Post-Game Talk: Pens vs Wild Loss: We miss you Flower

[Zbynek]

-Dubas

+Me not caring anymore

 

[AuroraBorealis]

Anaheim is really bad and they're up next. I'd be surprised if the Pens lose that one even as bad as they're playing. After that the Pens have the Habs...also at home. Easy to see the Pens rattling off two wins and giving the team some hope.

But after that? It's Isles/Canes/Caps...all on the road. Reality gonna strike back in a hurry lol.

Maybe, but the question remains. What kind of record would it take to get him axed?
I'm curious how Dubas sees it.

 

[TooManyHumans]

As we move into the lean years the past and future are what we have. Nothing wrong with celebrating everything the team accomplished and the guys that made it happen. Despite the struggles the last few years this era was a big success.

I don't watch live sports for games that have already happened. Seems like every year they celebrate Fleury, who is a major reason we didn't win more cups. I get that he's a nice guy. Great.

 

[wgknestrick]

The people saying we need to keep Mike Sullivan to continue the tank, I think you are missing the point.

If you don't change the culture, the James Hagens and Gavin McKenna types of this world are not going to save the franchise. Even this team's winners have forgotten what it is like.

Besides, there are ZERO guarantees Mike Sullivan gets fired. Zero. It could happen, but David Quinn is probably next in line.

If the people whose job it is to critique this team don't wake up, if the fans don't start revolting against this franchise, nothing will change.

This organization is broken. There is absolutely no quick fix.

This team needs to tank for 3-4 more years. Need a 1C, 2C, and 1D from those years along with many peripheral players in the later rounds.

There is nothing to fix on this car. It's just old, and we have to drive it until we save up for the next one. The last thing Pens need is to somewhat fix their problems, have management think they are 1-2 trades away, then trade more FN draft picks.

So for now, I'd recommend all of you sit back and enjoy watching what this team + Sully does best.....lose. At some point Sully will need to be fired, but I don't feel this team has any critical young players (yet) that he is at risk ruining. That time will come in 4-5 years once we (hopefully) have a couple top 3 draft pick players on the roster.

 

[AuroraBorealis]

I don't watch live sports for games that have already happened. Seems like every year they celebrate Fleury, who is a major reason we didn't win more cups. I get that he's a nice guy. Great.

So the 2 Cups he had huge contributions in are a given and he's stripped of credit then. His .933 in 2008 reaching the Finals G6 same thing. A given and not worth mentioning, because the Pens are gods and any great result is expected.
Only the failures count, because you're certain they would win it all in either 2010, 2011 or 2012 if they got past the teams that eliminated them. Still had multiple rounds to go in all of them btw, with strong teams waiting.

What makes you think they were gonna take out Chicago in 2010, Boston in 2011 or Los Angeles in 2012 in a best of 7?
Pretty sure that L.A. team lost 4 games that whole run. Chicago's 2010 team was outrageously stacked. Boston had lockdown defense and .940 Thomas.

 

[eXile3]

Given that we were a random ping pong ball shifting by a cm away from not getting Sid, I think luck was the cornerstone of our rebuild.

It’s the cornerstone of any rebuild. You can tank and get McDavid, MacKinnon, or Yakupov, Kakko.

 

[elmaco]

Boring

 

[Icarium]

We shouldn't care about one of the best people to ever grace the organization retiring, after watching him here for 13 seasons in a key role?
What the hell's wrong with you?

I don't give a damn if MAF is the greatest guy ever off the ice or a total jerk. He is ridiculously overrated as a hockey player, that's why all the praise he gets is annoying. If you want to give him the nicest guy ever award, go right ahead but he is a mediocre starter with great longevity that the media insist on portraying as a top goalie because he is nice. It's silly to the point of childishness,

As for the game, it's very much a 2020s Penguins thing to do to be tanking without actually trying. Clueless to the end.

 

[eXile3]

I don't give a damn if MAF is the greatest guy ever off the ice or a total jerk. He is ridiculously overrated as a hockey player, that's why all the praise he gets is annoying. If you want to give him the nicest guy ever award, go right ahead but he is a mediocre starter with great longevity that the media insist on portraying as a top goalie because he is nice. It's silly to the point of childishness,

As for the game, it's very much a 2020s Penguins thing to do to be tanking without actually trying. Clueless to the end.

