Jim Rutherford thinks long layoff would help Penguins. Would it?
When Sidney Crosby was asked during an NHL-run video call which teammate he would want to be stuck in quarantine with, he was quick with an answer.
“Kris Letang,” Crosby said during the Zoom call open to media. “He’s in the know. He’d get all the info. I’d have a better sense of what’s going on if I was with him.”
That “know” and savvy comes from experience. Letang is one five current Pittsburgh Penguins older than Crosby.
The Penguins’ leadership core of Crosby, Letang, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Patrick Marleau, Jack Johnson and Jason Zucker combine for almost a century’s worth of NHL experience (98 aggregate seasons).
In the unprecedented circumstances facing NHL teams when — if — the season re-starts after a hiatus of two months or more, will having an abundance of older players provide the wisdom and adaptability to thrive under such circumstances? Or will older legs take extra time to ramp back up?
There will be winners and losers in the wake of NHL break caused by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Count general manager Jim Rutherford among those who believe the suspension of the season will work to the Penguins’ advantage when (if) the season resumes.
“I think that prior to stopping play we had run into a period we were over-using guys in certain areas because of injuries, and it was staring to catch up with us,” Rutherford said. “We didn’t have that same energy and juice that we had the first half of the season, so I would suggest that it would be to our benefit having the break.”
How Penguins captain Sidney Crosby is passing the time https://t.co/Hfs8Zoyr6V
— Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) March 27, 2020
The Penguins had lost eight of 10 before a win March 10 at the New Jersey Devils in their final game prior to the NHL’s announcement it was “pausing” its season out of concerns associated with covid-19.
The night of that most recent victory in Newark, N.J., coach Mike Sullivan called the effort “one of the better … more complete games that we’ve played in a while.”
Letang had 24 minutes, 3 seconds of ice time that evening. Fellow defensemen Brian Dumoulin (22:36) and Justin Schultz (20:31) each had on-ice time that was more than their season averages.
But none of those three veterans had played appreciably more in recent weeks than they had, on average, earlier this season. The Penguins’ oldest defenseman, Johnson, had seen his ice time tumble over his past five games because his role was diminished upon the return of Dumoulin from a three-month injury absence.
The forwards group went through a stretch before the trade deadline in which ice time was bumped up a bit when Sullivan was reluctant to play a fourth line because attrition had left several forwards unavailable.
The Penguins entered the season as the 13th-oldest out of the league’s 31 teams, according to data compiled by The Athletic. Their average age of 27.7 was slightly higher than the league average of 27.3.
Of course, that average did not include the 40-year-old Marleau, who was added at the trade deadline. Other roster moves since October include the additions of Evan Rodrigues (26), Conor Sheary (27) and Zucker (28) and the subtractions of Erik Gudbranson (28), Alex Galchenyuk (25) and Dominik Kahun (24).
No matter how you slice it, the Penguins are an older team (relative to the league) than they were at the season’s outset.
#Penguins GM Jim Rutherford has the same thoughts as many do as the coronavirus pandemic has kept people holed up in their homes. Not macaroni and cheese again. https://t.co/3ZyrCck2gX
— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) March 26, 2020
Then there’s the rash of injuries they have dealt with this season that Rutherford referenced. It led to increased minutes for some of the team’s more important players. Then again, many of those players had far less damage inflicted on their bodies by mid-March than they would have had if they had not missed time because of injury.
Crosby, for example, played in 41 of the team’s 69 games, earning 28 games’ worth of unanticipated rest. Malkin played in 55, Letang 61, Hornqvist 52 and Schultz 46. The only Penguins players aged 29 or older who had anywhere close to full game-load’s worth of a season when it was paused were Marleau (66 games) and 33-year-old Johnson (67).
Perhaps, as Rutherford indicated, a layoff would leave the Penguins with an ideal combination of experience and rested legs.
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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