Penguins 5 Blackhawks 4

Dont look now but the Penguins are making a hard push for the Playoffs. If they can manage to get 2 more wins out of this road trip with one of those wins coming against the Panthers we will be talking about the Penguins trying to get the 5th seed in the playoffs rather than just making it in. After we finish up this 5 game road trip we have an 8 game home stand, and recently the Pens have been very good at home 9-2-1 over there last 12 home games. Kunitz and Staal looked great together last night, dont know what got into Staal but we got a look at the potential we will be trading away. That game probally did a lot for his trade value.

Whitney Trade

The longer i have had to think about this trade the worse i think it was. I do like both guys we got in return for Whitney but think we should have been able to get a better winger for him, a true scoring winger rather than a guy that has put up Satan like numbers. And i really like the prospect we got but what is Shero building for, the year that Malkin and Crosbys contracts come up? The time for this team to win is now.

One of my major issues with this trade is Kunitz makes to much money, if you were going to dump Whitney for a middle of the road player and a prospect you needed to at least make sure the player you are getting has a favorable contract and Kunitz does not he is overpaid making 3.725 million dollars a year. If kunitz was making 2.5 million a year i would like this trade a lot more. Then we would have aquired a good winger for the next three years and cleared 1.5 million in cap space that could have been used to trade Jordan Staal for a good scoring winger or used in the off season to sign a true scoring winger. Now if we are going to attempt to trade Staal at the deadline for a scoring winger we will have to give away a player like Satan, or Gill in the trade just to fit our aquired winger under the cap. This is going to be the same problem in the offseason when we try to sign players we will have to sacrifice in certain areas to accomodate kunitz contract.

I believe Shero has done a bad job to this point and time but will give him till the end of free agency this year before i call for his resignation.

Ryan Whitney traded

The Penguins have traded Ryan Whitney to the Ducks, in turn the Penguins have received Chris Kunitz, and Eric Tangradi. Tangradi is a prospect in juniors that shows a lot of potential, he is actually the player i am most excited about in this trade. He has 38 goals in 52 games this season and is 6'4" 220 pounds and is 20 years old. According to www.penguins.com this is a guy that will be in the lineup for the start of next season. Chris Kunitz is a left winger who has 16 goals so far this season (same as Satan). Kunitz is under contract through the 2012 season and has a cap hit of 3.75 million a season, which in my opinion is more than he is worth.

The good:
We got ride of an expendable blueliner for depth at forward.
Kunitz adds grit to the pens, before the trade he lead the ducks with 148 hits.
Kunitz is better than all of our other top 6 wingers other than Sykora.
We got a young, scoring, power forward, prospect that should be able to make this team next year.

The Bad:
We traded away one of our best trade assets and didn't get what we really needed in return(a true scoring winger)
This trade only cleared $250,000.00 in cap space.

I was surprised to see this deal happen, i didn't expect Shero to do anything until next Wed at the trade deadline. Here our the other players that i expect to be moved by next Wed Jordan Staal, and Hal Gill. Moving Staal should bring us a true scoring winger and either picks or prospects, moving Gill will clear some cap space, bring us a pick in the draft and make room in the lineup for Gogo.

Penguins to trade Crosby?

Last night i was watching the sports show down and was shocked to hear the Penguins beat writer Rob Rossi suggest that the Penguins should trade Crosby. Rossi's rational was the Bruins traded Joe Thorton and were able to sign Chara. That may be the worst argument i have ever heard, since the Bruins traded Thorton they have been terrible until this season. Rossi argued if you trade Crosby you could get anything you want in return and clear cap space in the process, suggesting we could get a winger for Malkin, a couple prospects and a couple draft picks. I don't understand how someone who spends every day around the team can think this way. They are one year removed from the cup finals and you want to trade away your 21 year old captain, who is under contract for the next 5 years at a reasonable salary for a player of his stature, and o yea he is the second leading scorer in the league you can pencil him in for at least a 100 points a season. Trading him is absolutely the wrong thing to do, there is no way you could actually get equal value in return for him, even if you take away what he does on the ice, you still have a guy that is the face of the NHL and fills the seats every night.

Rossi's other reason for trading Crosby made a little more sense but was still ridiculous. He argued that the salary cap will be going down by as much as 8 million dollars after next season and the Penguins will not be able to afford both Crosby and Malkin at there Salaries. If the salary cap does go down this much it is true the Penguins will have to do some restructuring but you don't sacrifice one of the best two players in the league, you make other sacrifices. The Penguins will have to look through there roster and decide who is overpaid, and who can be replaced by another player at a smaller salary. Here is a list of just a few players on our team that are over paid, Fluery 5.5 million, Whitney 4 million, Staal 4 million, Orpik 4 million, Satan 3.5 million, Feds 3.5 million, Hall Gill 2.5 million, Mark Eaton 2 million. These are all players that can be replaced with players at lower costs that can do just as good of a job. That does not mean i want to see all these players go, but if it came down to either them or Crosby i wouldn't feel to bad about sending them packing.

