Salary Cap: Salary Cap+Roster Building: 'twas a great run....

[EliteGoaltending]

Someone here proposed Ulf. That’s a step in the right direction. Recchi belongs behind the scenes and Gonchar is a more of an inexperienced teacher but he’s as quiet as a mouse.

If Sullivan isn't willing to adjust still, or is willing to adjust but those adjustments are not good; has a problem evaluating players, is stubborn with a lot of decisions, then his assistants wouldn't matter.

 

[Turin]

If Sullivan isn't willing to adjust still, or is willing to adjust but those adjustments are not good; has a problem evaluating players, is stubborn with a lot of decisions, then his assistants wouldn't matter.

I don’t think Sullivan’s problems are adjustment related at all. I can buy what Jules said though. Recchi and probably even Martin should go then.

But Hagelin was about to be brought back so did things seem fine at that point?

 

[Empoleon8771]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Malkin is growing at least frustrated in Pittsburgh, to the point where he at least implied to JR that he'd be open to a move. You saw it in his play this year and you read about it in stories from after the season (the "Ruhwedel can skate it out" one sticks out to me). I don't think JR was just being reckless when he said what he said, he wouldn't have said that had Malkin been 100% committed to playing in Pittsburgh. Malkin has complete control over any transaction due to his full NMC and NTC, I imagine JR isn't going senile and forgetting that.

He has been with the Penguins for 13 seasons at this point. He has won basically everything he can win in Pittbsurgh, and likely everything he probably will end up winning. I wouldn't be surprised if Malkin just wants a change because it's growing stale, both the team and himself. I don't think JR is throwing out that kind of language willy nilly unless Malkin is telling him something that this board doesn't know.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

EDIT: I do wonder if, as someone suggested, it's possible Malkin did a soft ask out, and they're printing this 'uncoachable' stuff (a) to shape the story about why and (b) because they know Malkin is out of the country and won't see it.

Does he not have access to the internet in Russia?

 

[Jules Winnfield]

If Sullivan isn't willing to adjust still, or is willing to adjust but those adjustments are not good; has a problem evaluating players, is stubborn with a lot of decisions, then his assistants wouldn't matter.

Sully might look at it like he’d rather have a Tocchet deal with his problems instead of him dealing with problems. Issues with certain players and why one player was treated differently than others earlier in the year and traded was Sully having zero patience and wanting everyone to be submissive to him vs him finding ways to make things work with people.

He’s always going to have a personality clash with certain types of high skill players that need a bit more creative freedom to be effective.

For Sully to be most effective he needs a strong coach under him. Whether his ego wants that or not that’s another question. I’m hoping he looks at it like he doesn’t want to parent certain children that don’t listen as well as he wants and he needs and wants someone else to do that job instead of him.

 

[ChaosAgent]

2) Kessel being a pain in the ass and forcing Sully to play him with Malkin because he didn’t want to play on the 3rd line any longer and he wasn’t producing on the 3rd line. Sully knew Kessel and Malkin were a dumpster fire together defensively and he was intent on making it personal with Kessel and Malkin no matter if we lost every game and kept them even if it meant the team suffered. Sully doesn’t want Kessel on the team and he was intent on letting the dumpster fire continue or let Kessel and Malkin prove they could make it work. It went beyond that however with injuries and lack of adjustments. JR took Sully’s side at first and that led to the Hagelin trade. Essentially that just pissed the players off even more because it proved to them without a Tocchet there the issues they had were not heard and the finger pointing went against the players instead of the coaching adjustments or bringing in other players in addition to support.

I wanna see AT&T Sports do some sort of Yinzer 30-for-30 on the Sully/Geno/Kessel love triangle at some point.

Like, who wanted to play with who? Did Phil want to play with Geno? Did Geno want to play with Phil? And did Sully want them to play together legitimately, or as a way of trolling/proving a point to whomever wanted to be together.

And what's the timeline of all this? I'm guessing at some point Geno realized that his best bet to be value-add at even-strength was not alongside #81 but maybe didn't have the heart to voice it to Sully.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

We're about as likely to trade Malkin this summer as we were to trade him any number of other summers when he was rumoured to be dealt based on some innocuous comment.

 

[Jules Winnfield]

I don’t think Sullivan’s problems are adjustment related at all. I can buy what Jules said though. Recchi and probably even Martin should go then.

But Hagelin was about to be brought back so did things seem fine at that point?

Mutiny on the bounty in the locker room over that deal. JR realized he made a mistake and tried to fix it. He got their attention but went about it the wrong way.

Had JR done the deal with Florida first and kept Hagelin, there would’ve still been underlying issues but the locker room wouldn’t have turned into a wasteland.

 

[Big Friggin Dummy]

Still don't think Sully (or Recchi) is nearly as big a problem as the guy who built this pile of filth on the blueline; JR.

If Sully's still failing with a competent roster, so be it. Look elsewhere. But I don't think we're going to have a fully competent roster as long as JR is building the team, and I don't think he can/will fix things before Sid and Geno dramatically slow down to the point of no longer being able to dominate play.

 

[ColePens]

Can someone get a new thread up?