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Salary Cap: '24-'25 Salary Thread: Crosbicles Volume MMXXV - Poolman and Poolparty?!?

eXile3 said:
You might want to check the posts. Nothing about my posts suggests I’m upset.

Plus it doesn’t seem you understand my argument. I never commented on if they should, or shouldn’t have traded him. My point was as soon as we did, we were no longer in a position to compete. It was naive to believe otherwise.
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Your entire comment history regarding Guentzel since the trade has been you saying that they shouldn't have traded him.

Anyway, there's not much of a point to continue this argument anyway. The team sucks, we just disagree for the major reasons why.
 
Icarium said:
Who exactly believed otherwise on this forum?
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A lot of people, including myself saw us as a bubble team. Not too many at the beginning of the season thought we would be shooting for a bottom five pick.

The rebuild started then. If that was Dubas’ intention or not. This is not a quick pivot.

Empoleon8771 said:
Your entire comment history regarding Guentzel since the trade has been you saying that they shouldn't have traded him.

Anyway, there's not much of a point to continue this argument anyway. The team sucks, we just disagree for the major reasons why.
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Correct but I realized I was too contrarian and gave it up. I was just stating the second we traded Jake we should have went full rebuild, it was over. I concede that we won’t know if the trade was a good one for some years.
 
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This is a point that everyone here agrees with, but watching Cale Makar play for the Avs just makes it so obvious how much Sullivan's system is restricting Karlsson. You can very reasonably argue that Karlsson's playstyle won't mesh with a team, but you can still let him be aggressive on the offense.



When was the last time a Penguins defenseman scored a goal like this? It's not even a particularly special goal, but I can't even recall when Karlsson or Letang last did this. Which to be fair isn't surprising considering Letang and Karlsson have only combined for 6 goals since the start of December.
 
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Big Friggin Dummy said:
Everyone who's been paying attention knew it was over with EK65 the summer they traded for him and Sully said some shit like "we're looking forward to helping him be better" or whatever it was. Nail in the coffin there. :laugh:
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The Penguins since 2018 have taken an approach of “what doesn’t this player do” versus what they do.

It’s why we ended up trading Phil Kessel despite him winning us two cups and putting up a career high.
 
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Gurglesons said:
The Penguins since 2018 have taken an approach of “what doesn’t this player do” versus what they do.

It’s why we ended up trading Phil Kessel despite him winning us two cups and putting up a career high.
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Sully is the king of trying to fit square pegs into round holes. All so his "systems" can be followed.

It's a ridiculous way to coach a team.
 
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Puljujarvi apparently getting recalled from WBS.

Pens1566 said:
Sully is the king of trying to fit square pegs into round holes. All so his "systems" can be followed.

It's a ridiculous way to coach a team.
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That's the frustrating thing here, he'd rather lose with his ideal system over trying to adjust his system to match the team. It's completely nonsensical.

If your team is as bad defensively as they have been this year, you should be making systematic changes to try to address that. They seemingly have not done anything like that.
 
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Empoleon8771 said:
Puljujarvi apparently getting recalled from WBS.



That's the frustrating thing here, he'd rather lose with his ideal system over trying to adjust his system to match the team. It's completely nonsensical.

If your team is as bad defensively as they have been this year, you should be making systematic changes to try to address that. They seemingly have not done anything like that.
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It's funny that they made major changes to the powerplay and have been reaping the benefits of that all while continuing to be plagued by the same 5v5 issues they've had for years.
 
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eXile3 said:
Correct but I realized I was too contrarian and gave it up. I was just stating the second we traded Jake we should have went full rebuild, it was over. I concede that we won’t know if the trade was a good one for some years.
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it would of been a waste, we didn't have our first. and knowing we would be worse this year.
 
Empoleon8771 said:
This is a point that everyone here agrees with, but watching Cale Makar play for the Avs just makes it so obvious how much Sullivan's system is restricting Karlsson. You can very reasonably argue that Karlsson's playstyle won't mesh with a team, but you can still let him be aggressive on the offense.



When was the last time a Penguins defenseman scored a goal like this? It's not even a particularly special goal, but I can't even recall when Karlsson or Letang last did this. Which to be fair isn't surprising considering Letang and Karlsson have only combined for 6 goals since the start of December.
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I thought bringing in Quinn would at least have an affect here, but no.

We saw the Real Karlsson for like 8 games in October 2023 and that was that. Every once and a while he has a dominant game but he just doesn't play like himself.
 
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Turin said:
I thought bringing in Quinn would at least have an affect here, but no.

We saw the Real Karlsson for like 8 games in October 2023 and that was that. Every once and a while he has a dominant game but he just doesn't play like himself.
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I mean Quinn has done a fantastic job with the powerplay at least.

