Random Penguins Fodder

[FLPensFan]

"DK ended the Penguins portion with this: Mike Sullivan's not in trouble. Copy and paste."

This is a dagger.

Apparently, this was Dubas's quote on the GM show the other day:

"I've said a couple of times now, if you don't have Sully, then you're looking for Sully," Dubas said. "If you have it, you should keep it, especially when there's no salary cap when it comes to coaching. It's much different than the decisions that you make with the roster."

[Admin]

Madden has an article out that the Pens will "likely" make a big play to sign Jake in free agency, but doubts he'll sign.

https://triblive.com/sports/mark-madden ... -stagnate/

"FSG likes Sullivan, too: There’s a Boston connection, and they respect the early part of his Pittsburgh tenure.

So, it looks like the four large contracts and Sullivan will all return in 2024-25.

Crosby, Malkin and Letang have no desire to play for another coach. As ranking veterans, they carry clout."

So just chalk it up to a bad season and hope things will turn out better next season?

[IntangibleBeer]

From DK's Friday Insider piece today, he says that the Penguins NEVER offered Guentzel a contract. Dubas and his agent talked a bit of preliminary talks before the season, but there was never a contract offer based on those numbers. Says Guentzel and his team/family hoped that as things got closer to the deadline an offer would be made, but it never happened. (DK had mentioned before on this topic that one of his sources is a close friend or family member of Guentzel's)

He also said while possible and perfectly legal to re-sign Jake this summer, a team source also say with the odd way things transpired with Guentzel, bringing him back this summer may be more difficult. (reading between the lines, Guentzel may harbor some bad feelings from never getting an offer)

DK ended the Penguins portion with this: Mike Sullivan's not in trouble. Copy and paste.

I thought Jake had been offered $8.5M x 5 years. Really, that didn't happen?

[VA Fan]

It is a concern that appearances are that they think the issue this year is that some guys will automatically return to a more normal level of play and not the putrid performance they have given this season. So very little needs to change.

I think most can agree there are more and bigger issues than that but I am not sure ownership and management agree. If next season is more of the same with a slightly different cast I don’t see how the ownership can market that.
Maybe they don’t care. I would guess when ticket sales tank they will care a little at least but by then we could be looking at something similar to what happened in Detroit are hopefully not Buffalo.

[KG]

I don't know. The Pens have a lot of cap space next season, with not too many holes to fill, especially if Poulin and Ponomarev are in the bottom 6. Something tells me Dubas wants to go younger big-game fishing.

[Admin]

I thought Jake had been offered $8.5M x 5 years. Really, that didn't happen?

According to Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos, it was $8.5M x 6 years and rejected by Guentzel.

https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburg ... h-penguins

Guentzel and his team said no offer was given.

[Three Stars]

The thing is, wavering effort has always been a Penguin problem since the salary cap became a thing, not necessarily a Sullivan problem. As Phil Bourque once said, the “Penguinis never do things the easy way”. Think about the weird losses throughout the 2010s. Montreal twice. The Rangers twice. The Islanders twice.

I mean, look at the recent cup years. They lose game 5 to the Sharks because they got tight around the neck. Then there’s the 2016-17 season. They almost lost to the Caps because they napped for two games. They let Nashville back into the Cup final by napping through games 3 and 4. I remember being rather impressed with Sullivan as a coach who actually dragged them kicking and screaming out of their customary collapse twice in one playoff. The next year they lost 10-1 to the Blackhawks and still somehow made the playoffs for a chance to threepeat.

[FLPensFan]

I don't know. The Pens have a lot of cap space next season, with not too many holes to fill, especially if Poulin and Ponomarev are in the bottom 6. Something tells me Dubas wants to go younger big-game fishing.

This is where Dubas might be able to take a Rust/Smith/Rakell player, add in a Ponomarev or Cruz, and maybe a pick, for an upcoming RFA. Maybe there is an RFA that is due for a raise, but a team is already cap strapped by other needs.

Carolina has Seth Jarvis, Martin Necas, and Jack Drury all as RFAs this summer They also have Teravainen, Guentzel, Skjei and Pesce as top UFAs to sign. 12 players committed for next year, 31M in cap space. Sounds like a lot, but if you figured 5M for Teravainen, 6-7M for Skjei, 5-6M for Necas...you've already used more than half of that cap space, still needing to sign or replace these other prominent players PLUS fill out the rest of the roster.

