Post-Game Talk: Harkins appreciation night

[Andy99]

If you don't get 3 of 4 points in the next two games, season's over IMO. Middling results won't be recoverable.

Yeah, my guess is 2 points…I wouldn’t put it past them to give a rousing effort against a FLA team that’s at the top of the East and then drop one to Chicago…3 is possible but I don’t think it means all that much given the standings…we’re probably going to have to run the table for the rest of February given our March schedule..

 

[hiptanaka]

Bylsma also had them at their worst injuries too.

Geno blew his knee out.
Staal had multiple injuries
Sid had his whip lash issues and concussion

Bylsma also made so with Pascal Dupuis and Chris Kunitz as 1st line wingers and won a cup where Max Talbot was in the top 6 at points.

Sullivan literally got the cream of the crop and while he got to cups, it's become evident that it might have been more of the help he got from the assistant coaches getting more of a say at the time vs how it went when he decided to take more control (Caps series 2nd round onwards).

I don't like Disco or Sully. But I think Disco dealt with more severe injuries and still got the most out of them vs Sullivan to coaches the team like they're missing major players.

In retrospect, we had no business winning in ‘17. Washington was our hardest series and the Caps outplayed us, but MAF stole game 7. And when he faltered against Ottawa, we had a prime Murray to take the reins and destroy everyone else.

Sullivan had little do with the ‘17 win, imo.

 

[Andy99]

In retrospect, we had no business winning in ‘17. Washington was our hardest series and the Caps outplayed us, but MAF stole game 7. And when he faltered against Ottawa, we had a prime Murray to take the reins and destroy everyone else.

Sullivan had little do with the ‘17 win, imo.

He changed the defensive style of play when Letang went down so I give him partial credit…also actually making the goalie moves…but yeah, we PDO’d our way to a Cup that year

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

I'm mostly just glad we played the right way and that the coaches are happy with it.

Who cares about wins and losses when you can get Sullivan's approval.

In retrospect, we had no business winning in ‘17. Washington was our hardest series and the Caps outplayed us, but MAF stole game 7. And when he faltered against Ottawa, we had a prime Murray to take the reins and destroy everyone else.

Sullivan had little do with the ‘17 win, imo.

Seriously. People "crediting" Sullivan with the 2017 Cup seem to forget that Sullivan's teams got badly outplayed pretty much every series, but Fleury/Murray put up Conn Smythe level goaltending and unlike these past two seasons, the scorers were opportunistic on the few chances they got.

2016 is the only run where you could say a Sullivan coached team looked dominant. Since then (including the 2017 run) it's looked pretty shoddy and had to rely on timely scoring or huge goalie performances to cover for being out played.

 

[Icarium]

Yohe lambasting the power play and about half the roster without a word of criticism for the coaching is such a Yohe thing to do.

 

[ThosePuckingPenguins]

Yohe lambasting the power play and about half the roster without a word of criticism for the coaching is such a Yohe thing to do.

My favorite Yohe thing is when he gets pissy when people call him out how he coddles Sullivan and says “I’ve been critical of Sullivan before.”

Where? When? He’s written articles absolutely torching Hextall and torching players. Never once an article written about how Sullivan may be the problem. Instead he writes how players on this team are hard to coach so Sullivan has a tough job.

 

[Kiith Nabaal]

In the 2014-15 season, the Penguins *barely* made the playoffs. They were tied in points with Boston and our final games were on the same day. If we lost and they won, we were out. Looking back at the year that team had, things were almost as bad then as they are now (that team had a great October and ours now was a disaster):

They were also not scoring as well as they used to. They were **19th** in scoring, whereas the previous year they were 5th. The Blue Jackets were producing more offensively than we were. Right now we sit 26th in GF which is even worse than what Johnston was doing. The PP back then was also 7% better than ours right now.

We have seen this before. It amazes me that there's still people out there who can't tell when a coach has lost the team and thus aren't performing to their potential.

There's some holes in the roster, but the coach has clearly lost his touch. Ya don't need five consecutive seasons of missing the playoffs to know that. If the Penguins are going to keep Sullivan around, then I suspect management imagines he will provide valuable input on who to draft for the rebuild to come.

