Armchair GMing the Penguins for 2023 – 2024, Counterpoint

Armchair GMing is one of my favorite things to do. I have freely offered my unsolicited advice to our Pittsburgh Penguins GMs, often. Normally I get around to writing a post on this subject first. This season, our friend Rick B beat me to the punch. Rick, my thoughts are too long to put in a comment on your article, so let this be my response.

This past season marked the first time in the Crosby-Malkin era that the black-and-gold failed to make the playoffs. The only reasons we missed the playoffs were many, too many to solve overnight. The only reason this incarnation of the Penguins was remotely close to an invitation to the big dance was 5 of the top 6 Forwards (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Jason Zucker, and Rickard Rakell) and in the second half of the season Kris Letang on Defense. Everything else on the team deserved what it got, early Tee-times.

With so many holes on this team, a new GM needs to prioritize the team’s needs and that is what follows.

The NHL Entry Draft

The NHL Entry Draft is almost upon us. There is no time to play around. The Draft must take top priority. My first step as GM would be creating my wish list – a ranking of the players I would wish to draft. Also, there is talk that the St. Louis Blues are willing to trade one of their 3 first round picks (10th, 25th, and 29th) for a player that can help them now.

Step 1A would be investigate an option to get one of those St. Louis picks. I would even be willing to exchange my 14th pick and a player for their 10th pick so they would still have 3 picks to play with.

After the top 4 or 5 prospects I have seen a great deal of volatility in the mock draft sites I have been reading. My draft list will no doubt have too adapt to any additions and changes in players available as draft day nears. However, as of now my Plans A, B, and C for draft day would be,

Plan A – if Nate Danielson is available, I grab him in a heartbeat. Danielson is a 6’-2”, 185lb, Canadian Right-Handed Center. Some mock drafts have him going before our 14th pick, some have him around our pick. If he is there, he is my first choice.

Plan B – If Danielson isn’t available, my second choice would be David Reinbacher, a 6’-2”, 185lb Austrian Right-Handed Defenseman (RHD). Reinbacher is projected to go before Danielson, but if he is available when I draft, for whatever reason, and Danielson is not, I take Reinbacher.

If I can swing a deal that would get me St. Louis’s 10th, I am pretty sure I can get one of those 2 players.

Plan C – If I can’t get Danielson or Reinbacher, I look to trade down in the draft for a latter 1st round pick and a high 2nd round pick. My 3rd Choice at this point, in this draft is Quintin Musty, a 6’-2”, 205lb American Left Wing (LW) playing in the OHL. Our friend Mike and I were just talking commenting back-and-forth about him a couple of days ago on a Rick B post. In most of the projections I have seen, he should still be around come the 20th pick or so.

Although Musty is my 3rd choice in this draft, I would gamble trading my 14th pick backwards if I couldn’t move forward with St. Louis get a 2nd round pick. There are many holes on this team, that could get addressed with a 2nd round pick.

If I couldn’t swing that deal, I would take Musty with my 14th pick. If I could swing that deal and still get a Musty, and a 2nd round pick, my 2 choices for that 2nd pick would either be Lukas Dragicevic, a 6’-2” 190lb Canadian RHD, or Dmitri Simashev, a 6’-4”, 201lb Russian Left-Handed Defenseman (LHD) that Mike just brought to my attention – Thanks Mike!

Jason Zucker

There really aren’t that many Unrestricted Free Agents (UFAs) that really jump out at me, at least none that our Pens could afford. In my mind, the best available UFA is one right under our nose, Jason Zucker. In the past I have been against Zucker. He did almost nothing for the team until this past season. However, he left it all out on the ice this year and I appreciate that.

My 2^nd step would be to at least open negotiations to see what it would take to keep him here in Pittsburgh. If he and I were to agree on a value but I needed to move Cap-Space around, I would ask him if he could wait until I could clear out Cap space.

Coaching

YES! The sorriest part of this team is its Coaching. If the Draft and UFA were not so close, this would have been my first area to address.

Long before Ron Hextall and Brian Burke came to Pittsburgh this team was failing. Before the sacrificial lambs were even on this team, Mike Sullivan and his Coach’s had been swept out of the 1st round by the New York Islanders and embarrassed by the Montreal Canadiens, the bottom seed of a qualifying round to the playoffs the following year.

Sullivan inherited a Cup team and has been destroying it ever since. The team he inherited was a hybrid team with not just the speed of Carl Hagelin and Bryan Rust but with grit. It not only had veterans like Chris Kunitz, Ian Cole, Nick Bonino and Matt Cullen, but Kids like Guentzel, Rust, Conor Sheary, Tom Kuhnhackl and a host of others.

