The Penguins: Making the Grade – Part Two

My grade/Opinion of Mike Sullivan is next up in my series of Making the Grade. It took a little longer than I may have wanted because I didn’t just want to give a simple grade but explain why I gave that grade So without further ado;

Mike Sullivan earned himself a D, from the meek and mild mannered judge from the suburbs just south of Pittsburgh, for his coaching this year.

For 2 years the NHL has made a mockery of the post season awards. The Jack Adams Award is supposed to be awarded to the best coach in the league. For 2 consecutive years Mike Sullivan was ignored. He wasn’t even a nominee. He took over a team that was foundering under Mike Johnston and turned it into Stanley Cup Champions. The next season he did something that hadn’t been done since 1998, repeating a Championship. And in a display of absolute disrespect, his name wasn’t even discussed for the award.

However, this year Mike Sullivan, like his boss, Jim Rutherford has been less than average. The only reason the team should still make the playoffs is the pure talent of Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, and Sidney Crosby.

In my mind a coach is responsible for 3 key areas to ensure success; overall team strategy, tactics, and team morale.

From an overall team strategy perspective, Sullivan is still on point. Speed kills and the soundness of this strategy has been proven by the 2 Cups this team possesses and the number of teams now enjoying success by copying the Penguins strategy.

There are several factors that affect team tactics; personnel decisions, game plans, and in-game adjustments. This is where Sullivan’s efforts this season have unraveled. Personnel decisions may have been his weakest area of coaching this year. He struggled all year when it came to deciding which players to have in Pittsburgh and which players to waive or send to Wilkes-Barre Scranton (WBS), he struggled with which players to insert into the lineup and which players to sit, and he had problems creating effective line combinations and defensive pairings because of his attempts to put square pegs into round holes.

Perhaps the pressure of a looming three-peat is too great for him. Maybe that pressure has overridden many of his personnel decisions over the course of the season. Many of Sullivan’s decisions have had the smell of trying not to lose — rather than a champion reaching for the glory, stretching out his hand to grasp the golden laurels.

The bad personnel decisions started with the opening night roster. Both Casey DeSmith and Tristan Jarry outplayed Antti Niemi. In fact Niemi had a totally forgettable preseason. However, the safe thought is to start the season with a veteran back up to challenge for a Cup and Sullivan followed that thought and the Penguins found themselves behind the 8-ball early in the season. Although Niemi did seem to find his game again playing up in Montreal, he had to not only get waived by the Penguins but also the Panthers before he found himself.

Niemi wasn’t the only veteran who had a forgettable training camp but got the nod over younger players. Matt Hunwick underwhelmed in the preseason, but also made the opening night roster. I am sorry, but from where I sat, Lukas Bengtsson outplayed both Hunwick and Chad Ruhwedel, yet Bengtsson started the season in WBS. Bengtsson did have some physical problems during this past year, but he was healthy at the start of the season. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom won out and the Penguins sent him down to WBS and went with veterans Hunwick and Ruhwedel, even though they weren’t the best Right Defensemen in the organization.

With Patric Hornqvist on the shelf with an injury, Sullivan made yet another personnel faux pas at the beginning of the season: Zach Aston-Reese and Daniel Sprong both had very strong training camps and should have been given a shot to fill in on the right side until Hornqvist was back. Instead, Sullivan opted to play players out of position to keep veterans in the lineup.

What made matters worse was the team had all of those back-to-back series and the fresh young legs of Sprong and Bengtsson. DeSemith or Jarry would have stopped at least stopped the soft goals that Niemi let in. With these kids in the lineup the Penguins would surely have had 5 or 6 more points this year and maybe more. Those 5 or 6 points wouldn’t have them in first place, but certainly could have contributed to a 2nd spot in the division.

Pressure — to win a 3-peat and pressure to play veterans over rookies — may not have been the sole motivation for bad personnel decisions, however. Ian Cole was hardly rookie, in fact he was a playoff hero, yet he was a frequent healthy scratch at the beginning of the season when the team was flipping back-and-forth like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a real Janus of a team. During the Penguins run of solid team play from January up until the trade deadline Cole was a solid fixture in the Penguins’ lineup. Therefore, the trading of Ian Cole with no viable back-up plan also impeaches Sullivan’s coaching this season.
As coach, I do support Sullivan in that he can have some leeway when it comes to players he just doesn’t like, so long as it doesn’t negatively impact the W/L record. However, when it would seem that he could not play nice with a player for the good of the team, well, that could become a problem.

That brings me to the elephant in the room, Daniel Sprong. There have been a host of arguments put forth to explain Sprong being buried in WBS. The most offensive and least plausible being that the kid needed to learn how to play defense and a 200’game. Sprong’s 8 games in the NHL are hardly enough evidence to erect a statue to the kid, but completely refute this position and make anyone trying to use this tack too emotional and subjective to be given any credence. In the 8 games that Sprong was on the club, he had the team’s best +/- and CORSI. His TGF/60 and SF.60 minutes are still best on the club and his TGA/60 and SA/60 are still the team’s lowest. Not only was the team getting the most shots and goals at even strength per 60 minutes of Sprong’s even strength ice time, but as expected with so much offensive zone time Sprong was affording the club, opposing teams were getting very few shots against (and therefore goals) when he was on the ice. And this is exactly what Sullivan’s winning formula has been over the last 2 years. Sprong should be the perfect match for Sullivan’s system. At least those numbers he was putting up should have earned him a much longer look at the NHL level.

