Post-Game Talk: Flyers 4, Penguins 2 - And The Beat Goes On

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ronduguayshair

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Oct 23, 2017
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I don’t hate Grant, he’s just vanilla and doesn’t help or hurt you. If you want to play breakeven hockey, I guess he’s your man.

He and JJ don’t fit the style of hockey the Pens claim they want to play, which concerns me about how they are evaluating guys. Throw in ZAR who they are treating like some top ten pick, and it has me a little concerned about their ability to find the right guys for how JR keeps claiming he wants this team to play.

JR did get Brassard, and I’m still confused why he isn’t fitting it. He’s always been a really good player, and if you told me this time last year they would have Brass and Kessel together I’d expect a dominant pair...

They are getting pinned in the defensive zone because of our bottom d pairing’s breakout. Zar has struggled against the wall.
 

Mr Jiggyfly

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Jan 29, 2004
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They are getting pinned in the defensive zone because of our bottom d pairing’s breakout. Zar has struggled against the wall.

I’m not giving up on JJ like I said, I’m just disappointed that he’s not really a good puck mover. I never paid attention to him, but he had a rep for being a puck mover. However, CBJ were laughing about that notion on the main board signing thread, so I suppose we were warned...

ZAR is ass on the boards. I’m honestly still waiting for him to win a 1-1 and come off the boards with the puck. He’s been up for a dozen games or so and I have yet to see him do it. I just struggle to see what makes the coach and org so in love with him outside of hitting and PKing.
 
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ronduguayshair

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Oct 23, 2017
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I’m not giving up on JJ like I said, I’m just disappointed that he’s not really a good puck mover. I never paid attention to him, but he had a rep for being a puck mover. However, CBJ were laughing about that notion on the main board signing thread, so I suppose we were warned...

ZAR is ass on the boards. I’m honestly still waiting for him to win a 1-1 and come off the boards with the puck. He’s been up for a dozen games or so and I have yet to see him do it. I just struggle to see what makes the coach and org so in love with him outside of hitting and PKing.

Zar is too stationary along the wall. Even when we do breakout it’s not with speed
 

Harvey Birdman

…Need some law books, with pictures this time…
Oct 21, 2008
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I don’t hate Grant, he’s just vanilla and doesn’t help or hurt you. If you want to play breakeven hockey, I guess he’s your man.

He and JJ don’t fit the style of hockey the Pens claim they want to play, which concerns me about how they are evaluating guys. Throw in ZAR who they are treating like some top ten pick, and it has me a little concerned about their ability to find the right guys for how JR keeps claiming he wants this team to play.

JR did get Brassard, and I’m still confused why he isn’t fitting it. He’s always been a really good player, and if you told me this time last year they would have Brass and Kessel together I’d expect a dominant pair...
Grant is that dude you want waiting in the tree line to back you up, you don’t depend on him. But you know he is there. We need more from our depth forwards. I still think at the deadline we need a D, but I am still adamant that if our depth forwards start scoring a lot of this teams problems go away.
 

NMK11

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Apr 6, 2013
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I don’t hate Grant, he’s just vanilla and doesn’t help or hurt you. If you want to play breakeven hockey, I guess he’s your man.

He and JJ don’t fit the style of hockey the Pens claim they want to play, which concerns me about how they are evaluating guys. Throw in ZAR who they are treating like some top ten pick, and it has me a little concerned about their ability to find the right guys for how JR keeps claiming he wants this team to play.

JR did get Brassard, and I’m still confused why he isn’t fitting it. He’s always been a really good player, and if you told me this time last year they would have Brass and Kessel together I’d expect a dominant pair...

JR needed Botteril a lot more than we realized

Great points. We've gone from a speed team, to a half speed team with an injection of bigger, more physical guys. It's starting to feel like the front half of this decade again where we have our core pieces but no real identity to play around them. Is this a possession team? A speed team? A collapse and counterattack team? A physical team?

It's weird how JR was the mouthpiece wanting to get faster, and he's just done a 180 this year. Maybe the speed game was really all Boterteril talking through JR, and now that he's gone the old man is moving to old time hockey players. You know, the bad ones.
 

Andy99

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Jun 26, 2017
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Ok...the team is what it is at this point...they’ve gotten away from rolling four scoring lines (or even three) and Sullivan’s only solution is to grit it up....if you listen to what he says about support and cooperative play in the O zone, that’s how you have unskilled players work to try to get a goal, when you don’t have talent that’s how you manufacture goals... he wants them to outwork opposing players in the O zone and that doesn’t work against 22-25 year olds when you’re fielding so many players 30+ ....also why I think ZAR gets so many chances...I don’t think Geno or Phil are on board with this style whereas that dovetails nicely with how Sid plays (most skilled grinder in the world)....also Sully doesn’t think he has the D to do otherwise...

