A bit of optimism, the 2015-16 Penguins

ToDavid

Registered User
Dec 13, 2018
4,026
4,976
I want to preface this by saying I'm not trying to convince anyone that Matthews' contract is a great deal. It's not. My personal opinion is that it's not very good at all. But this place can get a little gloomy so I wanted to remind everyone that everything is going to be just fine.

So I'm going to compare the core of our team to the core of the 2015-16 Penguins, a team that was about to win back to back Cups. "Core" is a bit vague but for this post I'm going to look at the top 6, top pair, and starting goaltender.

For Toronto I'm looking at next season, so ages have been bumped forward 1 year and cap percentages are of an $83 million cap. Marner is assumed to be at $10 million although even if it's higher it doesn't really change the overall point. For Pittsburgh cap percentages are of the $71.4 million cap in 2015-16.

Toronto
Marleau, LW, 40, $6.25 million, 7.5%
Matthews, C, 22, $11.63 million, 14.0%
Nylander, RW, 23, $6.96 million, 8.4%
Hyman, LW, 27, $2.25 million, 2.7%
Tavares, C, 29, $11.00 million, 13.3%
Marner, RW, 22, $10.00 million, 12.0%
Muzzin, LD, 30, $4.00 million, 4.8%
Rielly, RD, 25, $5.00 million, 6.0%
Andersen, G, 30, $5.00 million, 6.0%
Toronto Core, 27.6, $62.09 million, 74.8%

Pittsburgh

Kunitz, LW, 36, $3.85 million, 5.4%
Crosby, C, 28, $8.70 million, 12.2%
Hornqvist, RW, 28, $4.25 million, 6.0%
Hagelin, LW, 27, $4.00 million, 5.6%
Malkin, C, 29, $9.50 million, 13.3%
Kessel, RW, 27, $6.80 million, 9.5%
Daley, LD, 31, $3.30 million, 4.6%
Letang, RD, 28, $7.25 million, 10.1%
Fleury, G, 30, $5.75 million, 8.1%
Pittsburgh Core, 29.3, $53.4 million, 74.8%

I think we stack up pretty damn well against a team that won back to back cups. I think Crosby and Malkin have an edge on Matthews and Tavares but our wingers are better, our defense is better, our goalie is better, and our depth outside of this core is better. Our core is also significantly younger. Marleau makes it look much closer than it is but it's one more year before he's replaced by someone much younger and cheaper. If you drill down to our really important players than we're even younger still.

You're not going to get into trouble paying the best players on your roster. The biggest challenge is cutting away the fat and using your scouting and development systems to fill out the roster. I think most of us will agree that Dubas has done a pretty good job on that front so far.
 

apollo678

Registered User
Oct 21, 2013
169
43
So you don't think its a good deal because you don't think Matthews will be worth what he is paid over the next 5 years?
With respect to the rest of your point, I agree and I don't see why we should be gloomy at all. Though I do think that players like Brown and Zaitsev will need to be jettisoned.
 

KE19

Registered User
Jan 30, 2019
413
532
Matthews is not Crosby, Tavares is not Malkin and I doubt Andersen plays as well as Murray did in the 15-16 playoffs.
 

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