How do the Pens do it?

[Boxscore]

I hate the Pens. But, I've grown to respect them immensely. How do they do it? For one, they have Crosby, who is legitimately the best player on the planet. He's matured so much and now has those intangibles that very few players have. He's the glue. I also think the world of their coach. I think Sullivan has a great handle on his team, knows the personalities, and has identified the best way for them to be successful. He is the opposite of Dan Bylsma, who would stray from the plan and dumb his team down over ego, when they were challenged physically.

Over the last 2+ years, Crosby has instilled a weird confidence in his teammates, the way Gretzky, Messier and Lemieux used to. They believe they can win because of Sid, and he steps up and proves them right. My goodness, I can't believe I'm typing these words, but it's the truth.

 

[The Shovel Penguin]

Fruit baskets for Gary. Time to send a new one for this round.

 

[Burke the Legend]

Great drafting between 2010-2013. That talent entered the lineup and filled it out much better than the washed up vets + bargain bin pickups they had before. Matt Murray putting on the best rookie goalie playoff performance since Patrick Roy was also pretty helpful.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Tanking for years and getting Crosby and Malkin. Having the 2 of the 3 best forwards in the league can do wonders...

 

[philip]

Tanking for years and getting Crosby and Malkin. Having the 2 of the 3 best forwards in the league can do wonders...

That plays a big part of course, but I think they are so careful with their assets. They don't hand out silly big long term contracts, just don't overpay, and they seem to always win trades. It means always seem to be crazy deep.

 

[tom_servo]

And Craig Anderson and Martin Jones?

Some credit obviously goes to Pittsburgh's forward group and scorers for torching those goaltenders, but you'd have to be kidding yourself if you don't think they were a bit lucky to have the last 3 Vezina winners all have MAJOR meltdowns in the playoffs in 2017.

Those goalies didn't have meltdowns in the 2017 playoffs. They had meltdowns against the Pens. Because the Pens can ruin goalies.

 

[the_fan]

Malkin and Crosby

 

[ZeroPucksGiven]

Tanking for years and getting Crosby and Malkin. Having the 2 of the 3 best forwards in the league can do wonders...

Explain how they tanked
This has been disproven about a billion times already

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

Explain how they tanked
This has been disproven about a billion times already

Only a bad thing when referring to Pens. Yet go to every teams board and they had a "tank" thread towards the end of the season.

Pens didnt tank tho..they were horrible.

Definitely got lucky with who was available those 2 years tho.

 

[IPS]

The Hawks were so f***ing close to winning the cup in 2014. They ran into a ridiculously stacked Kings team that just refused to lose. Penguins are amazing but I really don't think they've faced anything like the 2014 Kings.

 

[ZJuice]

The Hawks were so ****ing close to winning the cup in 2014. They ran into a ridiculously stacked Kings team that just refused to lose. Penguins are amazing but I really don't think they've faced anything like the 2014 Kings.

Those 2014 playoffs were a farce. Kings players got away with murder every night. Poopoo style hockey.

 

[Howie Hodge]

Those 2014 playoffs were a farce. Kings players got away with murder every night. Poopoo style hockey.

That's a shi*** thing to say......

 

[Riptide]

The Pens pissed away 8 years having Shero as the GM. We always lacked depth and made our stars play with garbage wingers. Rutherford is a decent GM but Pittsburgh had all of the pieces to compete for the cup but Shero and Bylsma were awful. Shero did draft a couple of good players in his later years.

But any competent GM should excel with the star players. Shero could never find complimentary players.

Odd... pretty sure that Pittsburgh made back to back finals and won a cup with Shero as the GM... so clearly it wasn't all a waste. Add in the year Crosby and Malkin were both hurt, and nothing was happening there. So now you're down to 5 years. And then there's 2013 where pretty much everyone was already handing us the cup due to our depth... So now you're down to 4 years.

But I guess only being 50% wrong isn't too bad...

