News Article: Rutherford and Johnston are staying. Both of them.

[Dipsy Doodle]

Farnham isn't the difference of them moving forward. I'll give you KK, but there are no guarantees. KK doesn't fix the fact they were depleted on the back end.

There was no fix that was going to change the outcome. Maybe you get extremely lucky and get a final game at the CEC before they succumb to the Rangers, but they only gave up 2 goals in 4 of the games which brings you back to scoring goals. Something Farnham doesn't do. Somewhere somebody needed to step up to the plate but too few did at forward. Kunitz wan't the only one to single out here. They needed more from everybody to pull this off. It didn't happen.

We'll never know because they didn't even try to do anything differently.

Like I said, I'll take Harrington over Scuds any day of the week. Our blueline depletion seemed worse than it was because we were committed to playing a terrible player. Even if Ehrhoff and/or Pouliot came back, you know it wasn't Scuds coming out. And that's the problem.

 

[MtlPenFan]

This season:

Lovejoy: 52.07 CF%
Despres: 52.26 CF%

Cole: 54.47 CF%
Bortuzzo: 53.19 CF%

You have no quantifiable metrics that justify a laughter emoticon at my contention.

Really? I think laughter is literally the only thing that metrics in hockey should illicit.

Once again, I don't need charts and grafts and finger paintings to know who's a good player and who isn't, and who spends a lot of time in his own zone and who doesn't.

Without looking, I bet Scuderi's fancy stats were actually fantastic with Despres. And I see that Lovejoy must have been an AMAZING hockey player playing with Cam Fowler, even though I'd watch him pretty often in late games and wonder why Fowler hadn't shot himself in the neck.

But I guarantee you, again without looking, that the minute Despres was sent packing for selling meth to seniors, Scuderi's etch-a-sketch went down the toilet along with the turd that is his career. I'd hate to even look at Lovejoy's lite-bright charts and see where they ended up since Fowler was no longer there to tuck him in at night.

 

[Ugene Magic]

We'll never know because they didn't even try to do anything differently.

Like I said, I'll take Harrington over Scuds any day of the week. Our blueline depletion seemed worse than it was because we were committed to playing a terrible player. Even if Ehrhoff and/or Pouliot came back, you know it wasn't Scuds coming out. And that's the problem.

I think the D was fully healthy Scuds was revoked to #7. You take this with a lot of salt, but they did bench Adams. They were not afforded the option. Again, it doesn't change the outcome. The Pens needed goals and the forwards had their chances.

 

[Captain Hook]

Not surprised. I'm as scared of what JR may do this summer as the next guy but I also understand teams aren't going to change their coach and GM after every season.

 

[Frank Gallagher]

I had to put this somewhere, why not where we talk about how stupid the management is...

Let me just take this moment right now to inform you all that ‪#‎Fleurydeservedbetter‬

The Pittsburgh Penguins let him down this year, not the other way 'round.
JR and the Round Table of Incompetence wasted another year on half-assed "fixes," while continuing to employ washouts like Craig Adams, Rob Scuderi, and the newly useless Chris Kunitz, while ostracizing Beau Bennett, Bobby Farnham and casting them aside to ice Craiggers, and trading the only defenseman who cared enough about the team after Letang, Maatta, and Ehrhoff went down... Because as Lemieux and Burkle said, "We have to get younger, more talented and more skilled." In what universe is trading picks and prospects for rentals and retreads (not to say Winnik was bad, just not the difference between a cup or not, also, GO AWAY BEN LOVEJOY) a way to get younger and more skilled? (Let me give you a hint, it isn't!) These are the same reasons that Shero and Bylsma got the axe last year. I thought we'd get something, anything different, but it's just more of the same in Pittsburgh! It's all about "the brand" for Morehouse and the Pens. What brand? A brand that is proud to barely make the playoffs and bow out in the first round? Do they expect the fans to be happy with that? Screw the brand. I want a team that cares, a team that is built to succeed, not one that is "marketable." The front office, in all their smugness, ought to be ashamed of this trashheap that they've offered us this year, but of course, they are smug, they are content, and their jobs are safe. Average Joe Yinzer will say "W-w-well they lost this many hundred mangames to injury... You can't compete without the players on the ice!" Sure, but you can build a team that has depth and a team that can replace talent with talent, instead of mismanaging your cap space and playing the last TEN games of the season with FIVE defensemen, if you can count Lovejoy and Scuderi as defensemen... Taylor Chorney was one of the best D-men we had these playoffs. Better than half our "Veteran" D. Joe Yinzer says "Well we have too much money tied up in too few players!" Okay, well what is your solution? Trade Malkin? Trade Crosby? Ha! NO. We lose any trade reasonably offered for either of them. Any trade where you offer up the best player is usually you losing that trade, and those two are two of the best. Letang? No one is gonna touch that, plus, he's "marketable" â„¢. It is the job of the GM and the Assistants to figure out how to ice a team to win games regardless of the scenario. With the two Generational Talents this team has, we should never look this bad. The MGMT of the Penguins has wasted years of their talent with mediocre teammates, coaches, executives, etc. Don't even get me started on the Sports media, I'm not going there... (SOD OFF ROB ROSSI!) Ahem, sorry! Anyway, this rant concludes with me saying the Pens brass trashed the team this year and past years and probably for a few future years before someone wakes up and realizes it's happened. Hopefully by then, Malkin and Sid won't want to go to a team that will actually give them a chance to win something besides the local golf tournament. /end rant.

