Well .. this thread has degenerated .. almost predictably.
I'll take a shot at reviving it, but in a way that implicates Mario and Shero for doing nothing regarding this issue .. that is, nothing but making phony/false PR statements in the media regarding this issue.
Maybe this really requires a new thread (?), but what the hell.
Well; yes .. Mario/Shero now have definitely shown that they are not willing to acknowledge that there are these elephants in the livingroom (Therrien and Yeo).
And this shows that Mario/Shero would rather waste this season, would rather allow the morale and the atmosphere to deteriorate even further as this season winds down, and would rather not have to deal with the embarassment of firing a coach only six months after (foolishly) handing said coach a two-years extension .. rather than doing the right thing, the courageous thing, by replacing this poisonous coaching staff in the best interests of the players and the fans.
This situation is apparently now going to agonizingly have to "play itself out" to an ugly, destructive conclusion. This is going to risk doing permanent damage to the relationships between various players and the ownership/management of this organization.
Just how long are Mario/Shero going to wait?
Any trades/signings before the trade deadline this season will in all likelihood have little positive impact on the performance of this team unless by some miracle a coaching change suddenly materializes by the first week of February .. which has a snowball's chance in hell of happening. Anyway .. adding some fresh , "good quality" ingredients to a bowl of poisoned food, and stirring well .. isn't going to change the fact that you've still got a bowl of poisoned food.
I expect this team to not make the playoffs .. and at this point, assuming the MT/Yeo two-headed albatross is still dragging-down this team, I hope they do not make the playoffs. This team will never win a Cup with these coaches, the players have long ago grown sick and tired of them .. and yet Mario/Shero keep avoiding the truth while they make phony "politically-correct" PR statements in response to 'staged' interviewers' lobbed-soft-ball questions about the coaching .. while players such as Crosby hand out similar politically-correct, scripted, phony utterances in the same sorts of pseudo interviews.
A big red flag was apparently ignored by Mario/Shero in early July of 2008. They apparently decided to give Therrien the extension even after Hossa decided that he'd rather play under Babcock (and under Holland), rather than play under Therrien and Yeo. I think Therrien (and his staff) was the real reason Hossa didn't sign with the Penguins .. and there was even a first-hand report about this from a poster on the main Penguins messageboard in July 2008. Gary Roberts was not a happy camper at all, regarding MT .. and that was another red flag, at least. A bunch of players jumped ship .. but no real heed was paid to it.
Apparently Mario/Shero felt forced to extend Therrien simply because the Penguins made it to Game 6 of the Finals, even though it was the players who took Therrien to the Finals, rather than the knee-jerk assertions of so many that "MT took them to Game 6 of the Finals .. blah-blah-blah". Please .. don't put the cart before the horse.
And we recently had Bob McKenzie chime-in with a major report about how the players were really sick and tired of Therrien and his coaching. But people even played THAT down around here. Hundreds of people should have marched down to Mellon Arena and shoved that into Mario/Shero's faces.
Anyway, this disgusting mess is now on Mario/Shero .. but they are evidently content to save face and avoid facing the music, while they allow this season to go to waste, and as they allow likely resentments to build within players that could alienate various players from the organization .. not to mention turning off a lot of fans and killing the momentum that had built-up in support of the Penguins in the Pittsburgh area.