Tim Benz: Steelers, Penguins both idling in Pittsburgh playoff purgatory

Pittsburgh once referred to itself as the “City of Champions,” based on the success of its sports teams in the 1970s, 1990s and early 2000s.

Of late, though, those franchises have gone from playoff champions to playoff chumps.

• The Penguins’ recently completed playoff series loss to the New York Rangers was the team’s fifth consecutive series defeat and fourth first-round exit in a row.

• The Steelers have lost four straight playoff games. They are 3-7 in the postseason since their last Super Bowl appearance in 2010. The organization has failed to win a playoff game in nine of its last 11 seasons. Four of those years have ended without a playoff berth at all. And the club hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 campaign. That five-year drought is the longest since the Immaculate Reception in 1972.

• And the Pirates? Well, the extent of their playoff participation since 1992 has been three wild-card games (2013-15) and one divisional-round loss (2013). So, we’ll leave them out of the conversation until management gives us a reason to include them.

The Penguins and Steelers are both stuck in very similar places. Pittsburgh playoff purgatory. They are usually good enough to make the playoffs — an amazing 16 years in a row for the Penguins, 10 out of 15 years in the Mike Tomlin era for the Steelers.

But they sure aren’t doing much when they get there anymore.

The teams are also in similar partial rebuilds — with neither team preferring to use the word “rebuild” out loud.

I mean, does that surprise you? The Pirates won’t even admit they are rebuilding. Yet, in reality, they’ve pretty much been doing so since Sid Bream slid across home plate in October 1992.

For the Steelers, they are saying goodbye to a quarterback who played there for 18 years and a general manager that has been there for 22 years. Their starting offensive lineup may not feature a single player currently over 25 (if Mitch Trubisky wins the starting quarterback job, he’s 27). They also have a new defensive coordinator and an offensive coordinator in his second year. None of their starting linebackers or starters in the secondary are older than 27.

At least to some degree, that’s a rebuild.

For the Penguins, both goalies (Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Murray) are gone from their three Stanley Cup lineups in 2009, 2016 and 2017. Of the 23 skaters in the 2017 postseason, 17 have vanished. Three more from that roster — Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang (injured that postseason) and Bryan Rust — are unrestricted free agents.

It’s possible that by the time training camp opens next fall, the only players who will remain from the 2017 Cup team will be Sidney Crosby, Jake Guentzel, Brian Dumoulin and Chad Ruhwedel.

To say nothing of a change in ownership and the departures of general manager Jim Rutherford and team president David Morehouse.

To a larger degree, that’s a rebuild, as well.

It appears both teams are going about their roster reconstruction in a similar way. Odds are both coaches are staying put. Tomlin will be back for a 16th straight season with the Steelers. And unless Fenway Sports group pulls a surprise, Mike Sullivan will return for the Pens as well.

So long as Crosby is a Penguin, that franchise will never attempt a full reboot. For now, that’s three more years of his existing contract.

According to CapFriendly.com, the franchise has nine expiring unrestricted free agent contracts and three restricted free agent deals. That’s potentially $32.7 million coming off $83.5 million in payroll. That’s a ton of money to play with to reconfigure a roster around Crosby and Guentzel, via free agent signings and trades that take on salary.

Those are things the Penguins have rarely been able to do over the summer months. As painful as it may be for fans to bid farewell to the Cup heroes such as Rust, Malkin and Letang, that may prove to be a faster route toward improvement and one more championship run in the Crosby era.

If they hold on to one or two of those big-ticket players in the name of sentimentality, though, they may remain in this extended stretch of being just good enough … to not be good enough.

“It’s a special group. It’s a group that can win anything,” Letang said.

Well, except for any of your last five playoff series, Kris. Maybe it’s more accurate to say, “It ‘was’ a special group. It ‘was’ a group that ‘could’ win anything.”

But not anymore. Special groups get out of the first round now and then.

The Steelers don’t appear to have the stomach for total tear down either. They are throwing numbers at their problems.

They signed a bunch of mid-tier free agents, none of whom are going to make more than $4.75 million against the cap this year.

They brought in three new quarterbacks, two new offensive linemen and three new wide receivers, as well as a few new faces in the secondary.

But the clearest sign that the Steelers aren’t willing to burn it all down is what they did at quarterback. They drafted a 24-year-old senior with 49 college starts under his belt in Pitt’s Kenny Pickett with their first-round selection. That was doubling down after signing Trubisky in the offseason.

Living with Trubisky or Mason Rudolph would’ve been indicative of the team being willing to operate in their current 8- to 10-win netherworld. Drafting Pickett is suggesting they want him to take them above that level in the immediate future.

If not this year, then soon.

Until we see how Fenway wants to operate or how the new Steelers quarterbacks perform in the regular season, there is no reason to assume Pittsburgh’s postseason lull is going to end any time soon.

As a city, no doubt, we are spoiled. Five years without a title or a playoff win may seem like a blip to other towns. But, then again, these teams have had the talent to do more than what they have of late.

So I don’t blame the fans for getting hungry. And the longer both franchises keep sending the message that “we’re always competing for a championship,” it’d be nice if they actually started to flirt with that happening again.