 

[Malkin4Top6Wingerz]

The Despres trade sucked. The Ehrhoff signing was stupid and unnecessary. We got poor value on the Neal trade and only managed to score more than one goal in a single game these playoffs.

Sorry RRP, not going to let you play revisionist history on this one. The Ehrhoff signing was universally praised on this board at the time, including this quote from an esteemed member of the community. Can you guess who wrote it?

I really wanted us to sign a vet as a short-term stopgap. I was thinking Boyle, but then Ehrhoff got bought out and we pounced. Beautiful.

Spoiler alert: it was you. And everybody else loved it too. Just because the signing didn't go according to plan doesn't make it a bad one, and to criticize the trade as being 'stupid' or 'unnecessary' when raising no such concerns at the time is more than a little bit self serving.

That said, JR made several mistakes of varying proportions this season. The Ehrhoff deal wasn't one of them, and neither was the Perron trade. I can agree that they could've sucked more value out of Nashville for Neal, but I don't think anybody regrets that trade much in hindsight after initially being outraged, so it's a minor quibble at best. Also, let's not forget that the Comeau signing looked pretty amazing until he hurt his wrist.

The bad trades came in the form of Despres for Lovejoy and the major overpayment for Winnik, and the Despres trade was at least somewhat offset by the acquisition of Cole for Bortuzzo.

It's hard to evaluate JR's moves without better context. I'm sure most GMs have a couple of questionable moves per year. Chicago is basically the model franchise and they traded a first round pick for Vermette who has been nothing short of horrible for them, and then they traded a 2nd and a conditional 4th for a finished Kimmo Timonen. In fact, if you look around the league, the vast majority of trade deadline deals turned out to be massively in favor of the sellers, with very few deadline acquisitions making the impact their managers had hope.

I should have prefaced this post by saying that I don't want JR back. He's a guy that told us from the start that he was only a stop gap. That means he won't have to deal with the consequences of being liberal with draft picks or prospects because they won't be around when he calls it quits. That's a terrible management situation to have and it's pretty mind boggling that they would allow it to happen in the first place. JR is a bit of a risk taker as it is, now you want to remove all accountability for his performance? It defies logic. But so far, the totality of his moves haven't been that bad, and if we're going to nitpick, we need to at least be consistent with our own views, otherwise we're just diluting actual legitimate criticism and won't be able to seperate the two.

 

[JTG]

I guess I'm still in the minority who thought the Ehrhoff deal was a good one for us. Who knows what happens to him this offseason, but had he been healthy, I think he would have helped a great deal.

 

[AquaticBirdman]

I guess I'm still in the minority who thought the Ehrhoff deal was a good one for us. Who knows what happens to him this offseason, but had he been healthy, I think he would have helped a great deal.

It was a good deal at the time, I agree fully. I don't know of anybody who was actually "upset" last summer when we found out we signed a legit top-pairing puck-moving dman to a low risk 1 year deal. It's not like we've committed ourselves to this guy long-term, but some people here are making it seem like we did.

 

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

I liked the Ehrhoff signing when it happened. I thought it was a guy who would come in and help the top PP unit, and provide good transition with his puck movement. I also thought Ehrhoff coming in meant the end of Martin, and was looking forward to the return we'd get.

Even disregarding his horrendous injury woes with us this season, he never struck me as any good, let alone great. At no point did I ever find myself saying "Man, I'm glad we got Ehrhoff. He's been great."