 

[Icarium]

"Players on this team are hard to coach, therefore we should keep the guy who hasn't had any success in years and the team's trajectory is clearly downward" is one of those statements which make no sense even if the very dubious premise is actually correct. It's not like there is only one coach in the entire world who can coach spoiled prima donnas. Or that if Sully's replacement is a failure the Penguins franchise will cease to exist or something.

Both Stanley Cup finalists last year had coaches hired the previous summer who replaced rather successful coaches to boot. This year EDM went on an insane run with their new coach, Tocchett is doing miracles in Vancouver but we are stuck with Sullivan because the players are allegedly uncoachable? Even if it's true, since they can't win with him either, who cares?

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

Yohe lambasting the power play and about half the roster without a word of criticism for the coaching is such a Yohe thing to do.

Yohe has his lips so firmly planted on Sullivan's ass that if I were Sullivan I'd be pressing charges for sexual harassment.

 

[The Old Master]

WOW it took till the 7th Post to blame The Coaching

it's a given.

 

[CascadiaPenguin]

In retrospect, we had no business winning in ‘17. Washington was our hardest series and the Caps outplayed us, but MAF stole game 7. And when he faltered against Ottawa, we had a prime Murray to take the reins and destroy everyone else.

Sullivan had little do with the ‘17 win, imo.

Dear God... So, we had no business winning the Cup in '17 and when we did, the coach had nothing to do with it. I've sure it was a trivial matter for Sullivan to sit city icon/veteran favorite MAF when he faltered against the Sens. Easy call there, no doubt, right?

The more we lose, the sillier this place becomes. We're gonna be bad for a while, so why not up our games a bit? Its getting kind of embarrassing.

And before a pearl-clutcher labels me a Sully supporter, I think he should have been on the thinnest of ice after the play-in fiasco against the Habs, though pretty much the entire hockey world saw that "upset" coming.

 

[Genetic]

That sequence at the end when geno had the puck was unacceptable. Everyone was standing f***ing still and malkin had absolutely no one to pass to. f***ing move and get open

Love how Malkin wasted 15 seconds stick handling the puck when there was 32 seconds left in the game.

Lol.....

 

[Pancakes]

God. I don't give a shit about whether Sullivavn is better than Bylsma or whether Tocchett was the secret mastermind behind the two cups or whatever other shit.

The fact is whether Sullivan got carried back then or whether he's actually one of the best coaches in the league...it's irrelevant either way. What he's doing is not working here and it hasn't worked for several years now. He's tracking to miss the playoffs twice in a row.

Whether he's a good coach or a bad coach it's not working any more and hasn't for some time and he needs to go. If the team continues to stink after canning him, at least you tried.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Trying is close to caring but we don’t really do either.

 

[canadianguy77]

So is that Sid's fault and not Sully?

Some of these posters have went off the deep end. Sully broke them.

 

[Andy99]

Caps got a loser point today and now the Pens are back in 7th in the Metro lol

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

Caps got a loser point today and now the Pens are back in 7th in the Metro lol

 

[cygnus47]

Dear God... So, we had no business winning the Cup in '17 and when we did, the coach had nothing to do with it. I've sure it was a trivial matter for Sullivan to sit city icon/veteran favorite MAF when he faltered against the Sens. Easy call there, no doubt, right?

The more we lose, the sillier this place becomes. We're gonna be bad for a while, so why not up our games a bit? Its getting kind of embarrassing.

And before a pearl-clutcher labels me a Sully supporter, I think he should have been on the thinnest of ice after the play-in fiasco against the Habs, though pretty much the entire hockey world saw that "upset" coming.

2017 we got two all time goalie performances and no one knew what to do with Sid and Jake, plus we got an insane run from Phil and Geno on top of that. Plus most of our opponents had key injuries to their best players. We abandoned the 2016 system, insulated the goalie and hoped for our top 6 to win us games on bounces and putting away every chance. We got lucky.