Can we make a big offer and get a Logan Cooley out of Arizona, or a Barrett Hayton, Jack McBain, Matias Maccelli type. Dubas just needs to find some of those types of situations this summer, and see if he can pull off some draft day magic.

Maybe we get David Putney.

[IntangibleBeer]

I thought Jake had been offered $8.5M x 5 years. Really, that didn't happen?

According to Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos, it was $8.5M x 6 years and rejected by Guentzel.

https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburg ... h-penguins

Guentzel and his team said no offer was given.

Thanks @Admin. I had the term wrong.

So now I'm wondering: Who's zooming who?

[Antonio]

"DK ended the Penguins portion with this: Mike Sullivan's not in trouble. Copy and paste."

This is a dagger.

Apparently, this was Dubas's quote on the GM show the other day:

"I've said a couple of times now, if you don't have Sully, then you're looking for Sully," Dubas said. "If you have it, you should keep it, especially when there's no salary cap when it comes to coaching. It's much different than the decisions that you make with the roster."

The bloom is off the rose

[Antonio]

I don't know. The Pens have a lot of cap space next season, with not too many holes to fill, especially if Poulin and Ponomarev are in the bottom 6. Something tells me Dubas wants to go younger big-game fishing.

Every single year, we say oh, spots will be filled by "insert young guy name here" and every. single. year. they get taken by some retread. I have zero hope anymore of seeing anyone get a shot instead of whatever Nieto, Acciari, Carter, Phillips, etc they sign. They only way anyone young and new is getting a chance on this team is if A, they fire that goddamn curse behind the bench which apparently isn't happening until he retires or B, if KD Moneyballs Sullivan with the roster, which apparently isn't happening since this entire organization clearly **** **** **** ****s Sullivan.

Separately, I find it VERY hard to believe the penguins wanted to offer him 5x8.5 and just decided, nah let's not put it out there. That's a super attractive team friendly deal (I would have been all over that signing) and there is zero chance he would have taken it, so I'm calling **** on the idea that they never offered it, with the implication Jake just waited to sign that deal and was crestfallen it never got put out.

[Guinness]

"DK ended the Penguins portion with this: Mike Sullivan's not in trouble. Copy and paste."

This is a dagger.

Yeah. I've taken a patient, wait and see attitude with my opinion of Dubas, but if Sullivan is behind the bench next October... I just don't understand how that can be rationalized at this point. Winning in the post season should be the only metric, and for 6 years now, his record there speaks for itself.

I could deal with not making the post-season if the results unfolded differently for this team. If this team could put together more than 2 games in a row of looking like a real NHL team, maybe I wouldn't have an issue. This team could go 5-5 over 10 games, but if those 5 loses were against the top teams in the league, or 1-0 defensive showdowns, or the team looked really good and just got outplayed, I could live with that.

But over the past 2 years, the effort from game to game has been downright awful. You can probably count on 1 hand the number of full 60 minute efforts this team has played. You may not have enough fingers and toes to count the games where they look good for a period, then repeatedly make bad pinches, bad reads, poor goaltending, no production beyond the 1st line.

There's nothing that shows that this team has learned from the many mistakes they make game in and game out. And why should they learn, they get a jersey and lineup spot no matter what.

Couldn't agree more... And effectively, that falls back to Sullivan. We've been through it multiple times, and we've seen in happen all over the league - at a certain point, the coach just loses the ability to be heard in the room. It happens. And again if we get anywhere near next season and Sullivan is still HC, that's a huge ball-drop by Dubas.

[Pens4Life]

I dont believe even for one second that Jake wasnt offered a deal..

[DelPen]

I dont believe even for one second that Jake wasnt offered a deal..

Was he offered an actual contract in writing? Probably not. Was he pitched some numbers for term and salary? No doubt that was discussed.

[dark_forces]

I don't know. The Pens have a lot of cap space next season, with not too many holes to fill, especially if Poulin and Ponomarev are in the bottom 6. Something tells me Dubas wants to go younger big-game fishing.