Sullivan missed the playoffs this season and lost his last 5 playoff series he has coached. Since this team won the Stanley Cup in 2016-2017, our Coach has a record of 12 Wins and 21 Loses in the playoffs. After each series loss has come a nauseating litany of blaming everyone but the Coach, at least until this season. At least now, some people have the courage to begin to see the warts on this Coach.

Sullivan has been the one to preach speed only team, a perimeter team afraid to penetrate the middle of the ice. Sullivan is the one who said he didn’t have time to teach the prospects.

Sullivan isn’t the only Coach that needs to go packing.

Tom Reirden’s defense is pathetic. I would love to blame his system, but there never seems to be a system. Players never seem to know who covers who in the defensive zone. He has defensemen with extremely limited up-side trying to drive the offense and forwards with limited defensive acumen trying to fend off odd-man breaks.

The bottom line here is that no matter what other changes I would make to this team, this Coaching staff is extremely limited and has shown no evidence of being able to adapt to the fluid, changing landscape of the NHL. A one-dimensional team (Speed only, no Size, no Grit) may be able to sneak through the regular season, if it has a generational player or 2 on its roster, but it will never win a playoff series. As I mentioned above, even the last 2 Cups Crosby and Malkin won were multi-dimensional. The allergies these 2 Coaches have for playoff Hockey preclude them from a future on any team I would GM.

The trouble here is finding someone who will want this job. Our Penguins are no longer the belle of the ball. So, I would have to start the search ASAP and I would not limit my search to the usual suspects.

Reshaping the roster

Reshaping the roster is extremely important, but the upcoming Draft and the UFAs (And I do value trying to keep Zucker) are time sensitive issues. Getting a couple of new Coaches outweighs the reshaping of the roster, particularly the pieces missing from this puzzle are pieces that these Coaches would never try and work into the puzzle. Therefore, reshaping the roster comes in 4^th on my to do list.

Going down this roster this team needs,

1. Clean up Cap space for maneuvering room.
2. A power forward. This team has never even attempted to replace Patric Hornqvist and it has taken a serious nose dive. The Power Play (PP) particularly and the offense in general have been inconsistent because nobody on this team is either willing or has the skill set to collect the ugly Goals (G) that win stretch run games and playoff series.
3. A Defenseman with a heavy point shot, one that can score from long-range on more than a fluke play to force opposing defenses to defend their entire defensive zone and not just below the face-off dots.
4. A right-handed sniper. Our illustrious Coach didn’t get along with any of the best shooting right-handed forwards on this team (Phil Kessel, Daniel Sprong, and Kasperi Kapanen). He ran them all out of town on a rail. The absence of that right-handed shot has left a gaping hole on the PP, almost as big as the lack of a Hornqvist type player. There is no threat of a quick and lethal shot from the left wing of our favorite flightless fowl’s PP.
5. At least 3 Defensemen willing to do more than stick wave in the defensive zone, 3 defensemen willing to put body on body and defend against the Anders Lee s of the league.
6. At least 2 big Wingers to play bottom 6 capable of leaning on opposing defensemen and that will cause fear in their minds when they go back to retrieve pucks.
7. At least 2 speedy forwards to chase down loose pucks on those bottom 6 lines.
8. At least 2 Centers that can kill Penalties.
9. Finally, 2 Goalies capable of staying relatively healthy and consistent.

There isn’t enough room in this post to go into the details of reshaping the roster, so look for that in part 2 of this writing.

Fixing the Farm System.

Our Farm system is broken. Players a deserting this sinking ship (Filip Hållander and Filip Lindberg are the latest) Instead of giving kids a chance to learn and grow, the powers that be, have been scouring the world looking for journeymen minor leaguers to populate their game time rosters and box out true prospects, relegating them to the press box.

Since the kids bound for the Wilkes Barre – Scranton (WBS) Penguins or Wheeling Nailers will not impact the NHL roster, even though this is an easy fix, it is of less importance as the previous points I have written.

To achieve repairs to our player development, a house cleaning is in order. I look for a new Director of Player Development who understands the need for teachers at this level and turn over to him the task of finding Coaches that will hone our prospects so that they can come up and play when the need arises.

The Scouting Department

The last area I would fix is the Scouting Department. It is too late for new Scouts to help with this draft, but I would review my scouts and look to expand scouting in Europe. Chief among the traits I would desire in my scouts is work ethic. I would not want any scout that would rely on the opinions of a prospect’s Coach but would go out and watch the kid play. I would never have accepted Owen Pickering’s tournament Coach who raved about him giving this kid who finished last WHL season 107^th in scoring and was a -8 in a 9 GP cameo appearance in WBS after his junior season ended.