Tim Benz: An All-Quarter-Century team for the Pittsburgh Penguins

Since it is 2025, it seems like every sports outlet under the sun is putting together some sort of quarter-century list.

ESPN did one for the NFL. The NHL released one of its own and The Athletic pieced together a 40-man Major League Baseball list. 

At “Breakfast With Benz,” you might think we’d be above content-filling, late-June, coming-off-vacation endeavors such as these to fill the time before Steelers training camp begins.

Um. Who am I kidding? Actually, if you read us daily, you 100% know that’s not the case at all.

The NHL and NBA playoffs are over. The Pirates are in last place, the NFL newscycle is as quiet as it’s going to be all year, and we aren’t quite up to the NHL draft or free agency yet.

So, pfft! No, we’re not above this!

In fact, we are going to do an All-Quarter-Century team for the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates three days in a row this week.

We’ll start with the Penguins, and let’s make an important distinction right away. We are going to include the season that ended in the summer of 2000 (i.e., the 1999-2000 campaign). Technically, that would be 26 seasons. But since the 2004-05 season was canceled because of the lockout anyway, we’ll include 1999-2000 as the first year in an effort to make it a nice, round 25 years.

Plus, it’ll probably help us cheat and to “rahnd ‘aht” a better Penguins lineup. You’ll see why in a minute.

For our purposes, we are building our All-Quarter-Century Penguins roster based on a gameday type of lineup: two goalies, four centers, eight wingers, six defensemen and a head coach.

OK, the head coach is Mike Sullivan. Sorry, Disco Dan, but it had to be done.

The players are chosen based on individual accomplishments and contributions to overall team success.

In other words, this is a best-of list. We aren’t building the perfect defensive third line, looking for an enforcer, a few penalty kill specialists, or going lefty-right on our defensive pairs.

Goalies

Marc-Andre Fleury, Matt Murray

Let’s get the easiest one out of the way first. Fleury and Murray are obviously the two goalies — in that order.

The decision really isn’t all that difficult as to who is No. 1 and who is No. 2, either.

Indeed, Murray closed out Stanley Cup runs in 2016-17. His back-to-back shutouts to eliminate Nashville in 2017 are the stuff of Penguins legend.

But Fleury won nine games that postseason, 35 games during the 2015-16 regular season, the ’09 Cup and the ’08 Eastern Conference title. He also claimed 375 of his 575 career victories (second-most in NHL history) in Pittsburgh.

Not to mention …

So the Flower is No. 1, Murray is No. 2. Who would be a No. 3? Oof!

For the ’01 playoff run alone (I still have my moose antlers in the garage), and being a good soldier behind some awful teams after that, I’d love to vote for Johan Hedberg. But it probably has to be Tristan Jarry, doesn’t it? He’s been to two All-Star games, and by every metric, he is better than the Moose.

Hedberg has fewer wins (46) than Jarry (152). Jarry has posted a .909 save percentage and a 2.75 goals-against average. Hedberg’s save percentage in Pittsburgh was .901, and his goals-against was 2.86.

Unfortunately, when I think of Jarry, I think of everything he hasn’t done to help the Pens in the playoffs since 2019. At least when I think of Moose, I think of everything he did in 2001.

That’s the rub.

Centers

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal, Mario Lemieux

Crosby and Malkin need no explanation. They are on the franchise’s Mt. Rushmore with Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr.

Staal left before the other key members of the Pens’ youthful core from 2005-09. But his earlier-than-expected ability to fit in as a rookie in 2006-07 (when he played 81 games) is an under-discussed memory from the franchise’s quick ascent that season. His contributions in 2008 and 2009 (when he played 82 apiece) were massive. Plus, he put in yeoman’s work in 2010-12, making up for injuries to Crosby and Malkin while overcoming his own ailments along the way.

You could argue Nick Bonino for the fourth spot because Lemieux only played parts of four disjointed seasons in the infancy of the century.

However, Lemieux’s return in December 2000 (if not the 2013 Pirates Wild Card win) may have been the most memorable “non-championship” moment of the century.

Also, in the 170 games Lemieux played between 2000 and 2006, he still posted 229 points, as declining as he may have been.

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Wingers

Chris Kunitz, Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Phil Kessel, Patric Hornqvist, Pascal Dupuis, Jaromir Jagr, Max Talbot

Combinations of longevity, playoff contributions and individual achievement during regular seasons make the case for the first six men on this list.

Since we are counting the 2000 and 2001 seasons, Jagr has to be included. He won the scoring title both years and was on the team that got to the ’01 Eastern Conference final despite his postseason struggles that year.

By that logic, Alexei Kovalev probably should’ve been the eighth winger. If not him, then maybe Marty Straka, Petr Sykora, Ryan Malone or James Neal.

Consider Bill Guerin, Conor Sheary, Matt Cooke, Tyler Kennedy or Carl Hagelin if you want a playoff intangibles, grit, grind, puck retrieval and/or forecheck element.

All that aside, Talbot (who could play center and wing) had four of the most memorable moments of the ’08-’09 Cup runs: the last-second goal in Detroit in Game 5 of the ’08 Final, “The Shhhh” versus Philadelphia and his two goals during Game 7 at Detroit in ’09.

If we are trying to tell the story of the Penguins over the past 25 years, that story can’t be told without Max Talbot.

There were dozens of better players than Talbot on this team over that time. Yet, there were only a handful more important in its entire history.

Defensemen

Sergei Gonchar, Kris Letang, Brooks Orpik, Brian Dumoulin, Rob Scuderi and Justin Schultz

The first three names are obvious and don’t need much explanation. Frankly, given his eight full years of service and his playoff presence in 2016-17, neither does Dumoulin.

You could make a case for Trevor Daley and Hal Gill as guys for those last two spots. But they only played two years apiece. Dick Tarnstrom put up 103 points in 174 games on some bad teams, but he was a minus-58 over just two and a half years.

Paul Martin, Ben Lovejoy, Olli Määttä, Marcus Pettersson (442 games, 125 assists), Mark Eaton, Matt Niskanen, Ian Cole and Ryan Whitney are all candidates too.

Whitney had more goals (34) and points (150) than any of those other nominees. Plus, without him, Kunitz never gets to Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Schultz had 113 points as a Penguin and 29 more in the playoffs. His 13 playoff points in 21 games in the 2017 postseason without Letang available breaks that tie.

As for the last spot, it goes to Scuderi. He logged 460 games in Pittsburgh, was a plus-26 during the 2009 season, and without “The Piece” in Game 6 against the Red Wings, there may not be a Cup in ’09.

LISTEN: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer discuss their All-Quarter-Century Penguins teams and the upcoming NHL draft.