For Penguins Sake, Fenway Group, Fire Sullivan Now

Firing Brian Burke, Ron Hextall, and Chris Pryor was a good start at repairing our Pittsburgh Penguins, but it was only a start, Fenway Group, please, please, please, finish the job.

I am not going to argue that these Three Stooges did worse than Nero, who only played his fiddle and watched the burning of Rome. Our Penguins version of Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe, one upped that inept Roman Emperor. Our Stooges poured gasoline on the flames in their Keystone Kops attempt to cool the warming embers, thus igniting it into an inferno that turned a should have been Penguins Wild Card Playoff team into the ashes that now gets early Tee times.

In my not so humble opinion, the worst of the laundry list of stumbling, bumbling pratfalls perpetrated by the above trio was that ridiculous 3-year contract extension Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe gave to their all too often forgotten fourth brother Shemp, aka Mike Sullivan.

True enough, even before the season started, Hextall, in what must have been an audition for Max Sennett, signed Jan Rutta, traded Mike Matheson for Jeff Petry and Ryan Poehling, then traded John Marino for Ty Smith, making the youngest possible Right-Handed Defenseman (RHD) on the roster 32 years old.

However, it was at this point that Shemp/Sullivan took over the desolation of our favorite flightless fowl.

Let’s not forget that not all of Hextall’s moves were bad. He did manage to sign Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Rickard Rakell to affordable contracts and all three of them, with the help of Sidney Crosby contributed very heavily to the limited success this team eked out.

Sullivan wasted 82 Games Played (GP) seasons from 3 of those 4 players; Crosby, Malkin, and Rakell.

It wasn’t Hextall that refused to demote to 3^rd line Bryan Rust when he went ice cold in the middle of the season. It wasn’t Hextall that refused to bring up and play either Alex Nylander or Valterri Puustenin in that top 6 role while Rust tried to get his game back together. No Sullivan’s answer, move Rakell up to the top line to get it scoring again and Rust down to the 2^nd line, eliminating the 2^nd line as a scoring threat.

It wasn’t Hextall that employed a perimeter shooting offense with an allergy to taking it to the paint. Sullivan’s Smurfs finished 9^th in the league in terms of Corsi For Percentage (CF%) but 31^st in the league in Shooting Percentage (S%) resulting in a team finishing 19th in the overall league standings. All opposing teams had to do was channel their inner Mohammad Ali and his rope-a-dope defense and let Sullivan’s Smurfs burn themselves out with their ineffective low percentage shots and no traffic in front of the Goalie.

Hextall may have had some influence on Sullivan’s decision to keep Jeff Carter on the roster, but not in Carter getting critical ice time, particularly at the beginning of the season. Rather than managing Carter’s minutes and possibly reserving some gas in the tank, it was Sullivan’s decision to burn out what little Carter had left.

It wasn’t Hextall’s decision to drive the offense through defensemen named Marcus Pettersson and Chad Ruhwedel, having them pinch in, play after play, and asking Forwards cover their vacated posts. It wasn’t accidental that the team had pathetic secondary scoring when the forwards of the 3^rd and 4^th lines were constantly trying to play defense while offensively bankrupt defensemen took shots or skated with the puck. It should not have surprised anyone that Kasperi Kapanen scored 8 Goals (G) and had 14 Points (Pts) in his 23 GP with the St. Louis Blues, once he was allowed to play offense again and not forced to cover for an AWOL Ruhwedel.

That debacle was squarely not only on Shemp/Sullivan but his buddy Lou Costello/Todd Reirden.

It wasn’t Hextall that failed to teach his players defensive zone coverage or employ purse swinging Ruth Buzzi’s who never could move opponents out from in front of their Goalies or keep those opponents from running over their Net Minding teammates. When I played Goal, my little brother (in terms of age and size – I have about 5” and 2030lbs of muscle on him) went after an opponent my size who had the nerve to swipe at a rebound I had covered. It took both linesmen and the referee to get them apart. Penguins’ defensemen act more like lap dogs wagging their tails and hoping those opponents don’t hit them next.

It wasn’t Hextall who kept playing Goalies that ceded enough short side to drive a Mack truck through. That would be Shemp/Sullivan again. However, let’s not forget Bud Abbott/Andy Chiodo who couldn’t seem to teach these Goalies how to play their angles.

And speaking of Goalies, if Tristan Jarry was really that injured, as Jarry now claims, why was he in there? I don’t care if he is claiming that there was no treatment protocol for his injury, so he wanted to play. If there was no cure and he couldn’t get the job done, then get him out of there. Leave him on LTIR and use that Cap space to get a Goalie that may not win you games but on who at least wasn’t losing you games. That glaring error was on Shemp/Sullivan and his training staff.

It wasn’t Hextall that failed to get his team up to beat one of the worst teams in the league this year and that was looking to position itself for the most favorable chance to win the Connor Bedard Sweepstakes. Yes, you have it, that once again falls on Shemp/Sullivan.

Our friend Jorenz brought up a Sullivan quote in a reply to a different post yesterday, a quote where Sullivan deflected blame to his players.

 I do remember that quote Jorenz, where Sullivan whined that no one on the team was listening to him. I remember it and have cited it several times before, trying to get people to see that Teflon Sullivan was not that good of a Coach.

If he hadn’t been fired the year before for contradicting his GM who said Phil Kessel was injured during the Capitals series, Sullivan should have been fired then for admitting he had lost the team. (However, that was after the New York Islanders swept them in 4 games not the Montreal Canadiens series loss the following season). Furthermore, Sullivan doubled down on his ineptitude when he blamed Malkin and Kessel for not scoring that series even though they finished 1^st and 3^rd in scoring that series.

The last thing I will say is that it wasn’t Hextall that played an entire veteran lineup in a meaningless last game of the season against another team vying for the top draft pick and still lost. Once again that would be Shemp/Sullivan.

The sad part is, there still are Kool-Aid drinking Sullivan apologists. I ran into one this morning trying to throw all of the blame on Hextall. To them I say

If you want to argue that Sullivan’s speed game took the league by surprise and helped the team win that first of the back-to-back Cups, that is about all I will concede. When I look down the chalk board, the negatives of Sullivan and his Flea Circus hockey far outweigh the one positive.

(Although I will still remind you that Sullivan inherited a team replete with 2 generational talents, 2 more probable Hall of Famers, a several more All Stars and a boat load of top-notch role players. He took that stacked team and stripped it of nearly all its high-end talent and all its grit players. We are now 6 years from those heady days of the team Sullivan inherited. We now are seeing what a Sullivan built team looks like)

A quick reminder to everyone; Sullivan was fired from the Boston Bruins after only 2 Seasons. He was fired as an assistant coach from the New York Rangers. He, like pretty much every Coach in the league, is a cast off from some other team. Even with Crosby and Malkin playing a full 82 GP and those same 2 players along with their amigo Kris Letang having solid seasons, Sullivan managed to fall below Dan Bylsma in All time Winning Percentage and Bylsma was fire.

Fenway Group, you made a good start but don’t stop now. The one constant off ice over these last six seasons of frustration has been Sullivan. It is well past team to move on from Sullivan’s short pants hockey. It is now time to catch up with the rest of the league.

FIRE SULLIVAN NOW!