Problem is Sully has a vice grip on the 5v5 systems/play so don't expect any changes there so long as he remains.
 
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Empoleon8771 said:
Puljujarvi apparently getting recalled from WBS.



That's the frustrating thing here, he'd rather lose with his ideal system over trying to adjust his system to match the team. It's completely nonsensical.

If your team is as bad defensively as they have been this year, you should be making systematic changes to try to address that. They seemingly have not done anything like that.
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A lot of them being bad defensively is because we don’t really have guys who can take a guy 1v1 and get around him. So to create offense, they have to play a riskier game. Like most of what ails this team, this goes back to Sullivan preferring straight ahead north/south players who can’t dangle. Hell, most of our forwards can’t even sauce the puck reliably.
 
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canadianguy77 said:
A lot of them being bad defensively is because we don’t really have guys who can take a guy 1v1 and get around him. So to create offense, they have to play a riskier game. Like most of what ails this team, this goes back to Sullivan preferring straight ahead north/south players who can’t dangle. Hell, most of our forwards can’t even sauce the puck reliably.
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And we keep bringing up unskilled guys too from Wilkes lol…just like the coach likes them…I don’t understand why he hasn’t been fired for the last four seasons…we keep getting worse under his preferred play style lol
 
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I am in the camp that believed this team was a bubble playoff team (again) this season, and quite frankly I think we still might be. But there are just too many obstacles in the way. The main one, of course, is a coach so unwilling to do anything differently...in italian we call that being a "testadura". A hard head. The coach lacks imagination. The coach lacks balls. The coach is so full of himself that nobody should ever question whether his tried and true system still works today.

And then there is the roster, which is somewhat problematic because of the head coach. He likes a certain (simple) style of player, and this roster DESPERATELY needs more imagination, creativity, puck sense and overall skill. The players Dubas brought in this past off-season were simply not good enough. Adding Tomasino has helped to a degree, but way more is needed. Meanwhile, we have albatross contracts in the minors (Jarry) and in the press box most nights (Graves), and we somehow keep getting OLDER while the speech continues to preach more youth. Are we being sold a bill of goods?

I can barely watch this roster play anymore. It is painful. What the hell are they waiting for to try Koivunen? Try McGroarty? When are they going to get rid of the some of the drek? And why in the world did we send down Pickering? Only to bring up toughness? I like tough hockey players more than most here, but this is nonsensical when you have so few offensive options right now.

It is disgusting. And I don't know when we are going to see change. IF, and I stress IF it is true that Crosby has told everyone that matters that he has no interest in leaving, then Dubas should take full advantage of that. Fire the coaching staff. Start over. If you can, that is. At least you know you can start over with a Sidney Crosby on the roster. Not everyone can start an era that way.

But it is not going to happen because I do not believe for a second that it CAN happen. So our only hope is that Dubas acquires enough good young players in the coming weeks and months, and that Sullivan likes at least a couple of them. And that last part is going to be near impossible if history means anything.

This is going to get even worse (defensively) when we trade Marcus Pettersson. I know he has not had a great season so far, but without him the overall defense is going to be a disaster.

I wish I had more faith in Dubas to get the players we need to accelerate this rebuild, but with Sullivan behind the bench it is impossible to feel comfortable about anything related to this team right about now.

Onto San Jose.
 
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Anyhow, I have seen nothing from Dubas since his tenure began to suggest he even understands the situation this team is in, but I’m sure someone has some fanfic they’d like to publish.
 
canadianguy77 said:
A lot of them being bad defensively is because we don’t really have guys who can take a guy 1v1 and get around him. So to create offense, they have to play a riskier game. Like most of what ails this team, this goes back to Sullivan preferring straight ahead north/south players who can’t dangle. Hell, most of our forwards can’t even sauce the puck reliably.
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I miss seeing crisp passes almost as much as I miss seeing good solid checks.
 
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That's the worst part of it all; the team's extremely unlikable and not fun to watch at all. I don't care about the losing. There's no reason to tune in to games aside from habit anymore. They've been barely worthy of being background noise for half a decade, and it's always the same bullshit. Goaltending's volatile as hell. Coaching sucks ass. There's this mishmash of do nothing bottom-6 guys just existing. There's no depth beyond one line, whether it be Sid or Geno's that's clicking at the time. Could write that exact scouting report of this team every month of every year since the B2Bs and you'd pretty much be right on the money.
 
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I just hate the fact that we’ve gone from playing exciting uptempo hockey to boring zero event hockey with nothing that makes the sport great going on. It’s not age, it’s the fact that we’ve made the roster up of guys who are just frankly terrible.

And the worst part is, many of those guys aren’t the result of trades, we signed them! We could have signed literally anyone else!

No matter how you slice it, it’s objectively just a failure of vision, from an organizational standpoint.
 
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