2017 broke Sully, it was never a sustainable system but he continues to use it to this day.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Pillow Pants 4 Life

Now there's a player that never has trouble clearing his mind.

And you know, as much as I despise the game he plays, it's again not the player's fault. It's Mike Sullivan choosing to use an inferior player for a role he doesn't quite understand himself and is asking a player that isn't all that good, to do a role that he can't define.

It's a lose/lose situation, as is most of the deployment Sullivan conjures up.

 

[Pancakes]

Now there's a player that never has trouble clearing his mind.


And you know, as much as I despise the game he plays, it's again not the player's fault. It's Mike Sullivan choosing to use an inferior player for a role he doesn't quite understand himself and is asking a player that isn't all that good, to do a role that he can't define.

It's a lose/lose situation, as is most of the deployment Sullivan conjures up.

Sullivan's role for Harkins is very well defined. That's part of the problem. He wants a bottom six that takes no risks and just plays the other team to a draw. And then he expects the top six to pick up the slack but Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin aren't 26 any more. They can't carry an entire offense by themselves.

Course Dubas deserves blame for harboring the same thoughts. You can build a bottom six that just doesn't score when you have a top six with multiple players putting up 100 points, but we haven't had that for years.

 

[Turin]

God. I don't give a shit about whether Sullivavn is better than Bylsma or whether Tocchett was the secret mastermind behind the two cups or whatever other shit.

The fact is whether Sullivan got carried back then or whether he's actually one of the best coaches in the league...it's irrelevant either way. What he's doing is not working here and it hasn't worked for several years now. He's tracking to miss the playoffs twice in a row.

Whether he's a good coach or a bad coach it's not working any more and hasn't for some time and he needs to go. If the team continues to stink after canning him, at least you tried.

Dude is probably a tactical genius with the way the Pens turned into the best defensive team in the east after acquiring Karlsson somehow... but this team isn't built to be that team, nobody wants it to be that team, so it doesn't matter. The team gets mediocre results and looks boring as hell.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

In retrospect, we had no business winning in ‘17. Washington was our hardest series and the Caps outplayed us, but MAF stole game 7. And when he faltered against Ottawa, we had a prime Murray to take the reins and destroy everyone else.

Sullivan had little do with the ‘17 win, imo.

The firing of Johnston and having Tocchet, Sarge/Martin taking over most of the duties with Sullivan sort of just there barking at players while Tocchet tells them "don't listen to him, listen to me" is why they win the 2 cups. Sullivan without that filter is an absolute ignoramus.

The issue I had for a long time was thinking "why can't Mike Sullivan evolve and adapt his system" and the answer was always right there in front of me. It's because he never implemented a system. He essentially came in, took a hybrid of Johnston/Bylsma, asked Tocchet to help out and Martin/Sarge to do some more heavy lifting while he sort of just tried things that the Assistants told him would work or wouldn't and then had to talk to the players on his behalf to not have them lose their shit.

When the dust settled in 2017-18, we finally got to see the beginning of the Sullivan system and era.

Sheahan was doing ok in his 3C role, but Sullivan kept talking up Big Game Ass, then openly beefed with Ian Cole that year, then in 2018-19, he started to have issues with Phil Kessel who had 82pts in 82 games while being forced to work with Malkin and then causing a rift between Malkin, Kessel, and himself. There were signs he really was never capable of figuring out the next step basically right after the 2nd cup when the staff that really deciphered whatever Sullivan thought he needed from his players, left.

JR essentially just panics because of how badly Sullivan is using players and causing issues and then trying to get players that Sullivan had familiarity with or was his kind of player - Jankowski, Brassard, Jack Johnson (this one Sully actually went to bat for openly), etc. JR then trades Hagelin who was fine playing his game and producing in a 3rd line role but was continuously thrown on Malkin's line to add some 2-way ability and a really piss poor attempt at hoping HMK would work again when it hadn't for 2 seasons.

JR is trigger happy and can lose the plot for sure, but in this case, he just won 2 cups with a new coach and is bending over backwards trying to find him anything he wants to get another cup out of the core and it just kept getting worse because of how Sullivan would utilize the players.