 

[Captain Hook]

I guess I'm still in the minority who thought the Ehrhoff deal was a good one for us. Who knows what happens to him this offseason, but had he been healthy, I think he would have helped a great deal.

I liked the signing too. Definitely not something I'll give JR any hate for despite the fact it didn't work out. Ehrhoff has that bomb of a shot but unfortunately the Pens never really let him play for an extended period of time on the top PP where he could best use it. I really question the use of him when he was healthy as much as anything. It was like watching the Iginla situation 2.0.

 

[Ugene Magic]

I liked the signing too. Definitely not something I'll give JR any hate for despite the fact it didn't work out. Ehrhoff has that bomb of a shot but unfortunately the Pens never really let him play for an extended period of time on the top PP where he could best use it. I really question the use of him when he was healthy as much as anything. It was like watching the Iginla situation 2.0.

It just shows you don't need to rely on 100% being made of PMD's.

 

[Captain Hook]

It just shows you don't need to rely on 100% being made of PMD's.

I think the balance was okay. It wasn't ideal but Despres brought some physicality and we had some defensive minded guys in Martin and Maatta despite them being puck movers too.

I actually thought we had a need for Ehrhoff with Neal gone. The PP really needed another shooter after Neal's departure and my thoughts were they could use Ehrhoff's big shot on the point and maybe move Malkin to the half wall and let those two go back and forth blasting shots like Geno and Gonchar used to do or even Geno and Neal that year Geno had 50 and Neal 40. It just didn't happen.

 

[JTG]

I liked the signing too. Definitely not something I'll give JR any hate for despite the fact it didn't work out. Ehrhoff has that bomb of a shot but unfortunately the Pens never really let him play for an extended period of time on the top PP where he could best use it. I really question the use of him when he was healthy as much as anything. It was like watching the Iginla situation 2.0.

The use of him was questionable...absolutely. The fact you have a guy who is adept on the powerplay, and has a proven track record in that regard, but you still play a guy who is inept on the powerplay, and has a proven track record in that regard, is a baffling decision to say the least.

If you take Sid and Letang off the top unit, replace Letang with Ehrhoff, move Perron to the left wall instead of Sid on the right. I think you would see a completely different powerplay unit. Geno would take control of the entire right side, he and Ehrhoff could have set each other up for shots, Hornqvist is in the middle, Perron is over on the left wall waiting for one timers.

This team's powerplay will continue to falter with Sid and Geno on the same unit. I don't have statistical evidence to back up my claim (maybe a stat junkie who has a slow Saturday would want to do it), but the powerplay always seems to be much more lethal with Sid or Geno are out of the lineup.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

I think the D was fully healthy Scuds was revoked to #7. You take this with a lot of salt, but they did bench Adams. They were not afforded the option. Again, it doesn't change the outcome. The Pens needed goals and the forwards had their chances.

The team never gave any indication they were anything but impressed with him and didn't scratch him once this year. And despite having plenty of healthy options to replace an equally putrid Kunitz, they never even bumped him out of the top 6.

The Pens needed offense. Offense can come from a number of places, including smart transition from the defense and the ability to fire off a shot harder than 40MPH from the point. Both of which could have been accomplished better by our available options than what we repeatedly put out there.

 

[BHD]

Yay! Another year of Rutherford fumbling his way through building a playoff team.

 

[Shady Machine]

We'll never know because they didn't even try to do anything differently.

Like I said, I'll take Harrington over Scuds any day of the week. Our blueline depletion seemed worse than it was because we were committed to playing a terrible player. Even if Ehrhoff and/or Pouliot came back, you know it wasn't Scuds coming out. And that's the problem.

Agreed. And the injuries on D had a worse effect because they chose to trade Despres for Lovejoy. They made their own bed. We shouldn't make excuses for them when they put the roster in this position.

 

[Shady Machine]

I think the D was fully healthy Scuds was revoked to #7. You take this with a lot of salt, but they did bench Adams. They were not afforded the option. Again, it doesn't change the outcome. The Pens needed goals and the forwards had their chances.

Haha yeah that wasn't going to happen.

 

[Shady Machine]

I guess I'm still in the minority who thought the Ehrhoff deal was a good one for us. Who knows what happens to him this offseason, but had he been healthy, I think he would have helped a great deal.

It was a good deal in principal and I praised the move at the time. Taken together with all the other moves made, I would like a reset button.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

Sorry RRP, not going to let you play revisionist history on this one. The Ehrhoff signing was universally praised on this board at the time, including this quote from an esteemed member of the community. Can you guess who wrote it?

