Penguins Update: The Life Cycle of Champions

Following Other Rick’s terrific series of articles grading the Penguins’ individual performances over the past season and playoffs, I decided to take a more reflective look at where we are as a team. Or “where we’re at” in classic Pittsburgh-ese.

I’ll start by quoting the Holy Bible. The author of Ecclesiastes wrote, For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…a time to break down, and a time to build up.

So it is with championship teams. Each has a life cycle that, if plotted out on a sheet of paper, often resembles a bell curve. They start out in the depths, build up through a series of fortuitous drafts, trades and free-agent signings to reach champion status, then fade through a combination of age, attrition and other factors.

Indeed, father time catches up to even the mightiest collection of athletes. Remember the great Steelers dynasty of the 1970s? It seemed they’d win Super Bowls forever. They, too, proved mortal.

Time waits for no man. Or team.

Our Stanley Cup champions of the early 1990s followed the bell-curve pattern to a T. Difficult as is it to believe, the seeds for those teams were rooted in the horrific 1983-84 “Boys of Winter” squad that won all of 16 games. Three rookies on that team, Phil Bourque, Bob Errey and Troy Loney, went on to serve as valuable role players…if not the heart and soul…for the Cup winners to follow.

Too, the club’s putrid performance paved the way for the Pens to draft phenom Mario Lemieux first overall. Sans number 66 to serve as franchise savior, it’s doubtful we’d have a hockey team in Pittsburgh today, let alone be the proud possessor of five Stanley Cups.

After peaking with back-to-back Cups in 1991 and ’92, the locals began a surprisingly rapid decline. They captured the Presidents’ Trophy with a franchise record 56 wins and 119 points in ’93, only to bow to the Islanders in the second round in a shocking upset.

Loaded with five future Hall-of-Famers and heavyweight scorers Jaromir Jagr and Kevin Stevens, the black and gold was expected to recapture the Cup in 1993-94. Instead, they endured an uneven regular season, capped by a disastrous first-round defeat at the hands of Washington, on paper a vastly inferior squad.

I remember that series vividly. In particular how old, slow and spent we looked…as if we’d aged overnight.

Sound eerily familiar? It should. Our present Pens turned in a similarly tepid performance during the current postseason en route to an embarrassing four-game sweep at the hands of Islanders, who in turn were swept by Carolina.

What’s more, we’re on the exact same spot of the bell curve as the ’93-94 team. A couple of seasons past our peak and trending downward…with a bullet.

Like Craig Patrick before him, present GM Jim Rutherford faces a challenge of epic proportions. Does JR attempt to buttress his gifted but aging core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel and Kris Letang with a stronger supporting cast for one last run at the Cup? Or is it time to break up the old gang and restock with young talent? Given the Mulligan stew of pricey, long-term contracts laced with no-movement clauses, a task far easier said than done.

I can’t imagine for one moment there’s a long line of opposing GMs making like the Statue of Liberty…“Give us your tired, your over-paid and your over-the-hill and we’ll give you prime young talent and high draft picks in return.”

Rutherford’s got his work cut out for him.

Perhaps that’s why Patrick initially chose Option A. In the summer of ‘94, he bolstered his troops by adding Hall-of-Fame sniper Luc Robitaille and former 100-point man John Cullen. The Pens raced out of the starting blocks at a torrid 13-1-2 clip, then waned before stumbling in the second round of the playoffs.

The following summer Patrick at long last cleaned house, shipping out mainstays Stevens, Joe Mullen, Larry Murphy and the Samuelsson’s…Ulf and Kjell…along with Robitaille in exchange for younger, fresher legs.

Re-energized, the Pens made it to the conference finals that spring before resuming a gradual fade…one that resulted in the club bottoming out in the early 2000s. Which led to drafting a second generation of franchise players and beget a new championship cycle.

My opinion…totally unsubstantiated. Rutherford will opt for a partial tear down and part with one of his core players. Who goes…Malkin, Kessel or Letang…is anyone’s guess. As Other Rick mentioned in his most recent article, there’s a lot of smoke surrounding Malkin. Where there’s smoke, there’s generally fire.

Meanwhile, the seasons keep a changin.’ And the life cycle of a former champion grinds on to its inevitable conclusion. One day, the Pens’ window to win another Cup will close, if it hasn’t already. At least for the foreseeable future.

Enjoy the ride while you can. It won’t last forever.