This is where Dubas might be able to take a Rust/Smith/Rakell player, add in a Ponomarev or Cruz, and maybe a pick, for an upcoming RFA. Maybe there is an RFA that is due for a raise, but a team is already cap strapped by other needs.

Carolina has Seth Jarvis, Martin Necas, and Jack Drury all as RFAs this summer They also have Teravainen, Guentzel, Skjei and Pesce as top UFAs to sign. 12 players committed for next year, 31M in cap space. Sounds like a lot, but if you figured 5M for Teravainen, 6-7M for Skjei, 5-6M for Necas...you've already used more than half of that cap space, still needing to sign or replace these other prominent players PLUS fill out the rest of the roster.

Can we make a big offer and get a Logan Cooley out of Arizona, or a Barrett Hayton, Jack McBain, Matias Maccelli type. Dubas just needs to find some of those types of situations this summer, and see if he can pull off some draft day magic.

Maybe we get David Putney.

I wonder if we may see the 2nd round pick (Philly's) and at least one of the young players we received from Carolina going out to bring in a young, potential top-6 forward. It reminds me of what Montreal did a couple of years back dealing a 1st round pick for Kirby Dach.

[DelPen]

I don’t know what the rules of Emergency call ups are right now but I guess the Pens do since it looks like the only regular call up so far is Puustinen.

As far as St. Ivany goes, he looked good in camp and if the recalls work I’m all for giving some kids who worked hard in WBS to get a call up and get a nice check. But Sullivan’s comments are just stupid. The Pena done have a lot of righties so it’s good to have him up. Checking the math, we had 4, then 3, and now are back to 4. As for lefties, we had 3, called up a 4th and we are back to 3. I don’t see the relevance in his comment to anything of substance. We know neither Letang or Karlsson will be scratched. Ludvig has been fine. So have POJ and Pettersson.

That leaves Graves who’s a lefty and has been worse than everyone else in every single game. So why not give Shea a chance?

[FLPensFan]

I don’t know what the rules of Emergency call ups are right now but I guess the Pens do since it looks like the only regular call up so far is Puustinen.

As far as St. Ivany goes, he looked good in camp and if the recalls work I’m all for giving some kids who worked hard in WBS to get a call up and get a nice check. But Sullivan’s comments are just stupid. The Pena done have a lot of righties so it’s good to have him up. Checking the math, we had 4, then 3, and now are back to 4. As for lefties, we had 3, called up a 4th and we are back to 3. I don’t see the relevance in his comment to anything of substance. We know neither Letang or Karlsson will be scratched. Ludvig has been fine. So have POJ and Pettersson.

That leaves Graves who’s a lefty and has been worse than everyone else in every single game. So why not give Shea a chance?

What were Sullivan's comments? Who was the 4th righty on defense? MP, Graves, POJ, Ludvig, and Shea are LH. Letang, Karlsson, Ruhwedel (now gone) and St. Ivany are RH. The only other righty in our immediate system right now is Fedun.

My guess is that Ludvig sits and St. Ivany plays the 3rd RD spot. As for Shea, he's already gotten into 22 games at the NHL level this season. I'm fine with that being enough to decide if he is someone that they bring back or not. Shea is also a little older, having just turned 27 last month.

Poulin, Samorukov, Blomqvist and Ponomarov are the next set that I would love to see get a callup, with Poulin and Blomqvist likely the most important from an organizational standpoint.

[VA Fan]

When it comes to Jake and whether he got a contract offer or not. It is very probable that only Dubas and the agent talked. Dubas floated some numbers and term that have been reported on. The agent said no.

It is the agents job to negotiate. Sounds like there were no serious negotiations beyond that team friendly offer reported in the media.

So the media report he never got a written offer is most likely true. Jake never got a written offer because the numbers floated at the beginning of the season did not satisfy the demands. Dubas never negotiated further against himself so things never progressed. Then we had the dumpster fire of a season. Dubas decided to make a trade. Which is kind of what Jake’s agent laid out in his comments to the media as the type of decision the GM would need to make.

[penny lane]

If the pens win today, tomorrow, I'll know whether they want to get back into last spot play off race.
It's time for Sid to get back to the team.