Spoiler alert: it was you. And everybody else loved it too. Just because the signing didn't go according to plan doesn't make it a bad one, and to criticize the trade as being 'stupid' or 'unnecessary' when raising no such concerns at the time is more than a little bit self serving.

The quote means little out of context. Here's the thread:

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showt...then+ehrhoff+got+bought+out+pounced+beautiful

Now look at the projected starting line-ups. Look hard for one from that time that included Scuderi, Martin, and Ehrhoff. It was understood that either Scuds was a dead man walking or we were moving Martin, so we had the cap flexibility to go after the forward help we needed. Kulemin was still available.

But that was never the plan. Had I thought for a second we'd do the unthinkable and go into the season with all 3 and no forward acquisitions of consequence, my reaction would have been a lot different, as I posted several times when we realized we'd be vet blueline central yet again.

That said, JR made several mistakes of varying proportions this season. The Ehrhoff deal wasn't one of them, and neither was the Perron trade. I can agree that they could've sucked more value out of Nashville for Neal, but I don't think anybody regrets that trade much in hindsight after initially being outraged, so it's a minor quibble at best. Also, let's not forget that the Comeau signing looked pretty amazing until he hurt his wrist.

I very much regret the Neal trade, good as Horny's been. Malkin's got nobody to play with and our PP has nobody who'll shoot.

That trade-off's a big reason why we went from 5th to 19th in scoring in a single year, IMO.

JR's bit of a risk taker as it is, now you want to remove all accountability for his performance? It defies logic. But so far, the totality of his moves haven't been that bad, and if we're going to nitpick, we need to at least be consistent with our own views, otherwise we're just diluting actual legitimate criticism and won't be able to seperate the two.

Criticizing JR for the Ehrhoff move is consistent with my views.

 

[Steve Durbano]

Did anyone catch the blurb that Lovejoy was on the ice for 10 of the 11 goals scored by the Rags?

I think I'd rather have Derek Engelland on D, and he's terrible.

 

[joeyjake5]

Once again... is this the compliance buyout thing people keep bringing back from the dead? That option is gone and if it's DK brining it up in that context... wtf. Know your job.

It was only available the summer after the new CBA. I don't think teams can buy players out at this point. They can trade them -- that's about it. And I'd happily take a couple draft picks for them. A 3rd and a 5th you say? Done.

Someone please correct me if there's some other type of mysterious buyout option for teams in this CBA.

The sports idiots on KDKA-TV keep on using the term amnesty buy-outs which is long gone. This is where the confusion has creped in.
The only buy-out is the regular buy-out method.
Go to HockeyBuzz.com and in Wilson's blog he tells you what would happen if Scuds was bought out. Namely, a cap savings of $2MM for next year.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

I'm calling it right now: Evgeni Malkin to Carolina for Jordan Staal.

MAYBE good ol' JR is going to be able to squeeze another player out of Ronnie Franchise. Maybe.


Basically, we've yet to hit rock-bottom yet. Oh yay.

 

[Rectify]

I was a lot more disconnected from the team this past season than I normally am. We will see what happens in the summer, but if more roster turnover isn't in the cards, than I will probably be in the same boat next season.

Rooting for the stars of this team to do well is basically all we can do. From the standpoint of a fan, that really blows.

 

[joeyjake5]

Really? I think laughter is literally the only thing that metrics in hockey should illicit.

Once again, I don't need charts and grafts and finger paintings to know who's a good player and who isn't, and who spends a lot of time in his own zone and who doesn't.

Without looking, I bet Scuderi's fancy stats were actually fantastic with Despres. And I see that Lovejoy must have been an AMAZING hockey player playing with Cam Fowler, even though I'd watch him pretty often in late games and wonder why Fowler hadn't shot himself in the neck.

But I guarantee you, again without looking, that the minute Despres was sent packing for selling meth to seniors, Scuderi's etch-a-sketch went down the toilet along with the turd that is his career. I'd hate to even look at Lovejoy's lite-bright charts and see where they ended up since Fowler was no longer there to tuck him in at night.

I just wish the Pen's management team were this logical.

 

[joeyjake5]

It was a good deal at the time, I agree fully. I don't know of anybody who was actually "upset" last summer when we found out we signed a legit top-pairing puck-moving dman to a low risk 1 year deal. It's not like we've committed ourselves to this guy long-term, but some people here are making it seem like we did.

The Erhoff signing was much better than Shero's stupid scud signing.