The Penguins 2017-2018 Post-Mortem

I woke up this morning still with last night’s game heavy on my mind. Looking at a picture of my kids on my desk, a scene from one of their movies that included a different group of Penguins flashed through the frustration of hockey ending in early May – Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private standing on an ice floe, in front of the ship they hijacked. After several seconds of the 4 Penguins of Madagascar staring at the frozen desolation, Skipper can be heard saying “Well this stinks”. Actually, Skipper uses a more colorful metaphor but you get the point.

Now, with the long Spring and Summer ahead of us, without our Penguins playing again until September (4-months from now) comes the time for all of us arm-chair GMs to dissect the corpse. What went wrong? How did they lose? Were the Capitals the more talented team? Were they the hungrier team? Or were they just the better coached team?

Even despite the ridiculous banishment of Ian Cole for Derick Brassard and the NHL ensuring the Penguins would be further stripped of a talent by forcing the team to cede Ryan Reaves in that deal for a 4th line Center in that deal I still believe the Penguins’ organization had more talent than the Capitals team. The poison that murdered this year’s 3-peat effort was the arrogance and/or stubborn loyalty to players that just weren’t getting the job done, by the coaching staff.

Kris Letang has been an integral part of the Penguins’ organization for many years and has had some strong seasons. He holds most, if not all the Penguins’ scoring records for Defensemen. Furthermore, for a player of limited size he plays the game much larger and sticks up for his players. He was one of the few players to go after the Capitals’ goon Tom Wilson. However, in the end he was on the ice for 10 of the 19 goals the Capitals scored. As our friend Rick Buker often points out, the numbers may be skewed by the large amount of ice-time Letang tends to skate. So, even though Letang was on the ice for more than half of the goals against, so may try to argue that is only natural.

However, when you look at the 9 goals against scored when Letang wasn’t on the ice, 2 were Short Handed Goals and 3 were Empty Net Goals. That only leaves 4 goals against scored on Matt Murray in game situations where the team’s Defense could be truly held accountable.

More importantly, Letang was on the ice when 3 of the 4 game winning goals against were scored. And the eye test shows the number of odd man breaks the Capitals have had with Letang on the ice. Look no farther last night’s game winner goal for the Capitals.

Unfortunately, Kris Letang was given the most ice-time of any player. He averaged over 25 minutes per game. Perhaps none of the Black Aces Defensemen could have added the 1.55 points per 60 minutes (P/60) that Letang notched during the Capitals’ series but I can’t imagine any would have done worse defensively. However, as well as Brian Dumoulin played, giving him a defensive partner that wasn’t such a liability could only have allow him to hone the offensive flashes that he has started to flash, including last night. Therefore the increase in Dumoulin’s scoring plus any offense that a Black Ace could have generated very easily off-set the loss of Letang’s 1.55 P/60. After all the Penguins won the Cup last year without him.

A lot also has been mentioned about the lack of secondary scoring or lack thereof for the Penguins. There can’t be much of an argument here. Seven Forwards didn’t pick up a single point in the 6 games against the Capitals. Yet at no time did Mike Sullivan change the lineup. Perhaps, had the team snapped out of it and the Penguins would have won the series, Sullivan would have been lauded for having the patience to let the team work through their funk but they never did. They never had to. There was no consequence for their disappearance.

In the case of Conor Sheary, his disappearance should not have been a surprise. He was absent during the bulk of the regular season. Furthermore, he was absent during last year’s play-offs as well. Many have suggested that his absence is tied to his lack of size and he just gets beat up and mugged. Not that he doesn’t try, but his talent (which he does have) isn’t near enough to off-set the size he gives up in almost every game.

So, the big question in my mind is why did Sullivan not pull him and put in one of the Black Aces here as well. At least one of the Black Aces has a much better scoring pedigree than Sheary and all were much bigger. Try as you like, square pegs don’t go into round holes and continually trying failed strategies and tactics only leads to continued failures.

These are only 2 coaching errors but there are more, like the banishment I mentioned at the on-set of this post.

The season is over and our Penguins aren’t going into the history books as the first team to 3peat since the New York Islanders.

Have the Penguins’ coaches learned anything from this season? Only time will tell.

Can the team justify paying $7.25 million to a Defenseman who can’t play Defense, regardless of the offense he can produce? That is a hard question, a hard question with the answer that may be obvious but even harder for the team to resolve.

Will the team continue to try and play an under-sized Forward who disappears when the grind of heavier teams start to lean on him? Particularly when there are players in the organization who are bigger.

There are a lot of questions to be answered before September. Unfortunately, not only will they not have Ian Cole or Filip Gustavsson, they won’t have a 1st round pick. Maybe, they can look into signing Ryan Reaves in the off-season, he is an unrestricted free agent (UFA). So they won’t have to trade their non-existent 1st round pick for him this year.

Ian Cole is also a UFA, but if Sullivan ran him out of town once, I doubt the team will look into shoring up its turnstile Defense with him. (Prospect Andey Pedan signed with the KHL and will not be available as an option)

This will no doubt be a long, long summer.