Penguins Identity w/Realist Optics

[Honour Over Glory]

I wanted Gonchar from the start. There was a rumor he was not ready to break from family enough to be a regular on the bench - then viola this season he's there. I'm not sure the extent of his role, but it could/should be more significant.

Sarge as the guy to take over for Martin is fine. Rex as the AC behind Sully, bad move.

 

[Jacob]

Not sure what makes Gonchar qualified to be assistant.

If you want to bring him in to work with the D every now and then on certain things like shaking forecheckers or getting shots through from the point that’s fine but there are more monotonous, boring, day-to-day details to playing defense that a player of Gonchar’s talent level probably never had to learn, let alone how to teach. And it’s those little details and fundamentals that matter a ton over an 82 game season. And that our team has more trouble with than they should.

I want assistants that have previous NHL head coaching experience. They should be overqualified. With so much league parity on the ice I think coaching is more important than ever.

 

[Gurglesons]

If Rick Tocchett has anywhere near the impacts as some of you think here, our core sucks.

 

[Peat]

Not sure what makes Gonchar qualified to be assistant.

If you want to bring him in to work with the D every now and then on certain things like shaking forecheckers or getting shots through from the point that’s fine but there are more monotonous, boring, day-to-day details to playing defense that a player of Gonchar’s talent level probably never had to learn, let alone how to teach. And it’s those little details and fundamentals that matter a ton over an 82 game season. And that our team has more trouble with than they should.

I want assistants that have previous NHL head coaching experience. They should be overqualified. With so much league parity on the ice I think coaching is more important than ever.

You've got Martin to do that though. And he's the seriously overqualified guy to do that. If Gonchar is mainly doing one on one work stuff that Gonchar knows about, then there's no hole in the coaching there.

 

[Jacob]

You've got Martin to do that though. And he's the seriously overqualified guy to do that. If Gonchar is mainly doing one on one work stuff that Gonchar knows about, then there's no hole in the coaching there.

There’s no reason for him to be behind the bench then. What’s he gonna teach on the fly?

 

[JTG]

The engine to the Penguins system are defensemen that can retrieve the puck and quickly turn it up ice. We have exactly 3 guys right now that can do that out of 7. I think Riikola is a good defenseman, and I think we will see strides coming into next season with him. Maatta cannot get a puck out of the zone. Johnson's 1 redeemable quality in his career was that he could retrieve pucks and turn them up ice. He has lost that ability here. Pettersson does fine but his attempts are usually squashed by whatever sub-par defenseman he is playing with.

I will also say, I sit here right now and think about Olli Maatta's rookie year and how exciting it was to think we have finally found a great top pair defenseman to pair with Letang. His game is a shell of what he was in his rookie year and he has never rebounded.