 

[Riptide]

There is a difference losing a player in the middle of the playoffs over being aware said player isnt going to play the rest of the season right before the TDL. Pens had plenty of time to add Dmen Preds couldnt just pluck more centers when Johansen and Fiala went down.

You're right there is a difference... one team gets the advantage of having that player help them get through the first 3 rounds and the other team doens't. What a stupid comment.

 

[FinProspects]

07 First Round
08 Finals
09 Cup
10 Confrence SemiFinal
11 First round
12 First round
13 Confrence Final
14 Confrence SemiFinal
15 First Round
16 Cup
17 Cup
18 Confrence SemiFinal

Thats some serious playoff experience right there. Sid+Geno really have been through it all:
4x First round
2x Confrence Semifinal
1x Confrence Final
4x Finals -> 3xCups 1xLoss

 

[Riptide]

Tanking for years and getting Crosby and Malkin. Having the 2 of the 3 best forwards in the league can do wonders...

How do you "tank for years" when you were a playoff team in 23 of the last 27 seasons? Honest question.

The team was f***ing terrible because there was no revenue sharing, a crappy arena, a shit TV deal (local and national) and the owner was broke so he couldn't afford to keep the talent they had. And instead of making smart trades to bring in actual quality players/prospects the GM was forced to sell his star players and get CASH as part of the return just to afford payroll. And that's with Lemieux deferring 30+ million dollars that was owed to him. But I get it... it's much easier just to blame Pittsburgh's good fortunes on something that frequently has a negative connotation like "tanking" then actually looking at the facts of the situation.

 

[ZJuice]

Explain how they tanked
This has been disproven about a billion times already

Some people on here weren’t born yet when the pens won the lockout lottery so they don’t know the truth

 

[FinProspects]

How do you "tank for years" when you were a playoff team in 23 of the last 27 seasons? Honest question.

The team was ****ing terrible because there was no revenue sharing, a crappy arena, a **** TV deal (local and national) and the owner was broke so he couldn't afford to keep the talent they had. And instead of making smart trades to bring in actual quality players/prospects the GM was forced to sell his star players and get CASH as part of the return just to afford payroll. And that's with Lemieux deferring 30+ million dollars that was owed to him. But I get it... it's much easier just to blame Pittsburgh's good fortunes on something that frequently has a negative connotation like "tanking" then actually looking at the facts of the situation.

Yeah I dont agree with the tanking part either, but boy oh boy did the Pens get lucky with the timing.. one just couldnt pick a better time to be the worst team in NHL. If we compare that with pre-McDavid drafts for Edmonton, then you really understand how rare it is to have 3 generational players in back2back drafts, let alone being able to draft two of those players. And then to think that Pens were almost able to screw those two players is even more mind boggling.

 

[Artorius Horus T]

Won't matter how they do it, won't go trough next round.
versus two previous seasons, Pens have not been nearly as good.
- they could of "easily" fallen to Flyers, round one.

 

[Tender Rip]

Any number of things have to come together for a team to do what the Pens have been doing recently.

In no particular order:

- Sid and Geno's contracts relative to the total cap have gone from being fair/bargains to being absolutely great. Kessel add adds.
- JR and Sullivan revitalized the franchise identifying what was needed to support Sid and Geno. This is absolutely key, we wasted at least three years with Bylsma where we had no chance of winning at any point despite appearances to the contrary.
- of the 20 players who have played in this years playoffs 8 came up through WBS during the last three years, and none of them were 1st round picks. Murray, Guentzel, Rust leading the way. Affordably so, for now.
- JR has had more than decent luck making trades for role players matching needs at times of valuations being rather low. Hagelin, Bonino, Cullen, Schultz, Oleksiak, Hainsey etc.
- Hornqvist. Just because.
..... having Sid and Geno provides a base where you should to be competitive if management do their job well.

