Penguins: Endgame

Our friend Jim noted in a comment to a previous Rick Buker post, “This had to happen and now it did!!!” You are sooooo, right my friend. This Pittsburgh Penguins loss to the New York Rangers, like Thanos in the Marvel Universe, was inevitable. Those, like Jim and myself, and anyone willing to take off the rose-colored glasses and really look at this team could see the rotting bones beneath this whited sepulcher. Despite high profile players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang, our Penguins were never a true Stanley Cup contender. Coaching and poor management decisions made this loss inevitable.

That’s right, if you have guessed by the tone of that opening statement, I have come to bury Caesar not to praise him. To be sure, this Penguins team has brought us many, many years of big-time hockey for our ocular pleasure and for that I am eternally grateful but it is over now.

As the Bard noted in the voice of Mark Antony

“The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;”

So let it be with this incarnation of our Penguins. To all things comes an end.

The Good the Team Did:

Thank you, Sidney Crosby, thank you Evgeni Malkin, thank you Kris Letang, thank you Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, and Brian Dumoulin too. Sid, Geno, Kris, you brought us 3 Cups and 4 Final’s appearances. Jake, Bryan, and Brian, you were integral to at least one if not 2 of those Cups. Your place in Penguins lore is etched eternally.

Furthermore, the afore mentioned with Jeff Carter, Danton Heinen, and Tristan Jarry exceeded my expectations for this past season. I never thought this team would make the post season and they even got me to believe, for a moment, they may actually get to the 2^nd round.

Thank you, the players on this Penguins team.

The Evil that some men did

So, as I mourn another 1st round playoff loss, I will be tormented with the “what might have beens”. I have already read and heard many fans and writers try to ascribe blame to this player or that player. The bottom line is this, the coaches and the GMs pick the players on the team, decide on the strategies the players employ, and have the power to retrain the players or replace them. No player can be blamed, this late in the season, without blaming the coach first.

If not for decisions by Coaches who were employed several seasons past their usefulness (Dan Bylsma and Mike Sullivan) and GMs (referring to Ray Shero and Jim Rutherford not Ron Hextall) too short-sighted or too timid to make the tough decisions, I contend this team was denied at least 2 more appearances in the Finals and possibly more.

Many times, I have voiced my displeasure over the GM’s and Coach’s decisions, in particular the mortgaging the future when the team really didn’t have a legitimate shot at a title in a particular season. However, a full discussion of the reason for a 4^th consecutive 1^st round loss, a post-mortem, is a topic for another discussion. (I promised I would only be burying Caesar). Suffice it to say, the poor waif born out of risky behavior of Management, these past 4 years will be living long after this era becomes nothing more than legend.

An Epilogue:

As I wrote at the top, this team exceeded my expectations, so I am not as miserable this morning (mourning) after as many fans are, who allowed themselves to believe the hype. I am more astonished at how far our Waddling Waterfowl pushed the New York team whose talented core if much younger. Our once heavy weight champions to the Rangers right up to the brink, overtime of a game 7.

Now that our Penguins enter the off-season, I can see Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet on his hand, fingers prepared to snap, and I am girding myself for the resultant disappearing of familiar faces from this roster. Will Letang, Rust, and Malkin, along with Rickard Rakell, Brian Boyle, Evan Rodrigues, Nathan Beaulieu (without ever playing a game in the regular season or playoffs), Casey DeSmith, Louis Domingue, Jusso Riikola, Kaspari Kapanen, and Danton Heinen fade into the dust and off the big-league roster? Time will tell.