Eugoogoolizing the Penguins

As the years have passed since last our Pittsburgh Penguins hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup, I find myself relating to the role of Jacobim Mugatu at the end of the movie Zoolander, “The man has only one look, …… Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They’re the same face! Doesn’t anybody notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Our Penguins under Head Coach Mike Sullivan are Derek Zoolander. They have only one look. Since the start of the 2016 – 2017 season, there has been no change in the look of our favorite flightless fowl.

When Sullivan took the Helm of our hometown heroes, on December 12, 2015, he had no time to install HIS system. All he could do was loose the hounds. All he could do was tell generational talents and future Hall of Famers like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, All Star talents Phil Kessel, Kris Letang, grit players like Nick Bonino, Ian Cole, Eric Fehr, Carl Hagelin, Patric Hornqvist, and Chris Kunitz, and rookies like Tom Kuhnhackl, Bryan Rust, and Conor Sheary, go out there and play hockey. All he could do was ask rookie phenom Matt Murray and future Hall of Famer Marc-Andre Fleury to stand tall and backstop his hybrid, high-octane yet gritty assembly. And freed from the overly complicated Mike Johnston’s system, those players did respond and captured a Cup.

Sullivan was only slightly more valuable to that team than Kevin Porter and Derrick Pouliot. His best contribution to that team was telling the players to do what they do best. And their best was good enough to take the league by storm, only having 1-team the Tampa Bay Lightning put up a fight. The other 3-teams were only good enough to put up token resistance.

It wasn’t until the next season that Sullivan could start implementing HIS system. Although that 2016-2017 team had a better Points Percentage in the regular season, those advanced stats the friends of Sullivan love to tout really dropped off defensively. The teams Corsi (CF%) plummeted from 2 in the league from when Sullivan took over the team in 2015 down to 16, Shots Against per 60 minutes (SA/60) dropped from 13^th in the league to 25^th, and Goals Against per 60 (GA/60) fell from 8^th in the League down to 16^th.

		Regular						Post
Season		Pts %	CF %	SF/60	SA/60	GF/60	GA/60	Pts %	CF %	SF/60	SA/60	GF/60	GA/60
2015-16	Pct	0.657	54.89	32.44	28.57	2.44	1.98	0.677	51.63	34.01	27.39	2.53	2.12
	Rank	5	2	1	13	5	8	SC	7	2	6	3	7
2016-17	Pct	0.677	50.14	32.84	31.07	2.81	2.28	0.640	46.13	27.46	30.54	2.41	2.12
	Rank	2	16	1	25	1	16	SC	13	11	12	3	10

Long before I crunched the numbers, those who read these boards, if they would remember, will recall that going into the playoffs, I said that the Penguins would only win that 2^nd Cup, if Murray and Fleury would stand on their collective heads. The eye test was there for anyone who wasn’t allowing themselves to be blinded by the Sullivan Kool-Aid. Now that I have crunched those numbers, objective evidence supports that eye test and my assertion.

Then came the Post – Season and that played out just as I predicted; our Penguins did win the Cup, but they struggled mightily. Sullivan was not the genius that his fan club still proclaims. Fleury stole the Washington Capitals’ series. Our Penguins should have lost right there. Fortunately, with Murray on the shelf, Fleury just may have played the best hockey of his highlight reel career, shutting out Alex Ovechkin, the Great Eight and crew.

After the Capitals came the Ottawa Senators who wore an already exhausted Fleury (having withstood the burden of the Capitals onslaught). The Senators won game 3 in convincing style, chasing Fleury from the net. The lack of defense from the Penguins finally got to the beleaguered Goalie. Fortunately, the Penguins had their ace in the hole Murray, finally recovered from an injury. The regular season starting Goalie came in fresh and stole that series back for the black-and-gold.

With only 16 teams in the Post – Season, Sullivan’s genius defensive system, that he now had time to install, checked in at 13^th in CORSI, 12^th in SA/60, dropping their GA/60 to 10^th.

