the only Cup winner to be afflicted. After winning a second Cup in three years in 2014, Los Angeles missed the playoffs the following year. Last season, too. Only now are the Kings regaining their mojo.

Still, patience is a virtue. The core of our back-to-back champions remains largely intact. Does ‘JR’ stay the course with the current group with an eye toward a resurgence down the road?

Any thoughts?