Tim Benz: The Penguins 'roadies' need to do more to support 'the band'
It was one thing when the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to keep the band together this past spring. But did they have to keep all of the roadies too?
Management’s offseason strategy to find whatever has been missing from this group after four straight years without winning a playoff round clearly was to keep it together and look within.
So far, that plan has yielded very few results. The franchise has hit the All-Star break with a sub-.500 record of 24-25 (or 24-16-9 if you want to break out the loser points). A big reason why is that the support group of players the team opted to retain in free agency hasn’t been good enough.
Consider some of the numbers associated with players the Penguins decided to keep beyond the core group of Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell (at a total of $22.32 million against the salary cap, via CapFriendly).
• Danton Heinen ($1 million): He’s been better lately, with two goals in his last three games, but he had just three in the previous 39.
• Kasperi Kapanen ($3.2 million): Between injury and ineffectiveness, he has six goals in 35 games. Four of them came in the span of two games on Dec. 1 (vs. Las Vegas) and Dec. 3 (hat trick vs. St. Louis). He has scored just once since then.
• Jeff Carter ($3.1 million): Carter was actually extended in January 2022, before all the other decisions were made on the more expensive players, which, in a way, was more quizzical. He has just one goal and one assist since the calendar flipped to 2023.
• Casey DeSmith ($1.8 million): Instead of looking to potentially upgrade at the backup goalie position behind the frequently injured Tristan Jarry, general manager Ron Hextall decided to stick with DeSmith, who has had injury issues of his own in the past. Plus, he is having his worst season in terms of goals against (3.35) and save percentage (.901).
• Marcus Pettersson ($4 million) and Brian Dumoulin ($4.1 million): These two defensemen are in a different category. They are still in Pittsburgh under contracts that had already been in place long before this season. But both were the subject of trade speculation before the team eventually dealt John Marino and Mike Matheson off of the blue line. Dumoulin struggled through the holidays but has found his game a bit lately. Pettersson has been steady enough. With the defense corps failing to score much at all, though, it’d be nice if they could provide at least one goal. Neither player has done so yet this year. They both average over 20 minutes of ice time per game and are just a combined plus-3.
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The cap is so tight in Pittsburgh that the likelihood of being able to improve some of these depth slots is slim without getting the other team to retain a ton of salary or take some on with perhaps some draft picks as compensation.
This may all seem like retrospective second-guessing. Except that it was something we forecasted as a problem for the Penguins when they had the opportunity to reconfigure the roster with a lot of cap space had they let their veteran free agents walk last summer.
That’s something that apparently ownership, management, the fanbase, head coach Mike Sullivan and captain Sidney Crosby didn’t have the stomach to witness.
So if improving the roster is going to be difficult for the Penguins, what does the team do to improve the results when play resumes on Feb. 7 at home against the Colorado Avalanche?
“Get some rest. Come back in a better mood,” Malkin said after a 6-4 loss to the woeful San Jose Sharks on Saturday. “Have a couple practices, play better games. We have great guys here. We want to play in the playoffs, for sure. And we will play hard every game.”
Sullivan is putting the onus on himself as his club clings to the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
“I’ve got to do a better job coaching these guys. Getting it out of them,” Sullivan said. “Making sure that the message is being heard. We have got to learn through experiences. We have got to go to work and practice. We’ve got to watch film and get better. It starts with the coaches.”
Sullivan pointed to “volatility” and inconsistency within the Penguins’ collective game as a reason for the club’s staccato first half. That’s an explanation Crosby echoes.
“Some nights, I think, maybe we are forcing things. Other nights we make a mental mistake. It’s not consistently the same thing. But all those add up and end up in the back of our net. We’ve got to solve it,” Crosby said.
Solving it means being proactive and hunting for fixes, as Sullivan suggested. Not staying the course and just hoping things will get better.
That appeared to be the plan in the offseason. And you can see how that has worked out so far.
In this week’s “Breakfast With Benz” hockey podcast, Tim Benz and Brian Metzer discuss where the Penguins stand at the All-Star break.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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