Last night, on top of the past several years, shows you how from the Pens perspective focusing on stacking your offense and neglecting the defense is going to make it difficult to do much in this league. The offense can do so much but it's that pyramid/domino effect, how can they do much when they don't have a good support base behind them?
Part of that is Sheros doing from his time there.
But now that Shero had that go around, hopefully learned some things along the way and being that he has a nice base in place to build on here, you hope he will be able to see how having this solid defense in place and building from the net out is going to be beneficial in this league.
To be fair, Shero inherited a team with Malkin, Crosby, and Fleury. Malkin and Crosby turned into superstars so he basically had to give them the deals he did. Once that happens, then you have too many eggs in one basket and the team around suffers a bit unless you develop well which they failed to do since they tried to trade away assets/picks to contend each year.
Now, Shero inherits Schneider, Larsson, Merrill, Severson, Henrique, and Gelinas but few forwards. Henrique and Schneider are signed to incredible deals (Thanks Lou) and Shero locked Larsson up to a killer contract. This team is going to be built like Lou wanted it to, but with Shero's ideas of how to build it. And right now, we are getting a lot of value for our contracts.