 

[Tender Rip]

Won't matter how they do it, won't go trough next round.
versus two previous seasons, Pens have not been nearly as good.
- they could of "easily" fallen to Flyers, round one.

Well, we played better in 2015-2016, there are no arguments against that.

I think we have been better than we were last season against Columbus though, who dictated play a great deal against us even if they lost in 5. As for could have easily fallen to the Flyers..... nonsense. Flyers had the upper hand in the play in three periods out of 18, at best. In the games we lost we had loads of opportunities before going behind the 8-ball, mainly through screwing up on the PP. Most Flyers fans know this to be true also, it wasn't close. When a team is outscored 28-15 over 6 games it rarely is, and less so when in our 4 wins we won by 7, 4, 5 and 3 goals.

Doesn't mean we couldn't lose against the Caps, although I don't think we will. Odds are long on going all the way again obviously, but no longer than they were going into the second round last season where I certainly expected that we would lose against a stacked Caps team playing without Letang and Murray.
Going forward, a lot depends on health... and thus luck.... for every team left in the competition.

 

[Peat]

There is a difference losing a player in the middle of the playoffs over being aware said player isnt going to play the rest of the season right before the TDL. Pens had plenty of time to add Dmen Preds couldnt just pluck more centers when Johansen and Fiala went down. Given how your fanbase views Letang you certainly didnt miss his bad defensive play and boneheaded penalties. Johansen's loss for Nashville had a much larger effect on Nashville and their offense than the loss of Letang had for Pit and their defense.

Except the Pens thought Letang would be back for the play-offs at the trade dead-line. The acquisitions made were to give us enough depth to get there and more injury depth when there, not to replace Letang.

And the views of some - exacerbated by a season where Letang has struggled for form after that injury - shouldn't be taken as gospel for how the fanbase views Letang, or how valuable 2015-16 Letang was to the team. A lot of people thought we simply couldn't win last year without him. The big difference in our corsi in 2016-17 compared to the years before and after had a lot to do with his absence.

I don't think Jones ever allowed more than 3 goals, and I also watched the Tampa series; both of those goaltenders were flat out spectacular.

Vasilevsky's save percentage was only 0.05% better than Holtby's. Either Vasilevsky wasn't flat out spectecular, or Holtby didn't melt down. I know save percentage is a blunt tool, but its good enough to say their performances weren't that far apart.

 

[Kimota]

Feels like the moment they got Kessel, everything changed. They had the sort of depth they've always been looking for. Reminds me of the Ulf Samuelsson/Ron Francis trade during the Mario time.

 

[Kimota]

The Hawks were so ****ing close to winning the cup in 2014. They ran into a ridiculously stacked Kings team that just refused to lose. Penguins are amazing but I really don't think they've faced anything like the 2014 Kings.

That is true. That is much easier to win now than it was back then. All you need now is talent and you go threw. I bet even though he is older, Sid must find it's easier for him to play in the league in this day and age.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

Yeah I dont agree with the tanking part either, but boy oh boy did the Pens get lucky with the timing.. one just couldnt pick a better time to be the worst team in NHL. If we compare that with pre-McDavid drafts for Edmonton, then you really understand how rare it is to have 3 generational players in back2back drafts, let alone being able to draft two of those players. And then to think that Pens were almost able to screw those two players is even more mind boggling.

It’s not really mind boggling, Shero just had the wrong philosophy for how to build around his generational pivots.

He basically admitted that those two could elevate their linemates, so that allowed them to focus heavily on their blueline. The problem is, this usually meant Crosby and Malkin were playing with mostly unskilled, coal miner types. The only skilled linemate Crosby had under Shero was Hossa for two months...

When he finally did acquire a legit goal scoring winger in Neal, he was a poor skater that couldn’t create his own offense and leached off Malkin.

Thankfully, JR came in and had the philosophy that you surround your generational pivots with skill and speed. It was always obvious that’s what should have been done, but Shero studied under David Poile and basically adopted his approach of building your blueline first.