Penguins: Defenseless

It has been since October 29th 2017 since any team has scored more than 5 goals against our Penguins, but that is what happened last night – the Florida Panther held on to beat our Favorite Flightless Fowl 6 – 5. The loss was a very inauspicious beginning to the post Ian Cole era on Defense.

Many people, including myself, expressed a lot of concern over the Derick Brassard trade. Most of the concerned wasn’t aimed at Brassard not being capable of upgrading the Center position of the team. Most of the people I know are excited about the prospects of seeing Brassard in a Penguin uniform. The biggest concern I have and others seem to share (judging by comments I have read) centers on the loss of Ian Cole. The concern seems to be that the team lost more defensively than it gained in a 3rd line center.

Speaking just for me (although I suspect many others), I am not deluding myself that Cole is the second coming of Bobby Orr, Paul Coffey, Larry Robinson, Chris Chelios, or any of those Hall of Famer types. The concern I have is that trading Cole is an exponential loss. Cole was a warrior in the mold of Patric Hornqvist but on “D”. More importantly, Mike Sullivan’s insistence on trying replace Cole with Matt Hunwick would seem very problematic. He just can’t do it.

To get something good, sometimes you have to give up something good, I get that and Ian Cole is a very good defensive Defenseman. Unfortunately, Matt Hunwick is not. Maybe in some other system, on some other team, in some other time, in some other plane of existence, Hunwick did and could still get the job done, but here and now he is killing this team.

More importantly, his performance last night not only did nothing to alter this opinion I have of him, it only re-enforced my completely negative thoughts on him. He ended the night a -3 and was on the ice for 4 of the 6 goals that Florida scored. If I had been playing or coaching last night I would have had to double check which uniform he was wearing.

In a reply to a Post from fellow contributor Rick Buker, I responded that I thought if the Penguins could generate enough offense then maybe, just maybe losing Cole for Brassard may be acceptable, since the puck wouldn’t be in the defensive zone all that much. However, watching the train wreck that is Matt Hunwick on “D” I am not so sure that even 4 lines of CORSI beasts could counter act Hunwick’s liability. Our boys in Black and Gold out shot Florida 37 – 30 but still lost, thanks to many blown “D” zone coverage mistakes, 4 of 6 which came with Hunwick on the ice (yes, I repeated it).

During the post-game show, several of the Penguin announcer questioned Hunwick’s less than stellar performance. There was a half-hearted attempt to suggest that the poor play may have been due to Hunwick just not being a good pairing with Jamie Oleksiak. In some other circumstances, I would at least try and consider that excuse, but even while voicing that premise, those bringing it up didn’t sound like they believed it themselves, while they were saying.

Someone also tried to cast blame on the rookie Tristan Jarry for not bailing out the veteran Hunwick. Wow, since when is it the responsibility for a rookie to bail out a veteran?

There are still several hours left before the trade deadline, please Rutherford admit your mistake and move Hunwick out or at least bring in another “D” man. Although I would like to think Andrey Pedan could do the job, coming up from Wilkes-Barre Scranton (however, he hasn’t played in several games – I am not sure if he is hurt or not), I wouldn’t put money on it. I would rather get an insurance policy for that bottom “D” pairing. Our team may be able to get to the playoffs with Hunwick out there but I really doubt it can go very far without some help back on the blue line.