Penguins 5, Flyers 4

I did not get to see any of this game because i went skiing, but i did get to listen the the third period and the post game show on the radio. Listening to the third period i really thought we were going to blow this game, we just kept letting the Flyers back into it. But the important thing is we found a way to win. Is this going to be the calling card to the Bylsma era, high scoring, hang on to the edge of your seat, wide open hockey? Its very exciting to watch and with the skilled personel we have its better than the system Therrien had put in place, but we need to be more responsible defensively if we want to compete for a Cup.

One observation from listening to the post game show on the x after every game, that i thought interesting enough to write about was how unapreciative our fans are of having 2 of the 3 best players in the NHL. For the last two weeks while Crosby hasnt been playing his best hockey everybody that calls in says how Malkin is the best and Crosby is all media hype and not worth his contract. Then Crosby has a 4 point game against the Flyers and the calls poor in saying its clear to see why Crosby is the best player in hockey and he is better than Malkin because Crosby proved he is a playoff scorer where Malkin dissapeared in the playoffs last year. Our fans shouldnt make this a contest between the two of them instead they should appreciated how blessed the city of Pittsburgh is to have both of them. As far as which one of them i think is better i dont think there is a right or wrong answer, it really depends on the season or night you are arguing your point. Some seasons your going to look at the stats and say its Crosby other seasons it will be Malkin with the more impressive numbers. They are both unbelievable talents only to be matched be Washingtons Ovechkin. It should be a fun game on Sunday watching the 3 best players in the NHL duke it out. I am curious to see if the fude between Malkin and Ovechkin is truly over.

Penguins 5 Canadians 4

The Penguins are now 1-0-1 under coach Bylsma. The difference between Therrien's strategy and Bylsma's were easy to see last night, i am not saying that Bylsma's strategy is better than Therrien's but it is certaintly more entertaining to watch. It was great to see that under the new coaching staff the D-men are allowed to jump up into the play, they pinched and kept the puck in more times last night than i think they have had in total for the rest of the season, this lead to a couple of the Penguins goals. The down side to this was the Penguins gave up a ton of odd man breaks last night which lead to Canadian goals. If you watched the game last night you know just how entertaining it was and can see that the offense is going to thrive in this new system. We should begin to see more 6-4 wins rather than us getting shit pounded 4-1 while we sit back and play the trap.

Positives for the game, we scored 5 goals, we had balanced scoring, we were aggressive on the puck, we outshot the Canadians.

Negatives for the game, Fleury had a terrible game, Gill was really bad, We gave up a lot of Odd man rushes.

Note:
Kris Letang was a healthy scratch last night, this is scary to me considering i feel he has been our best defenseman all year and is one of the only guys i feel should not be traded. I hope this is just a message being sent to him from the new coaching staff about his practice habits or -5 he posted over the last two games. The other thing it could be is Shero is working out a trade that Letang is involved in. If this is the case the Penguins better be getting a whole lot in return, because Letang is young, affordable, and i believe will be as good or better than Gonchar in the near future

Malkin to be traded

Just read a rumor that says Shero is talking to the Thrashers about trading for Kovalchuk, the Thrashers are asking for Evgeni Malkin in return. If Shero makes this trade it would be a travesty, trust me i want to see Kovalchuk in a Penguins uniform very badly but how could this possibly make the Penguins better? Shero wants to trade the leagues leading scorer away for a winger that is older, only has one year left on his contract, and has no where near the talent of Malkin , sounds like a great idea. The only way i even consider this deal is if Kovalchuk would sign a five year contract for about 5.5 million a year and Atlanta would have to give the Penguins there next 4 first round draft picks which would probally be really high picks. Even at that i am not sure this would be a good move for the Penguins. Malkin is a Player you build a franchise around Kovalchuk is a great addition to your franchise. If I am Shero i would counter Atlantas request with Staal, Whitney, and Satan for Kovalchuk. This trade would clear cap space for the Penguins to sign Kovalchuk long term.

