Nah. We tried to put big guys on our team forever. It never has worked.
Roberts was a vital part of the Penguins playoff run in 2008; that's pretty much the last time the word "manhandle" or "bully" could be applied to a Penguin team in a favorable way, and Roberts was the reason for that, possibly the sole reason.
I'll always remember in game 4 of the sweep against Ottawa, fairly late in the third period with the outcome in no doubt whatsoever, Roberts was still playing "his" kind of game (the exact opposite of a typical p***yfied "Penguin" kind of game that we know so well from both before that time and since that time); Roberts was drilling people hard -- and legally -- still destroying everything in sight even though the series mere minutes from being over.
Ottawa's alleged tough guy Chris Neil was just about literally in tears as he whined to the refs. You could almost hear him saying "These are the PITTSBURGH PENGUINS! They aren't supposed to play that way - EVER!!! They're not ALLOWED to! It's in THE RULES! Make them STOP!". More delicious tears than that have rarely been shed.
That scenario was the exact opposite of the 2007 series, where most of the Penguins were deer in the headlights (it was the first postseason experience for the Crosby-Malkin-Fleury version of the team) as Ottawa hit everything that moved -- high, hard, late, cheap and dirty -- all series long and the Pens wilted while the refs just smiled. Decades later, some things haven't changed much in the playoffs.
But for one brief moment in 2008, the Pens were actually the
aggressors in a playoff series and it did "work". The confidence the more fragile players gained from Roberts' performance -- Hey look, someone actually has our backs this time!!! -- perhaps might have helped a wee bit in propelling that inexperienced team all the way to the finals that year. Regardless, it's fun to not always be on the receiving end of a free beatdown.