After a long and bloody argument with someone who is closer than I am to the Penguins organization, he conceded that the party line of defending the demotion as Sprong needing to learn how to play a 200’ game. My friend finally advanced an excuse that I would support (if it is true) — he argued that Sprong was still an immature kid, implying that he was too cocky to listen when he was told something.

Since Sprong is only 19, and remembering back to when I was 19, that does sound reasonable. When you add in the world of talent that the kid has flashed, that argument gains even more credibility. Many young players suffer from this and need to have that edge removed before they can truly come into their own and help the team. If that is the case, and the team had enough veterans to capable of taking the team back to the promised land, and most importantly the team wasn’t looking to enter the history books as the first team since the early 1980s to 3-peat, I would applaud that reason.

Unfortunately, this Penguins’ team may not really have the luxury of sanding that particular edge off Sprong. If this were any other year, if the Penguins were looking for their first Cup or even second Cup, the need wouldn’t be so great but this year the team has a chance to go into the history books a chance that hasn’t happened in nearly 40 years. Combine that with the number of times this team has been shut out or stymied because of the reliance on Crosby, Malkin, and Kessel to generate the offense and opposing teams seemingly always looking to use the Penguins as their measuring stick for the season, indications are the team really needs a player like Sprong now. If Sullivan wouldn’t work with Sprong the team should have offered him in a trade for either Michael Grabner or Evander Kane.

Sullivan’s treatment of Ian Cole does make me wonder if Sprong is the temperamental one (or is Sullivan)? One in 20 players versus the coach would indicate the player is the one, but with each and every player that a coach has problems with after that first one, the odds start switching as to who is really the one at fault. Some here have suggested that Rick Tocchet was able to mediate between Sullivan and some players and maybe this is true. Maybe if Tocchet had stayed in the ‘burgh one more year Cole would still be here and Sprong would be with the big club and not in WBS.

Sullivan’s insistence on playing Conor Sheary also would seem to support the idea of line up spots not always being earned. Although I will not argue that Sheary is offensively deficient. He does have good instincts and decent wheels. He oftentimes even gets into good defensive positions. However, he is very weak on the puck and gets muscled out by average players. It is not that he doesn’t try, but unfortunately he is small and I won’t apologize for stating the obvious. There are times when there are physical prerequisites for a position and the NHL is one of them. Sheary flits about the ice like a gnat across a lily pond but to paraphrase the Bard his efforts end up “signifying nothing”. As I noted in a response to one of readers after last game, on one of Sheary’s shifts in the Detroit debacle Sheary got mugged by bullies at both ends of the ice. The first time in the offensive zone to break up the Penguins’ attack (no wonder they couldn’t get any zone time) and then mere seconds later, while the team was trying to clear the puck, the Wings beat him up again to take his candy (puck) away, breaking up the Penguins’ clearing attempt.

Last game, the Penguins sat Dominik Simon to keep Sheary in the lineup. Simon may not be much bigger than Sheary, but he has shown to be stronger on the puck and actually has more creativity in the offensive zone.

I also give Sullivan failing marks in terms of personnel decisions with his line combinations and defensive pairings. There were many games this season where Sullivan frenetically switched up lines, never giving any players time to get used to each other. When a coach shuffles the deck that frequently, just like in the regular world, it usually means that person hasn’t got any idea of how to fix the problem. In this case, the problem may really have been the players he selected to play the game to begin with. Maybe the wrong players were on the roster. Maybe the right players were in WBS.

Over the previous two seasons, Sullivan seemed to be a genius when it came to initial game plans and in-game adjustments. This year Sullivan seems to be off of his game. There were many games this year where the team fell behind by 2 or more goals very early and could not come back. The players tended to accept the blame for this and they probably deserved at least some of the blame for not being ready to play. However, with the number of times this has happened, now responsibility rests squarely upon the shoulders of the coach. It is the coach’s job to see that the team is ready to play. And it is the coach’s job to see that adjustments are made to get back in the game.

In the final area, morale, I cannot give Sullivan high marks this year. The team has looked flat all year. The only two players that have appeared to play every game and not show frustration or indifference are Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel. Even Sidney Crosby (after failed line combination after failed line combination) has had the look of “you have got to be kidding me” and “what is going on here?” on his face as he skated to the bench. The only time Crosby has looked really engaged was the 8 game span when he was flanked by Simon and Sprong. (At least that is what it looked like to me)

With only a handful of games left, I doubt that I will be changing my assessment of Sullivan this regular season. However, the post-season starts with a clean slate. Hopefully, he will get it together and start helping put the team in a position to win rather than trying to ride the coattails of his past and the current fervor and/or talent of Malkin, Kessel, and Crosby.

More importantly, I am already wondering about next year. Jordan Bellerive and Sam Militec had really big years in the juniors, each piling up over 90 points. Jan Drozg wasn’t quite as prolific but had a pretty good year as well. And Anthony Angello had a solid year at the collegiate level and is a huge body. Will Sullivan be too stubborn to give these kids a legitimate shot, if their games of this year translate into training camp next year? Or will we fans be forced to sit and watch marginal veterans under-perform while Crosby, Malkin, and Kessel are forced to try and carry the day again?

Summer school is right around the corner.