Therrien Fired

Therrien was fired Sunday night, i have to question the timing of this firing on two levels. First if you were going to fire Therrien it should have happened a month ago when the Pens started this long losing streak. Second even if you were going to fire Therrien why do it on Sunday night when you have a Monday afternoon game, they should have let him coach Monday and that would have given the new coach a couple of days to work with the players before there game with the Canadians Thursday instead of the team meeting there new coach during the morning skate before the game in New York. This is another sign to me that Ray Shero is not the right guy for the job, everybody wanted to praise him last year when the Penguins got to the finals. But when you look at last years roster who was on this team that Shero actually brought in? (Jordan Staal, Gary Roberts, Big George, Hossa, Adam Hall, and Hal Gill) other than Hossa and Staal none of these players did anything to help get the Penguins to the finals last year. So what did Shero do to improve on Craig Patricks team this year, well he was unable to re-sign Hossa after giving away two first round draft picks and two third line players, never even made an offer to Ryan Malone, refused to give Rutuu a 3 year deal instead of a 2 year deal so he went to Ottawa, signed Whitney two a 6 year 24 million dollar deal even though hes terrible, and didnt even pursue the other quality free agents that were available this year. Think Naslund or Jagr may have helped this team? He had every chance to sign them and didn't even make an effort, even though our glaring weakness is scoring wingers. But then again he did manage to lure Satan and Fedatenko to Pittsburgh claiming that Satan would fill the void left by Hossa, that idea alone should tell you just how bad he is at his job.

The other thing that cracks me up about the Therrien firing is somehow Mike Yeo got to keep his job. If anybody should have been fired it was Yeo, he is the coach in charge of the power play that boasts the leagues two top scorers and is one of the worst in the NHL. The power play personnel since Gonchar got back is even more frustrating to me, why is yeo keeping Whitney on the pp rather than playing the right handed puck moving offensively gifted Kris Letang on the left point and Gonchar on the right point. If they would do that you would have two D-men that were always in position to take one timers from the point.

It will be very interesting to see how Shero handles the trade deadline, this will be his last chance to prove he deserves this job. With the overtime loss to the last place Islanders today the Penguins are 4 points out of 8th place so what do you do buy or sell at the deadline?

Pens vs Leafs

Just when it looked like the Penguins had really turned the corner and were going to compete for a playoff spot they go out and play a stinker. This game started off very promising with the Penguins jumping out to a 2 nothing lead in the first period, after that it was all Leafs. The Leafs scored 6 unanswered goals in the second and third period to hand the Penguins an embarrassing loss and in all likeliness end the Penguins playoffs hopes. The Penguins entered the game 5 points behind the 7th and 8th place teams despite winning 3 of there last 4 games, they needed this game bad to close the gap to 3 points. This is not like losing to the Red wings the Leafs are one of the worst teams in the league, and we certainly cant afford not to come away with 2 points against teams that are lower than us in the standings. The bright spot of the game was Fleury, i thought he played a great game and made some unreal saves. You will not hear me say that very often about a goalie that gave up 6 goals in a game. So what does this loss mean for the Penguins heading into the trade deadline? Well for me it means everybody on our roster with the exceptions of Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Letang should be made available at the trade deadline by Ray Shero. This does not mean i think they should all be traded but Shero should be listening to offers for all those players. Here are the players excluding the ones mentioned above that would take huge offers to pry out of my hands Gonchar who has one more year on his contract, Orpik our only physical defensemen who has 3 seasons left on his contract, Staal who is only 20 years old has a affordable 4 year contract and has shown much improvement since signing his extension. Also i would trade either Whitney or Gogo but not both of them. It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next three weeks. If Shero handles this situation properly we may miss the playoffs but we should be able to clear some cap space so we can sign a scoring winger in the off season ,and also bring in some quality players from the trades made to return us to the Cup Finals next year.

Penguins vs Sharks

This was probally the Penguins best game of the season, It is the first time in a while that i thought the Penguins had the momentum going in there favor the entire game. The Penguins only managed one goal in regulation but registered 35 shots while attempting 64. Those are pretty good numbers specially when you are playing the best team in the NHL. Fleury was outstanding again and recieved a lot of help from his defensemen. My bright spot of the game though was the line of Satan, Staal, and Thomas completely shutting down the Thorton line, this is something that not many teams are able to do. Anybody who reads this blog knows how i feel about Satan so for me to give him any compliment must mean he had a fantastic game I actually saw him hit someone, granite the other guy never saw Satan coming but it still counts as a hit. The win last night moved the Penguins 1 point away from the 8th and final playoff spot and only 5 points behind the fading 4th place Canadians. If the Penguins continue to play the way they did against Detroit and the Sharks they will easily make the playoffs and be a tough out for any opponent.