[BigMcK]

Once the Penguins are officially eliminated, FSG can state that they did everything within their power to support the teams quest for a playoff spot. Massage the narrative. Tell season ticket holders that the team did the best that they could. Spew Corporate BULL Sheet!!!

Once officially eliminated, put all of the deadwood players onto LTIR and then bank cap space for the call ups. 15(?) games to go in the season?

Probably not going to happen because this franchise is burning longtime fan loyalty.

Maybe I am bitter when looking back at the work that keyboard warriors like Karsh rallied the faithful to save the Penguins to remain in Pittsburgh, and FSG now craps on the fans.

Back in lean years, I spent my money to see my favorite team on ice on the West Coast. Many West Coast fans did. Low budget Penguins teams.

I am going to wait until the start of the season before even remotely commiting to a single ticket purchase locally.

Pittsburgh Penguins, as a FSG corporate owned team is a buzz kill. Money to burn, a coaching staff that is on full suck mode, and a GM without balls.

Sid, you are not the problem nor solution. Me personally, I go for another ring with your friends. FSG is only going to market your greatness.

[Wyopen]

Would this defensive combination work?
MP. Letang
POJ. EK58
Ludvig. St Ivany

Switch POJ and Ludvig if you’d like.

[Wyopen]

Never mind St Ivany was reassigned to WBS.

[Three Stars]

*sigh* Ok, let's go point by point.

Once the Penguins are officially eliminated, FSG can state that they did everything within their power to support the teams quest for a playoff spot. Massage the narrative. Tell season ticket holders that the team did the best that they could. Spew Corporate BULL Sheet!!!

You mean like every owner since the beginning of time? Even terrible teams say they're going to try and compete. This is not a Penguin or FSG-specific thing.

Once officially eliminated, put all of the deadwood players onto LTIR and then bank cap space for the call ups. 15(?) games to go in the season?

Unless they all have have lacerated spleens or some other kind of verifiable injury, the NHL (nor the NHLPA for that matter) will not allow this kind of temper tantrum.

Probably not going to happen because this franchise is burning longtime fan loyalty.

Or because it's against the CBA, but sure, go off king. If this season is enough for you or anyone else to question or renounce your loyalty to the team, then your loyalty mustn't be all that ironclad. This is not even close to the worst times this franchise has ever had, not to mention any other franchise.

Maybe I am bitter when looking back at the work that keyboard warriors like Karsh rallied the faithful to save the Penguins to remain in Pittsburgh, and FSG now craps on the fans.

What did FSG have to do with the Penguins in the late 1990s? Were they even remotely in the picture then? Do you count as the faithful given that you threatened to withdraw your support below?

Back in lean years, I spent my money to see my favorite team on ice on the West Coast. Many West Coast fans did. Low budget Penguins teams.

I am going to wait until the start of the season before even remotely commiting to a single ticket purchase locally.

I'm sure those west coast teams will miss your single ticket purchase terribly. Incidentally, gate (ticket) revenue is partially kept by the home team, with the rest sent directly to the league. You don't attend home games, so there's no direct financial connection between you and the team.

Pittsburgh Penguins, as a FSG corporate owned team is a buzz kill. Money to burn, a coaching staff that is on full suck mode, and a GM without balls.

Or, the team's best players are showing their age and can no longer carry the roster, something that this franchise has literally never seen. Think about it. The only player who stuck around to age last time was Lemieux and he was gone half the time for one reason or another. All the rest got traded long before their warranties expired. This fan base has literally never seen this before, and judging by your diatribe and various others, I don't think you're handling it all that well.

Sid, you are not the problem nor solution. Me personally, I go for another ring with your friends. FSG is only going to market your greatness.

An owner marketing its best player's greatness. Be still my beating heart. The only time I've ever seen Crosby do something out of spite, it was becoming the all time leading scorer against the Flyers. Otherwise, you don't see Sid doing spiteful things.

Anyone else want to threaten to renounce their fandom over this season?

[Admin]

Anyone else want to threaten to renounce their fandom over this season?

Just to be clear, if anyone wants to do that, feel free. It’s kind of the point of this place.

[Three Stars]

Anyone else want to threaten to renounce their fandom over this season?

Just to be clear, if anyone wants to do that, feel free. It’s kind of the point of this place.

You're not wrong.