Since 2017, Mike Sullivan has only won 1 playoff series and both his regular season and post season records have fallen below Dan Bylsma’s record (0.627 and 0.537 for Sullivan vs 0.668 and 0.551 for Bylsma) and Bylsma was fired while Sulivan is still hailed as a genius by those who refuse to see.

So, why am I railing against Sullivan again?

I really hate beating a dead horse; that is at least part of the reason I have written so little of late. Our Penguins haven’t changed at all. They haven’t learned at all from their losses. Rather than face the truth, the team and their media spin doctors keep deflecting, blaming everything and everyone except the main culprit for their descent from elite status. Their latest victim and scapegoat, Ron Hextall, wasn’t even close to being around when Sullivan’s system was exposed as marginal in the regular season, when backed by elite players, but downright awful when the post – season rolls around, requiring superhuman Goaltending to succeed. The team that won the 2^nd Cup was essentially the same team that won the first of the back-to-back Cups. The only thing that changed was the system. Therefore the plummet in defensive stats wasn’t from personnel but strategy.

This team was failing long before Hextall got here. Hextall was no where near Pittsburgh when Sullivan’s team Defense disappeared the 2^nd Cup year.

The final straw that set me off into writing again about a subject that I have beaten into the ground was our friend and my partner in crime Rick B referring us to read an article on a lesser site, Pittsburgh Hockey Now (lesser site because all they always seem to do is tote the Penguins’ management’s party line rather than actually ask the hard questions like an honest journalist should.

(I say journalist rather than blogger because that site likes to posture about how big they are. I would expect a little more from them)

In the article, to which Rick referred us, Dan Kingerski juxtaposed Bruce Cassidy’s defensive strategies for his Cup winning Las Vegas Golden Knights with Sullivan’s wanna-be strategy for the Pittsburgh Penguins defense. Kingerski notes that Cassidy understands that his team pays Defensemen to play defense and positions at least 1 Defenseman in front of his Goaltender, like any logical thinking Coach would do. However, according to Kingerski, Sullivan tells his Defensemen to chase the puck along the boards like 6-year-olds and then asks his Forwards, particularly Centers – who are paid to score Goals not prevent them – to play Defense in front of their Goalie.

Kingerski further states that is why Sullivan likes small defensemen; they fit his system. They look like 6-year-old defensemen skating around chasing the puck, rather than playing positional hockey.

No wonder, none of the Penguins forward prospects can make the team. All their lives they have trained to score Goals, but their Coach now demands that they stop shots rather than take shots. Their coach wants the Defensemen who were trained all their career to stop shots to move the puck to shoot the puck rather than those more skilled at offense performing those tasks.

And the media buy into the stupidity, complaining about a lack of secondary scoring. Are they serious? Do they really think that these bottom 6 forwards have anything left in their tanks to do the job that they are paid to do after covering for the errant defensemen. They bemoan Jeff Carter because the 37-year-old veteran who has played under real coaches and who must mistakenly think he is supposed to play forward, can’t adapt to Sullivan’s inversion.

My frustration and impetus to write boils down to Kingerski not questioning the lack of logic here. He just rambles on as if Sullivan’s system has any sanity to it.

It is one thing to ask the forwards to help on defense, but it is totally inane to ask them to play defense for roaming defensemen.

Bottom Line

The Fenway Sports Group hasn’t been embarrassed enough. They, and their media lackeys still hype Sullivan. So, no, I am not under any delusions that I will get my fondest wish and Sullivan will get his ticket out of town. The champagne must remain on ice. Pittsburgh’s version of Derek Zoolander, one look Sullivan isn’t going anywhere soon. Our coach will continue building his center for ants.

I am resigned to stocking up on other spirits to try and take the sting out of the upcoming season.

Barring new GM Kyle Dubas pulling off multiple Trevor Daley for Rob Scuderi trades, netting him modern day clones of Fleury and Murray to backstop Sullivan’s upside-down strategy as well as finding a mad scientist with a fountain of youth serum to give to Crosby and Malkin we will be having this same conversation next summer. And I have no doubt the same people that want to argue against logic this summer will also argue against logic next summer.