State of the Penguins

It appears the Penguins have turned some sort of corner in the last three games they have played with a lot of intensity, picked up the hitting and have won 2 of there last 3 games. The game against the Blue Jackets was the best team effort they have had in a long time. Sid and company were putting points on the board and Fluery had a terrific game. Kris Letang has also seemed to have turned the corner offensively all of the sudden he can hit the net with his shot and is letting it fly from everywhere. Unfortunately all the positive things we have seen over the last week were not enough to lead the Penguins to a victory over the hated Red Wings. Things will only get harder Wednesday night when the Penguins host the NHL's best team the Sharks. So what is Ray Shero to do now, he has a team that is all of the sudden playing some good hockey but cant seem to make up any ground in the play off race. Do you make a big trade, or do you just sit back and see where this team goes as is. In my opinion a big trade should have been made for a scoring winger before Christmas, if that would have happened we would be talking about the Penguins trying to win another division title rather than trying to make a late season push to make the playoffs. Now that Shero has waited this long and we are sitting in tenth place i think i would wait to see where this team is in the standings at the end of February, if we are still in tenth place i would trade as many of our free agents as possible for picks, and prospects. If we are sitting in the 6th or 7th spot i would try to make a trade for a big scoring winger (one that is under contract). To make the second scenario a reality we need Whitney to step up and play much better than he has so he could actually bring us a quality scoring winger in a trade. If i was asked today if the Penguins would make the Playoffs or not I would still say yes.

Evgeni Malkin

Let me start this post by saying I am a huge Sidney Crosby fan and people that have been putting him down this year are stupid. Crosby is number 2 in the scoring race only behind his teammate Malkin. But after recent reports of Malkin really taking an active leadership role in the locker room and leading by example on the ice is it possible that he may pass Crosby as the leader of this team? Reports from multiple Penguins players including Luca Caputi (on the Mark Madden show) said that Malkin went nuts demanding more from everybody on the team during the second intermission of the Tampa Bay game. He even went as far as putting $1000.00 of his own money up on the board to go into the team funds if the Penguins could pull out the win. The Penguins came out in the third period and looked unstoppable especially Malkin who had 2 goals and an assist in the third period and overtime. As far as my thoughts on Crosby i think he is a great leader, he may not be as fiery as Malkin but always says the right things to the media, and represents his team better than anyone else in any sport. And o yea, he brings it every night on the ice you never see him take a night or even a shift off. The one thing i will say for his play as of late even though he is still putting up amazing numbers is i still think his knee is bothering him he doesn't seem to be able to battle in the corners like he normally does.

Penguins vs Lightning

I only got to watch 2 periods of this game before i had to leave to go to my adult league game. Needless to say i left my house frustrated and was certain that our chances of making the playoffs were over. I was contemplating the entire ride to the rink what guys on our roster would be free agents at the end of the season and how many draft picks and prospects we could get for them at the trade deadline. I was shocked when i got home after my game turned on Sports Center and saw the Penguins score go by on the ticker. They must have had one hell of a third period, i was able to get the stats for the third off www.pittsburghpenguins.com and saw that the Penguins out shot the Lightning 17 - 5 through the third period and overtime. From what i read it sounds like Malkin was unsoppable. This win leave the Penguins 1 point out of the final playoff spot in the East. If anybody reading this saw the third period of the game please leave a comment explaining how the Penguins managed to turn it around.

Luca Caputi

Well we let another 2 points slip away last night in Montreal, we were fortunate about every team we are trying to catch to get into the playoffs also lost last night so we didnt loose any ground. I actually thought the Penguins played a pretty inspired game, the speed and intensity was there we just couldnt beat Price to get back into the game. The one bright spot of the game was Luca Caputi who scored the opening goal of the game on his first NHL shift, he becomes the second Penguin to do this the other was Mario Lemieux. Fleury also had a solid game and made key saves when the Pens needed them unfortunatly we didnt take advantage of the solid goal tending.

Notes:
Satan will be a scratch tonight for the game against Tampa Bay, its about time they sit him down.

Congratulations Pittsburgh Steelers

I know this blog is suppose to be dedicated to the Pittsburgh Penguins but how awesome was the Steelers SB XLIII victory last night. That was deffinatly the most exciting Superbowl i have ever seen. Them winning this year has came as a complete shock to me, with the schedule we were playing this year and the concerns about the O-Line i had them going 9-7 but still making the playoffs because our division was so bad, but assumed they would get bounced there first playoff game. If our D can stay healthy i dont see any reason we cant repeat next year, of course i thought the Penguins would pick up where they left off at the end of last year as well.

Leafs 5, Penguins 4

Wow was this a disgusting loss, we are desperate for points and we manage to loose to the worst team in the east. Therian should be fired for not pulling Garon after he gave up the fourth goal, had we pulled him and put Fleury in we would have got at least one point out of this game. The other thing that i don't understand right now is how much talk we here about how we have 9 NHL D-men and our defense is our strength. But when you watch the games opponents get the puck in our end and we go minutes unable to get the puck out. A big part of this is our goalies giving up rebounds and our D-men not getting tough in front of the net clearing out opponents and pucks. One other complaint about Therian, please don't play Goligoski on the wing either play him on defense or send him down to play for the baby Pens. I would much rather see Minard or Bissonnette play that position. Goligoski wont continue to progress playing wing he needs to be playing D.

Here we go Steelers here we go (lets hope for a sb victory today)