I always liked the Pens as a kid, but my fandom began in earnest in 2001, Eastern conference quarterfinals, Straka beats Kolzig in OT, hooked ever since. The dark ages that immediately followed that run to the Conference Finals were rough - we were constantly selling talent, Mario was almost always injured, we had no players and the most exciting thing game to game was watching Konstatin Koltsov fly down the ice faster than anybody in the league while leaving his hands somewhere back in the neutral zone.
But we knew there was at least an idea - we’d draft high, get new talent, and Mario would charm some governors or whatever and we’d get a new arena. In the meantime, we’d play terribly but at least rack up a gnarly amount of penalty minutes. And hey it worked! We got a decent arena and 3 cups out of it, can’t complain.
This… this feels bleaker than watching Dick Tarnstron lead the team in scoring, a Riiiiiico Faaaata goal call that goes on too long, my buddy Louie buying a Dan LaCouture jersey to see him traded a month later, thinking Milan Kraft was finally putting it together, watching Matt Bradley and Mike Eastwood dress for all 82 games.
There’s no plan this time, because there is no organizational imperative to be competitive. It’s not tank and rebuild, it’s not even wheel-and-deal and try to rebuild on the fly. They think what they’ve built is perfect. What they’ve built is a mausoleum. “Here lies Penguins hockey 1988-2018. It was fun while it lasted.”