A good example is also Matt Cullen. Under Tocchet as Assistant Coach, Matt Cullen thrived in his role, he was a mentor to Jake, he was a fantastic 4C and then when he came back, the usage Sullivan threw at him was just ridiculous at the time but then we saw how did that to essentially every bottom 6 player since.

I will die in the hill that Sullivan and his coaching strategy is not why they won the 2 cups, it's the fact that the Assistants and a few smart trades, rallied the team and some insane motivation. Tocchet's system is also very apparent in that 2nd cup, the more cleaned up version is what he and Sarge are deploying in Vancouver.

Meanwhile the only thing Sullivan ever talked about was his stupid ass pairs idea which really wasn't even implemented until 2017-18 when shit started to hit the fan and jackson pollock the walls.

Sullivan's role for Harkins is very well defined. That's part of the problem. He wants a bottom six that takes no risks and just plays the other team to a draw. And then he expects the top six to pick up the slack but Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin aren't 26 any more. They can't carry an entire offense by themselves.

Course Dubas deserves blame for harboring the same thoughts. You can build a bottom six that just doesn't score when you have a top six with multiple players putting up 100 points, but we haven't had that for years.

Ah yeah you're right, his role is defined to play the most boring style of game imaginable while also thinking it'll somehow breed offense.


I don't get Dubas, Sullivan isn't a coach that won the 2 cups a few yrs ago, it's 7yrs now since those 2 cups and Dubas joined when they just missed the playoffs and were trending down already. To see the same issues again this year as the previous year, to be that blind is sad. I mean it just feels like it's written into Dubas' contract that he can't speak negatively about Sullivan.

 

[Pancakes]

I don't get Dubas, Sullivan isn't a coach that won the 2 cups a few yrs ago, it's 7yrs now since those 2 cups and Dubas joined when they just missed the playoffs and were trending down already. To see the same issues again this year as the previous year, to be that blind is sad. I mean it just feels like it's written into Dubas' contract that he can't speak negatively about Sullivan.

I just can't believe that the Pens are going to sacrifice everything just to keep Mike Sullivan.

Say what you will about Dubas and Hextall's moves. Perhaps they do deserve blame for some poor roster moves. But they have tried to change the roster. They both made significant moves, for better or worse. And the same coach has been managing both rosters with the same poor results.

At this point there's only one major thing left to try and that is to change the coaching staff. When you keep getting the same results with different players, what else can you do?

But if Dubas/FSG take that off the table as an option then it is what it is. We're going to see the Pens slowly get worse and worse until our stars retire or Dubas finally pulls the plug on Sullivan and kicks off the rebuild.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I just can't believe that the Pens are going to sacrifice everything just to keep Mike Sullivan.

Say what you will about Dubas and Hextall's moves. Perhaps they do deserve blame for some poor roster moves. But they have tried to change the roster. They both made significant moves, for better or worse. And the same coach has been managing both rosters with the same poor results.

At this point there's only one major thing left to try and that is to change the coaching staff. When you keep getting the same results with different players, what else can you do?

But if Dubas/FSG take that off the table as an option then it is what it is. We're going to see the Pens slowly get worse and worse until our stars retire or Dubas finally pulls the plug on Sullivan and kicks off the rebuild.

I don't really have as much of an issue with JR and Hextall and even Dubas for the moves they made. I 100% fault them for not firing Sullivan when they should have.

 

[Pancakes]

I don't really have as much of an issue with JR and Hextall and even Dubas for the moves they made. I 100% fault them for not firing Sullivan when they should have.

I think even when you look at some of the panned moves like Granlund there is a case to be made that Sullivan was heavily responsible for f***ing up those moves and making them even worse than they were on paper.

Like Granlund was a bad idea by Hextall, but there was a scenario where we could have gotten actual value out of him and that scenario would have been putting him in the top six and giving him lots of PP time. And yeah he probably shouldn't have been acquired in the first place because there wasn't necessarily room on pp1 for him. But either way, putting him as a checker was not it.