End of the Rutherford Era for our Penguins

Friends, Pen’s Fans, Hockey Fans, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the JR Legacy, not to praise it.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with JR.

Jim Rutherford pulled off some great feats in the ‘burgh, particularly and synergistically with Jason Botterill. Dealing head case James Neal for Patric Hornqvist was the building block of the Cup years. Add to that acquiring Phil “the Thrill” Kessel for a nascent Kasperi Kapanen, flipping Brent Sutter for Nick Bonino, not only finding a way out from under Rob Scuderi and his contract but getting more than useful Trevor Daley in return, and let’s not forget signing Matt Cullen to a steal of a contract and Rutherford built a a champion. Yes, to be sure, Rutherford had a lot of success here in Pittsburgh

Unfortunately, that is all in the rear-view mirror, and will soon be interred with the JR legacy.

Now, our Favorite Flightless Fowl must navigate through the haze, the maze, and the mess that Rutherford leaves in the wake of his tenure as our Pittsburgh Penguins General Manager.

Tarnish began to diminish the luster of the JR Legacy, even before the second of the back-to-back Cups was hoisted. Over the course of the last three seasons, Rutherford has thrown lots of money at marginal or aging players to sign or extend contracts, but rather than locking up Bonino on an extension (as I suggested way back when), when Rutherford would have had a chance to secure him on a more friendly contract, he rested on his laurels and Bonino’s value sky-rocketed out of the reach our Black-n-Gold.

After Cup number 2, the tarnish began to spread rapidly. With Bonino all primed and ready to jump ship, by all accounts, no contract was offered to Cullen and prospect Oskar Sundqvist was traded with the teams first round pick to St. Louis Blues for Pugilist Supreme Ryan Reaves and St. Louis’s second round pick in a knee jerk reaction to P.K. Subban’s less than sportsman like treatment of captain Sidney Crosby. When the smoked cleared from this debacle, the team stripped itself of its 3rd, 4th, and 5th Centers and a draft pick. Reaves was subsequently traded because the Coach didn’t value his skill set and the player he was traded for was in turned traded for a player that has since retired. The draft-pick the team acquired was wasted on a player forced into retirement by injuries. The sum total of the deal, no more Cups, no assets. (Long time Penguin Poop readers may remember that I never liked the trade and wanted the team to keep its draft pick and use it to select Nicolas Hague. I wonder how this team would look right now with Sundqvist and LHD Hague rather than the nothing it wrought.)

As the Three-peat pursuit continued, bad decision followed bad decision further depleting the team of Cap space and assets. I am not going to iterate all of the bad trades and signings, there just isn’t enough space or time. But with all the wheeling and dealing of bad trade after bad trade, the team has nothing really left in the pipeline and doesn’t even have a first-round pick next year. In fact, the Penguins only have a 2nd, a 5th, and 3-7th round picks next season. No help would be on the horizon even if next year’s draft were deep.

Nor does the team have much in Cap space for a while due to the dead money in the Jack Johnson buy-out and the downward dealing of Hornqvist’s $5.2 million for 3 more seasons (who by the way is off to a great start) for Mike Matheson’s $4.875 million for 6 more years; a contract back loaded so the team will actually owe $6.5 million in real money on top of the Cap hit.

Sorry if I am being irreverent to a departing member of our favorite franchise but the evil that Rutherford did will live years and years. The golden era will fade to nostalgia and the team could very well still be digging out from under the Rutherford Legacy.

Odds and Sods

STOP it already with the Malkin hate. Expectation is a horrible thing. Evgeni Malkin, Like Sidney Crosby is not the Crosby of even the last Cup year neither is Malkin the Malkin of yore. Age catches us all. Neither Malkin nor Crosby can carry a bunch of pylons for Wings. The inconvenient truth is this, neither Crosby nor Malkin has a 5 on 5 Goal this season. They both only have 2 Assists 5 on 5 and both of their lines have only managed a measly 3 Goals in the first 7 Games, yet no one is talking about Crosby’s 5-on-5 impotence. (Sorry Mike) I don’t care about the “eye test”, for all of the sound and fury the first and second lines are in a dead heat for mediocrity.

Furthermore, last season, Malkin was the best Center in the league, in almost all categories 5-on-5. No one declines that fast, without injury. However, even last season, when Malkin was on top of his game and best in the league, he didn’t mesh with Jason Zucker. Malkin – Zucker was a waste of ice-time for both players last year and nothing this year has indicated any change.

The real problem isn’t Malkin or Zucker, but Mike Sullivan who keeps insisting on pairing these two polar opposite players. Zucker has a track record of fast starts with fading finishes as the grind of the season wears on. Sullivan is wasting Zucker’s best games pairing him with Malkin as well as saddling Malkin with a line-mate that doesn’t help him. He is not putting either player in a position to succeed.

Finally, Malkin haters, Evgeni Malkin has a full blown No Trade, No Movement Clause in his contract. He isn’t going anywhere unless he wants to go.