Jeff Carter bled goals for two years and we did everything short of giving the guy a parade.

It’s just the way org is.

 

[AuroraBorealis]

I don't give a damn if MAF is the greatest guy ever off the ice or a total jerk. He is ridiculously overrated as a hockey player, that's why all the praise he gets is annoying. If you want to give him the nicest guy ever award, go right ahead but he is a mediocre starter with great longevity that the media insist on portraying as a top goalie because he is nice. It's silly to the point of childishness,

8 seasons .912+ behind a lot of bad defenses, while barely missing games. 5 seasons over .915
Probably the best shootout goalie in the league, at a time where a lot of them were played. He played 82 of those for us. Went .740. He was stopping 3 of 4.

Yeah, he wasn't elite. But having that position pretty stable for so long was valuable too. We never had to worry about missing the playoffs due to goaltending, like some other teams did.
In 2014-15 he saved our necks from a playoff miss under MJ with a .920 reg season, when most of the Forwards were giving career low performances. We got in on game 82.

I find that a lot of fans go to the other extreme, forgetting what he did provide and end up underrating him. His numbers would have been better on structured teams too. We saw him have .927 and .928 seasons for Vegas at ages 33 and 36.
Try to remember what our blue lines and systems looked like while he was here. He had to deal with a lot of run-and-gun, sloppy hockey. A well above average amount of high danger chances relative to shots faced.

 

[TooManyHumans]

So the 2 Cups he had huge contributions in are a given and he's stripped of credit then. His .933 in 2008 reaching the Finals G6 same thing. A given and not worth mentioning, because the Pens are gods and any great result is expected.
Only the failures count, because you're certain they would win it all in either 2010, 2011 or 2012 if they got past the teams that eliminated them. Still had multiple rounds to go in all of them btw, with strong teams waiting.

What makes you think they were gonna take out Chicago in 2010, Boston in 2011 or Los Angeles in 2012 in a best of 7?
Pretty sure that L.A. team lost 4 games that whole run. Chicago's 2010 team was outrageously stacked. Boston had lockdown defense and .940 Thomas.

We've celebrated him and the Cups he helped win plenty of times. They've been acknowledged. I can also acknowledge that he sucked out loud repeatedly in the playoffs and tanked any chance we had in those years.

 

[Malkinstheman]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1851610451936723120

Sullivan isn't deploying his players properly? That doesn't sound right

 

[metalan2]

I don't give a damn if MAF is the greatest guy ever off the ice or a total jerk. He is ridiculously overrated as a hockey player, that's why all the praise he gets is annoying. If you want to give him the nicest guy ever award, go right ahead but he is a mediocre starter with great longevity that the media insist on portraying as a top goalie because he is nice. It's silly to the point of childishness,

As for the game, it's very much a 2020s Penguins thing to do to be tanking without actually trying. Clueless to the end.

The Fleury worship is finally over.

 

[hiptanaka]

He was the prime reason for our playoff failures in the early 2010s but i dont feel like he gets enough credit for the 08 run and the Caps series in 17. We were completely outplayed in Game 7 of the 17 Caps series and the only reason we squeaked by was because Fleury completely stole it.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

This team needs to tank for 3-4 more years. Need a 1C, 2C, and 1D from those years along with many peripheral players in the later rounds.

There is nothing to fix on this car. It's just old, and we have to drive it until we save up for the next one. The last thing Pens need is to somewhat fix their problems, have management think they are 1-2 trades away, then trade more FN draft picks.

So for now, I'd recommend all of you sit back and enjoy watching what this team + Sully does best.....lose. At some point Sully will need to be fired, but I don't feel this team has any critical young players (yet) that he is at risk ruining. That time will come in 4-5 years once we (hopefully) have a couple top 3 draft pick players on the roster.

You know, a GM can actually make trades that do not involve draft picks. All we do is either trade futures for middling talent or pick up someone else's garbage for draft pick capital that is ultimately underwhelming considering the drek coming back our way.

How about trading player or players for someone else's player or players? I know, it must be hard to do because nobody on the team is playing well save for a 22-year-old rookie goaltender.

That is why they pay GMs a lot of cash. To figure this shit out. And by GM, I mean Mike Sullivan, of course.