What to do outside of trading for younger, faster players to roll four lines or firing the coach? this sounds antithetical but imo they should go full DB and try to stack some wins...DB got a lot of RS wins but he sucked during the POs...we need RS wins...for the time being, Sully should move Brass from 3C and play him on G’s or Sid’s wing...he obviously can’t or won’t play 3C here and run a line but he did well at LW....L1 Brass-Sid-Simon, L2 Jake-G-Horny, L3 Pearson-Sheahan/Grant-Rust, and then bring up two quicker players than ZAR or Wilson to play with Grant...alternate Letang with the lines....just play really aggressive...don’t try to shelter the D, have them pressure the puck carrier and take the body...try to force TOs and counterpunch with the top lines....Sully can’t find a system that works with this team so try something else...we just need to get rolling, he can always switch back to playing a different style when/if we get in PO position but we will need to put together a 7-game+ winning streak, just like WSH has....
 
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Andy99

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Great points. We've gone from a speed team, to a half speed team with an injection of bigger, more physical guys. It's starting to feel like the front half of this decade again where we have our core pieces but no real identity to play around them. Is this a possession team? A speed team? A collapse and counterattack team? A physical team?

It's weird how JR was the mouthpiece wanting to get faster, and he's just done a 180 this year. Maybe the speed game was really all Boterteril talking through JR, and now that he's gone the old man is moving to old time hockey players. You know, the bad ones.

Or maybe while everyone was getting younger and faster around them, they couldn’t get those guys or they thought it wouldn’t work anymore since the team was quite beat up by bigger players...JR has said this from 2017 when he first brought in Reaves...he didn’t think Sid or G would survive with the team playing the same small but quick wings...they wanted to get a little more size...but the problem is the big fast players are first round picks and no one is trading those players to the Pens, so they have to get slower, bigger players and they haven’t integrated those players well enough into an identity that works, or they can’t play to that same identity...couple that with the D not being able to move the puck quickly and we’re seeing the end result...
 

ColePens

RIP Fugu Buffaloed & parabola
Mar 27, 2008
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You can't just claim it is a reason because the individual is not there any more. I see this a lot. DB's system went to poop because Fitz left. Sully went to poop when Toc left. Fletcher was needed here as a GM. JR went to shit when Bots left. I mean... really? We have no clue at all what is going on in the background.

If anything, this more-so fits who JR is as a GM. He's a gunslinger to say the least and he doesn't sit around. He sort of did the same thing at Carolina. He hit absolute gold and got us back to back and now we are seeing some of the bad JR like a FIVE YEAR DEAL FOR A GUY WHO WAS SITTING. :laugh:

But it's seriously impossible to identify who did what when we are privileged to see the background stuff.
 

SouthGeorge

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May 2, 2018
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I still can't get over it. Letang could clearly see all 4 teammates caught deep in front of him on the PP. He takes a few steps forward and towards boards to pressure Flyer with the puck. Instead of retreating to the center of the ice and keeping everybody in front. I just don't get it. It's so simple and he makes the same mistakes over and over again.
 

Gurglesons

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Dec 18, 2009
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I still can't get over it. Letang could clearly see all 4 teammates caught deep in front of him on the PP. He takes a few steps forward and towards boards to pressure Flyer with the puck. Instead of retreating to the center of the ice and keeping everybody in front. I just don't get it. It's so simple and he makes the same mistakes over and over again.

If only we had one the other four players ahead of him currently in the expected Norris vote!
 

KIRK

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Aug 2, 2005
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You can't just claim it is a reason because the individual is not there any more. I see this a lot. DB's system went to poop because Fitz left. Sully went to poop when Toc left. Fletcher was needed here as a GM. JR went to **** when Bots left. I mean... really? We have no clue at all what is going on in the background.

If anything, this more-so fits who JR is as a GM. He's a gunslinger to say the least and he doesn't sit around. He sort of did the same thing at Carolina. He hit absolute gold and got us back to back and now we are seeing some of the bad JR like a FIVE YEAR DEAL FOR A GUY WHO WAS SITTING. :laugh:

But it's seriously impossible to identify who did what when we are privileged to see the background stuff.

Funny thing is, JR has been anything BUT a gunslinger in the last 16 month.

