By my count, half their forwards are players that other teams didn't want.
I'm not saying that they're not competent NHL'ers, just that it is a lot to collect on one team.
Hayes hasn't even been that bad. Beauvillier is useless and Glass has been fine on the 4th line. The issue is coaching. When the coach keeps forcing Rust to work with Crosby and then tries the bare minimum to get players going as well as random idiotic healthy scratches and line up decisions, it makes a lot look worse. Puljujarvi goes from having a good game vs Detroit to being a healthy scratch for literally no reason.
The Pens system has been shit for years, he refuses to make adjustments and when he says he has he refuses to answer questions by the media about what they were.
This is a team that is just coached so poorly. The players look lost trying to play a system that doesn't make sense and is designed to run into walls with no adjustments. When Sid is talking about how bad he's playing defensively and needs to be better, yet the coach doesn't make any adjustments to the way they play or the lines to fix any of it, the blame is the GM? To do what? Beg the idiotic ownership to let him fire Sullivan?
Sullivan, let me remind you, went over his previous Gm's head to negotiate and sign his own extension.
If we're going to say Dubas is dumb, he's dumb for taking the GM job that he never was hired for. He will be another Sullivan casualty like JR, Burke, Hextall, Gonchar, Martin, Recchi, and Reirden.