 

[Ragamuffin Gunner]

This team sucks.

They should have never let Fleury go. Not that it would change that this team sucks but letting him go for Murray was a huge mistake in hindsight. You can't criticize the team for making that call but it ended up just a miserable mistake.

Obviously it would have made no sense at the time but imagine what we could have gotten for MM right after the 2nd Cup win. It would have been nuts.

 

[Deport Ogie]

 

[AuroraBorealis]

We've celebrated him and the Cups he helped win plenty of times. They've been acknowledged. I can also acknowledge that he sucked out loud repeatedly in the playoffs and tanked any chance we had in those years.

They were just gonna lose at a later time in those 3 years. They weren't defending well enough to win championships, and well-rounded beast teams were waiting in the Finals, unlike 2016 and 2017.
We won in 2009 against a beast, balanced team because we had our D-men playing well above their career average levels at the same time.
So don't worry about it. No Cups were lost.

 

[TooManyHumans]

They were just gonna lose at a later time in those 3 years. They weren't defending well enough to win championships, and well-rounded beast teams were waiting in the Finals, unlike 2016 and 2017.
We won in 2009 against a beast, balanced team because we had our D-men playing well above their career average levels at the same time.
So don't worry about it. No Cups were lost.

The same thing can be said about the Steelers and all their playoff losses. So let's start celebrating Tomlin incessantly.

 

[Sidgeni Malkby]

So tired of Fleury. I said this before, but I still don't forgive him for his playoff gaffs year over year...during our prime years. Goals bouncing off of him coming off the wall..sheesh.

After the 1st cup win, he turned into a great regular season goalie, but horrible playoff goalie.

The game....
- how predictable is predictable? wow!
- Step 1: get a lead
- Step 2: blow a lead with style.
- Step 3: scramble to come back and making it looks like you can almost tie it, but actually not even make it close.

+ Blomq is good! I just hope he doesn't get shell shocked at some point.

+ clearly Crosby was pouting the last few games, because with Malkin on his line, he seemed to give more of a crap. Let's hope that builds into something for Crosby, but obviously sucking this hard is uncharted territory (or a distance memory) for Crosby.

+ Poor Malkin...he is actually one of the few that actually looks like he's giving a crap out there, but there is only so much a 38 year old can do. Usually he's the one to pout more.

I know many of you guys are all over this team, but I refuse to believe that a team that almost made the playoffs 2 years in a row, suddenly is a last place team?

It doesn't work like that!

 

[Ragamuffin Gunner]

I see some will never get out of 2012.

It's no coincidence that MAF's worst years started once DB fully took over after 09 and stopped the moment DB was fired.

The Pens weren't winning shit with that loser behind the bench, especially considering what BOS, CHI and LA were doing at the time.

 

[Buddy Bizarre]

They were just gonna lose at a later time in those 3 years. They weren't defending well enough to win championships, and well-rounded beast teams were waiting in the Finals, unlike 2016 and 2017.
We won in 2009 against a beast, balanced team because we had our D-men playing well above their career average levels at the same time.
So don't worry about it. No Cups were lost.

Can you tell me the lotto numbers?

Pedanticism aside, it sure would have been nice to find out if we could have beaten those other teams. But MAF single-handedly cost this team multiple playoff rounds. He also saved this team's ass in 2017 for a round.

Dems the facts

 

[ncm7772]

I honestly don't care about Fleury anymore. I'm tired of celebrating the past.

Thank you! It’s been over 7 years. People need to move the eff on.

 

[Andy99]

Anaheim is really bad and they're up next. I'd be surprised if the Pens lose that one even as bad as they're playing. After that the Pens have the Habs...also at home. Easy to see the Pens rattling off two wins and giving the team some hope.

But after that? It's Isles/Canes/Caps...all on the road. Reality gonna strike back in a hurry lol.

Anaheim just beat the Isles on the road…with this exemplary defense, I would be more surprised if the Pens win another game lol…Graves is our best D man lol

https://x.com/i/web/status/1851610260890411175

 

[AuroraBorealis]

The same thing can be said about the Steelers and all their playoff losses. So let's start celebrating Tomlin incessantly.

I don't watch football and never will. Can't comment on that one lol