Signing Johnson was bad and dumb, but that's not being a gunslinger. Being a gunslinger would've been, for example, trading Maatta 16 months ago.

If anything, JR's last 16 months have been a lot like Shero. Trying to keep the band together, even when you can see it's getting stale, looking for reclamation projects, Sheahan type re-signings, etc.

Even the one move that you could maybe call a gunslinger move, the Brassard trade, involved a defenseman and forward the coach wanted no part of, a 1st (which always is viewed as expendable), and a goalie of the future when, at the time, you had a goalie of right now in Murray and a high end potential backup of the future in Jarry.

No, if anything, JR has spent the last 16 months avoiding the hard choices that a gunslinger willingness recognizes and accepts as necessary.
 

SouthGeorge

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May 2, 2018
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You were laying in the weeds all season waiting for Letang to have a bad game so you could attempt to save some face, eh?

Funny ass ****.

I've always said regular season Letang is fine. It's playoffs when he gets exposed. Losing last night exactly how they lost to the Caps in the playoffs reinforced nothing has changed with him. Even though he's the reason they lost last night, he's currently not the issue in the big picture for why this team is so bad.
 

Mr Jiggyfly

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Jan 29, 2004
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I've always said regular season Letang is fine. It's playoffs when he gets exposed. Losing last night exactly how they lost to the Caps in the playoffs reinforced nothing has changed with him. Even though he's the reason they lost last night, he's currently not the issue in the big picture for why this team is so bad.

Like the way he dominated the 2016 playoffs and scored the cup winning goal?

Dude is such a bummy ass bender.
 
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KIRK

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Like the way he dominated the 2016 playoffs and scored the cup winning goal?

Dude is such a bummy ass bender.

giphy.gif
 
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Sidgeni Malkby

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Nov 19, 2008
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What confuses is why we are trying to spread the talent around when we are almost fighting for the playoffs. It’s not the time for that.

As far as I’m concerned we have enough to load up the top 2 lines, and then figure out the rest.

Avalanche beat us with basically 1 line.

I’m not as down on the D as everybody else. Dumoulin, Letang
JJ, Schultz
Riikola, Maata
Oleksiak

For whatever reason this feel much more like a Sullivan problem. Maybe need to cycle some Assistant coaches, or maybe add one to get a fresh perspective.

Edit#
Oh, and Letang is not the problem.
 

KIRK

Registered User
Aug 2, 2005
109,700
51,216
What confuses is why we are trying to spread the talent around when we are almost fighting for the playoffs. It’s not the time for that.

As far as I’m concerned we have enough to load up the top 2 lines, and then figure out the rest.

Avalanche beat us with basically 1 line.

I’m not as down on the D as everybody else. Dumoulin, Letang
JJ, Schultz
Riikola, Maata
Oleksiak

For whatever reason this feel much more like a Sullivan problem. Maybe need to cycle some Assistant coaches, or maybe add one to get a fresh perspective.

Edit#
Oh, and Letang is not the problem.

No, this defense outside of the top pairing is a mess.
 

ColePens

RIP Fugu Buffaloed & parabola
Mar 27, 2008
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If only we had one the other four players ahead of him currently in the expected Norris vote!

What the heck is this post? Why is it wrong to critique Letang's positioning. It's been an issue for quite a while. It's just one part of his game that he hasn't figured out. We can all point to that classic experience last year where he left his positioning.

Once again... it's okay to talk about all the good. But it should also be fair game to analyze the bad, too. Even if the good outweighs the bad. To me, it's the same thing that I do with the Pens. It's okay to remember we are blessed with the good and it is also okay to critique the bad. I'm not just going to throw 3 Cups in people's faces.

Letang's positioning has been an issue. He's also had a nice resume of good this year and IMO is only behind Sid for the best player on our team.
 

Ogrezilla

Nerf Herder
Jul 5, 2009
75,534
22,049
Pittsburgh
I've always said regular season Letang is fine. It's playoffs when he gets exposed. Losing last night exactly how they lost to the Caps in the playoffs reinforced nothing has changed with him. Even though he's the reason they lost last night, he's currently not the issue in the big picture for why this team is so bad.
he's actually one of the few reasons this can actually win anything at all this year. Bad game last night for sure, but he's the most important player on this roster right now imo. Not best, but most irreplaceable. We are toast if he goes down.

And the idea that he's good in the regular season but not the playoffs simply doesn't hold water.
1: he was struggling all year last year, not just the playoffs.
2: The playoffs before that, he was incredible.
 
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