Salary Cap: Salary Cap & Roster Building | Still July (Cap Details + Links in First Post)

[Gurglesons]

Last season he added Oleksiak but traded Cole during the season. Before that he swapped Despres and Lovejoy and Bortuzzo for Cole. It’s not always increasing the total. Last year they probably didn’t have the defensive depth they’ve needed for another run given what they used for the other 2. This year, if he’s unable to add another D again and no one steps up it’s likely a problem. It’s not something to panic about but it’s something to remember.

They’re not significantly worse but could be if things don’t work out well with Sprong, Murray and the path they’ve taken with the D. Mainly, they need to get playing the right way again. If they try to glide through the season and the forwards float defensively I think it becomes a serious problem.

Agreed. When Justin Schultz is coming in as your most consistent defensive D on the right side, you need the team to buy in.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Agreed. When Justin Schultz is coming in as your most consistent defensive D on the right side, you need the team to buy in.

I believe in those nerd numbers, Schultz was actually solid in the regular season and playoffs with his defensive play, to the point where it can't be used as a "if so and so was your secondary blah blah blah..."

Because Justin was solid last year, offensively he seemed like maybe he was pressuring himself too much, but defensively he was solid as hell.

 

[Gurglesons]

I believe in those nerd numbers, Schultz was actually solid in the regular season and playoffs with his defensive play, to the point where it can't be used as a "if so and so was your secondary blah blah blah..."

Because Justin was solid last year, offensively he seemed like maybe he was pressuring himself too much, but defensively he was solid as hell.

Schultz isn’t paid the second most dollars on our D to be solid defensively.

And let’s not oversell him defensively. He was solid, and going into 2018-19 he’s the most consistent right side D on the defensive side, but he doesn’t PK, he’s get fairly even if slightly offensive oriented zone starts, he needs to bring more of 2017 and less of 2018.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Schultz isn’t paid the second most dollars on our D to be solid defensively.

Then maybe they should have given him better support with getting his offense back on track last season and a down year from him but a positive in another area, Mr bitch about literally everything these days, isn't a bad thing and not a bad year.

Furthermore...

He was on a 35pt pace if he had played 82 games at the pace he was on with the ice time he was getting on the poweprlay as well. Not only that, he was missing his mainstay as his defensive partner so he had to actually get better defensively to make up for the gap he was missing on his pairing.

It's definitely evident that on even strength, he was missing some stability and while he finished with the best +/- on the team and has grown exponentially with his defensive game, his numbers dropped big time even strength, he did just play 63 games out of 82 though.

Last year he put up 31pts ES, and 20 on the powerplay, which is literally just 10 more than he put up this season. The biggest discrepancy was ES. He put up 17 this past season, that's a 14pt drop there, he always looked most comfortable with Ian Cole, looked meh with Olli Maatta and looked more like he had to play more defense while with him because Olli would jump up and caught so f***ing often.

I would put money on JS cracking 40+ with Johnson or Oleksiak.

PP time isn't the real issue. He's getting 30 seconds less between the last 2yrs.

The most bizarre thing if anything is the jump on powerplay time for Olli Maatta vs the year before.

8 seconds on the powerplay to 1:19?

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

I don't think there's anything wrong with moving a center to wing, the Flyers moved Giroux to the wing last season and he put up 102 points. Same with Draisaitl and RNH with the Oilers. I think it's pretty fair to say that most centers can play wing well.

One could argue that McDavid is the one being moved to wing to allow him more freedom and those two (Draisaitl and RNH) to take the defensive responsibilities.

 

[Turin]

I believe in those nerd numbers, Schultz was actually solid in the regular season and playoffs with his defensive play, to the point where it can't be used as a "if so and so was your secondary blah blah blah..."

Because Justin was solid last year, offensively he seemed like maybe he was pressuring himself too much, but defensively he was solid as hell.

Those nerd numbers suggest Letang was by far the best Penguin defensively.

 

[WayneSid9987]

Whats there to debate? Brassard will be playing multiple positions to get his 18 min of icetime in a contract year. 12min 3C and 6min 2LW seems like a good mix to both help the team and keep him happy.

I think you'll see him thrown out there in place of the Simon's and Sprong's and Phil's(at times) on wing in defensive situations. Theres more options than just him tho, Sully used Sheahan(which i disliked at the time since switching the guy with a bad groin made more sense to me but perhaps Sully figured he needed the healthy legs on the wing more), Rust, Kuhnackl for that last season. This season he has Brass or Sheahan, Rust and Cullen.

The key is really finding a trio with Brass C'ing that Sully can throw out at any time. He could never really hit on that last season+Brass was quite obviously playing on a bad groin. BUT theres enough wingers to do that still so it's not as if i want Brass at wing. It's just an option that is there if need be.

 

[Peat]

Then Sullivan needs to come up with a similar system they can run for a chunk of the season that won’t kill them but won’t let the bad habits get ingrained.

I'm not sure that system exists. You can run a more conservative system, but then you ingrain bad habits about not judging and making the high reward plays.

 

[dogthateats]

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

We lost because we had no secondary scoring. Our defensive issues certainly didn't help, but even then as glaring as they were, had we received any sort of offensive support, we should have been able to outscore those issues. As for our "depth", on paper we had excellent depth. The issue is that the very skilled depth we had wasn't producing when we needed them to.

Yeha, i was mostly referring to the beginning of the season when McKegg was our 3C etc.

 

[Shady Machine]

Yea the Pens went from Sheary/Kuhn-Cullen-Rust/Fehr on their fourth line to the worst, least used fourth line last year. It’ll go a long way to have 4 lines again.

Yeah about that whole Ryan Reaves experiment...

 

[Shady Machine]

Absolutely. And after seeing how MAF was treated here as the years went on I expect people to trash Murray if he continues to play like he did this past year. I for one won't put up with people making typical yinzer excuses if he has another season where he's like 35th in the league in save % and below 50% in quality starts, etc. I got on him pretty good, but wasn't a jerk about it because he had injuries and obviously his dad passing didn't help things. He had a lot going on, plus the back to back Cups gives you a certain amount of leeway.

But, with that being said, he needs to rebound. And I have faith he will with a full offseason to rest up and move past his dad's death.

No more excuses, for him or Letang now. If those guys both trend upwards, we'll be right back in the thick of a deep playoff run.

Lol. Can you possibly talk about Murray without mentioning Fleury? You're exhausting with this stuff.