Post-Game Talk: Pens vs Wings: You ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

[HandshakeLine]

Show me in either of these two videos the questionable hits the Penguins threw.

Hmm, lightning in a bottle, okay, not the world's most viable strategy. But even those B2B teams were miles more physical than we have constructed now.

Being physical is a legit strategy. We won without overly relying it, but we had two of the world's best players in their prime and playing out of their minds. If we're going to try to be not physical, we need to find players that are frankly better than current-day Sid and Malkin to anchor the top 6 and that's not happening.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Like pulling up highlight reels from 8 years ago and going "see, we don't need to be physical" is half of my point! Of course you might have not had to be as physical then when you were a much younger, faster team.

We are not a young, fast team anymore. Why try to pretend?

 

[Victor Z]

Hmm, lightning in a bottle, okay, not the world's most viable strategy. But even those B2B teams were miles more physical than we have constructed now.

Being physical is a legit strategy. We won without overly relying it, but we had two of the world's best players in their prime and playing out of their minds. If we're going to try to be not physical, we need to find players that are frankly better than current-day Sid and Malkin to anchor the top 6 and that's not happening.

If the Pens end up in the playoffs and have to face the Rangers they are going to get absolutely destroyed physically, and it will be ugly.

The Rangers have lots of guys who never pass up a chance to make a hard hit, and -- in the playoffs -- against a team of marshmallows like the Pens -- they are going to have a field day. Lots of dirty hits will be mixed in with the hard semi-clean ones.

This, while Sully frowns harder and says "just play", and the players cry at the referees to protect them while they watch their skill players carried off on stretchers (a la Rakell & Sid last time around or Dumo & ZAR vs. Tom Wilson a few years earlier).

 

[HandshakeLine]

Yeah, it's just the saddest kind of sour grapes to complain about hitting in the postseason. IMO. It sucks that Sid got leveled, but the Pens couldn't close the deal. Taking it to your opponent's best players, wearing them down, playing borderline on them in the postseason is like NHL 101.

This team likely doesn't win its first Cup incidentally without Samuelsson drilling Neely in the conference finals back in '91, so it's even weirder to me to pretend that we haven't benefited from it on occasion.

 

[Rakell67]

Yeah, it's just the saddest kind of sour grapes to complain about hitting in the postseason. IMO. It sucks that Sid got leveled, but the Pens couldn't close the deal. Taking it to your opponent's best players, wearing them down, playing borderline on them in the postseason is like NHL 101.

This team likely doesn't win its first Cup incidentally without Samuelsson drilling Neely in the conference finals back in '91, so it's even weirder to me to pretend that we haven't benefited from it on occasion.

Kunitz trucked Timonen in Game 3 of the 2009 series vs. the Flyers. Pens won the series 4-2 but that hit had to have hurt Timonen a bit, thus helping the Pens.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Kunitz trucked Timonen in Game 3 of the 2009 series vs. the Flyers. Pens won the series 4-2 but that hit had to have hurt Timonen a bit, thus helping the Pens.

Yeah, it's to our credit we didn't rely on that as much as some teams, but we have absolutely benefited from real borderline physical play in the postseason.

But also, nobody takes away a Cup because you hit the opponent hard and put them out of the game.

 

[LOGiK]

Yeah, it's to our credit we didn't rely on that as much as some teams, but we have absolutely benefited from real borderline physical play in the postseason.

But also, nobody takes away a Cup because you hit the opponent hard and put them out of the game.

Hockey is a tough sport to complain about hitting. If you are (Sid) star-level good you have to keep your eyes/ears open/alert & understand that at any point, they can line you up to take you out of the game/series.
Not to mention just a regular hit can go wrong and take you out.

 

[Tom Hanks]