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.