Softest team in league history

[Jacob]

Nice. My favorite movie line ever.

 

[Coastal Kev]

Those guys excel in something??? Ideally sure, in reality not so much. There's a reason they all move around for near nothing....

One teams trash is another teams treasure.

I would like to go back to 95 or 96, not sure of the exact season. But the Pens had a team made up of top end talent. Lemieux, Jagr, Francis, Murphy among others and then they went young and gritty with the remaining of the roster. Guys like Tamer, Roche, Dziedzic and Leroux. This was one of my all time favorite Pens team. On their own or on another team, guys like Roche and Dziedzic had little value, but to the Pens stars, they took a lot of pressure off of them. And I'm not talking about fighting since fighting doesn't have the same place in the game. I'm talking about not answering with physicality, but taking it to the other team with energy and grit first.

When the Pens dumped guys like Roche & Dziedzic, Pens fans pointed to them and laughed at their failing careers and labeled them as terrible players. But the point these fans never understood is that some players hold more value to certain teams than to others.

 

[Greeneye]

One teams trash is another teams treasure.

I would like to go back to 95 or 96, not sure of the exact season. But the Pens had a team made up of top end talent. Lemieux, Jagr, Francis, Murphy among others and then they went young and gritty with the remaining of the roster. Guys like Tamer, Roche, Dziedzic and Leroux. This was one of my all time favorite Pens team. On their own or on another team, guys like Roche and Dziedzic had little value, but to the Pens stars, they took a lot of pressure off of them. And I'm not talking about fighting since fighting doesn't have the same place in the game. I'm talking about not answering with physicality, but taking it to the other team with energy and grit first.

When the Pens dumped guys like Roche & Dziedzic, Pens fans pointed to them and laughed at their failing careers and labeled them as terrible players. But the point these fans never understood is that some players hold more value to certain teams than to others.

Who can forget the glory years of Dave Roche and Joe Dziedzic? I've officially seen it all on these boards.

 

[Coastal Kev]

Who can forget the glory years of Dave Roche and Joe Dziedzic? I've officially seen it all on these boards.

Exactly proving my point... thanks

 

[Zen Arcade]

Dziedzic and Roche were both terrible at being deterrents. They were both awful fighters and they were too slow play an effective physical game.

To me, those two were emblematic of how Craig Patrick lost sight of how to build a tough team and thought throwing any big dude in there would work.

 

[billybudd]

Pghkev isn't wrong that the 96 team was fun to watch, deep as Hell and tough as nails. Last club the Penguins had prior to Crosby that had a legitimate chance to win it all* (though I believe the Avs would have stomped them with Francis out from a broken foot, had they squeaked past the Cats).

*the Mario return year club wasn't beating those Devils. Play that series 100 times and the Pens lose all 100.

Dziedzic and Roche were both terrible at being deterrents. They both awful fighters and they were too slow play an effective physical game.

To me, those two were emblematic of how Craig Patrick lost sight of how to build a tough team and thought throwing any big dude in there would work.

Dziedzic was on fire for about half a month. Scored something ridiculous like 8 goals in 5 games, then only one or two for the rest of his career.

Anyway, Patrick spent a couple years chasing the next Kevin Stevens (Roche, Murray, Wells, Dziedzic, Oksiuta, Stojanov...all failed to become that for one reason or another, though Murray did become something else, somewhere else), before moving on to soft, big players from Europe.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

Nice. My favorite movie line ever.

One of my favourite movies ever too.