Like my colleague, Rick Buker, I too have reservations about the turnaround time our Penguins are facing. However, my sense of foreboding doesn’t stem from the same source as Rick’s.
My concern for the future of this team doesn’t revolve around any mystical patterns (playoff appearances or lack thereof or first-round exits) the black-and-gold share with other franchises. The pattern of the same number of missed playoff seasons with a brief but futile return to the post-season only for a ceremonial first-round exit are symptoms, like a cough or a fever, not a disease. It is the disease that gives rise to the symptoms that evokes pause for me.
The thing that worries me about our Penguins and what they have in common with the Blackhawks is that they were and are completely mismanaged. Team building is just that, team BUILDING. A team isn’t just a collection of snipers, or playmakers, or mobile defensemen, it is a jigsaw puzzle of fitting snipers to score goals with playmakers to get them the puck with gritty, lunch-pail forwards who win puck battles and stake out a claim in front of opposing goalies. It is about pairing mobile defensemen with guys that can clear the front of their own net from opposing raiders and cover for the roaming mobile defensemen when they sortie out on offensive maneuvers. The final piece of the puzzle is a legitimate NHL-level starting goalie with a legitimate backup goalie who has the mental and physical makeup to handle playing only 20-ish games per season.
Neither Chicago nor Pittsburgh has demonstrated that level of leadership from their front office.
Granted, if a team has generational talents in their prime or at least just slightly past their prime, they can carry a bunch of passengers that GMs and Presidents of Hockey Operations who lack acumen use to surround those singular talents.
Connor Bedard is not a generational talent. If he were, then Chicago would already be at least threat to make the playoffs, rather than a contender for the first-overall pick for another of an endless parade of seasons.
In Pittsburgh’s case, once Jason Botterill was removed from the Jim Rutherford-Botterill tandem neither could lead a team to the playoffs. JR squandered what he built with Botterill and Botterill could never replicate what JR helped him build.
Ron Hextall was hamstrung by a coach who had too much power and an ownership that facilitated that inverted power structure, so it is hard to completely tell where the problem lie. We have to look at the futility that Hextall inflicted on Philadelphia to try and make sense out of that brief regime.
As for Kyle Dubas? In a world where logic and proportion reigns and not one where media hype brainwashes the weak-minded, he is in his fourth year at the helm and this team is foundering. Make no mistake, this is HIS team and he screwed it up.
There is no sane reason to suggest that Dubas can lead this team back to contention. His body of work, in Toronto and now here in Pittsburgh, has displayed a complete lack of ability or knowledge of how to draft and develop talent or even to identify UFAs for signing. Even if our Penguins were to draw the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, Dubas has shown credible evidence that he would use that pick to chase a player rated as mid-round pick he thinks is going to be the steal of the draft.
Ben Kindel isn’t a bad player. He will eventually be a decent middle-sixer who will have at least a ten-year career (barring injuries) but he wasn’t an 11th-overall pick nor is he going to be a superstar. He has the worst plus-minus of any forward on the team over the time he has been in the league. He lacks the vision and hockey IQ to handle the speed at which NHL level players can come at you. He can’t think fast enough to move the puck properly when opposing teams take away his time and space. He’s at best his best when he can play a dump-and-chase game against a loosely defending team.
As for the Rucks, if they were really going to be the second coming of the Sedin Twins, Liam wouldn’t have lasted until the 22nd pick and Markus certainly wouldn’t have lasted until the 39th pick. Daniel went 2nd overall and Henrik 3rd overall – get over it people.
Even if Dubas were to accidentally get it right, he suffers from the Mike Sullivan veteran-presence mentality. He shotgun signs low-end UFA reclamation projects that block roster spots for prospects. Even if the Penguins were to land Landon DuPont (ex-Penguin Micki’s son) and the kid is really a generational talent, Dubas would bury him behind a laundry list of Trevor van Riemsdyks so that his talent would be wasted in the juniors and minors until his career was almost over.
Bottom line? The similarity in records between the Hawks and Pens are symptoms of the same disease, mismanagement.
