#66
Registered User
Its clearly Mario. This win sloppy, lose badly, la dee dah attitude has been around the Pens for 30 years. To a degree Sid is at fault too. Its not an atmosphere suited for him and I don't think he likes it. He could change all this with one word but might be a little to respectful of Mario.i dont necessarily think mario is part of the problem, just that its plausible. its basically just circumstantial evidence at this point-- mario as a player loved the country club atmosphere to a fault, and this current club seems too country-clubby. correlation doesn't equal casuality.
but hes so far removed from the on-ice team, its pretty hard to say what effect he has on the team itself. i know for a fact that byslma is a problem, i'm now starting to think that shero is a problem, but ownership... thats several degree of separation right there.
one thing that is kind of damning-- all the media reports this past offseason said that shero had that big meeting with ownership right before the press conference announcing extensions for the coaching staff. this meeting was basically supposed to determine the fate of bylsma and co. reports said shero went into the meeting prepared to fight tooth and nail to defend bylsma. but shero was surprised that ownership was already completely on board with extensions. that kind of sucks.
did mario even earn that much money in his playing career? he seems like a dude with expensive tastes, i'm not familiar with any other investments or sources of income that he has. hes not like burkle who can afford to throw away millions of dollars. the cup is great, but i have to imagine still looks at this operation as a money-making opportunity for him. i can see why he would want to play it safe and stick with the popular and relatively "successful" byslma. keep his iconic stars happy, keep winning a fair amount of games, have some respectable playoff runs, and keep putting people in the seats.
again, correlation does not equal causation. frankly it seems more like mario has pushed shero to be aggressive (which is concerning about shero but thats another thread), which is a good thing. but ownership's complete support of bylsma this offseason is concerning.
at this stage this is just interesting speculation. but if this team continues to stick with bylsma/shero and their "we only want players that want to be here" shtick, then maybe ownership is culpable.
The Pens not only came very close to getting Bob Johnson fired but asked Scotty Bowman not to come to practices. Then EJ comes in to babysit time after time. Does that make any sense?
Now we have teams that go on cup runs with Roberts, BGL, Malone, Cooke and Roo only to have the same GM change to build a pack of pusscakes. A coach that was all about bopping on the end boards has Chris Kunitz fading away from checks... KUNITZ.
This team turned in its black hat for a pair of pink panties and it friggin sickens me.