There was a big announcement yesterday from the Pittsburgh Penguins and Root Sports. Paul Steigerwald will no longer by the play by play announcer for the team and will shift to a front office position.
Steigerwald famously took over for Mike Lange on the television side of things shortly after the 2004-05 lockout ended. He has been the television voice for the Crosby/Malkin era. People around the team speak glowingly about him and like him as a human being. They respect his passion for the Pittsburgh Penguins. I respect his passion for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
However, for the majority of us who don't know him personally he has been an objectively terrible play by play announcer. The quality of the television broadcast dropped immensely when it shifted from Mike Lange to Steigerwald. Instead of quirky and fun goal calls we were subjected to over-the-top cringy homerism which poisoned the broadcast each and every night. There’s a reason there are Twitter accounts that sync up the Mike Lange radio calls to video after each game.
Whenever you hear people discussing the best hockey broadcasts around the league the odds on favorite to come in 30th place is the Root Sports production. The driving force behind the low rankings has been Steigerwald. He doesn’t call a great game, his goal calls are bland, and when the other team does something positive it must be because of luck. It's grinding to listen to as a Penguins supporter let alone anybody else. Any attempt at humor is closer to a Mike Huckabee impersonation than something any viewer could possibly find humor from. No better example of this exists than the Hobey Baker joke gone wrong. The broadcast was corny and dated, always. A nightly cringe worthy experience.
When was the last time you learned anything from a Root Sports broadcast? I mean, other than the fact that Pittsburgh somehow has the best 20 hockey players in the world all on one team and under the cap. It's amazing they ever lose a game.
Steigerwald's role in the front office will be in public relations and communications. It is a role that will be similar to the one the Penguins gave him when he was 25 years old, marketing. He did a good job in this role. It’s just too bad they let him broadcasting booth for all these years and never told him that his job description had changed.
Steve Mears of the NHL Network will be taking over the broadcasting duties. It would be tough for him not to be an improvement over the last decade.
I’m sure Paul Steigerwald is a great guy, I’m just glad he’ll never be calling another Penguins game.
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Pittsburgh winning Game 2 was the most significant outcome for the Penguins on that night. Following closely behind was the health status of Justin Schultz and Bryan Rust. There just might be good news on that front
It is hard to trust injury reports in the postseason. However, I do believe if the injuries were serious enough to keep the players out of both Games 3 and 4 that they would not be traveling with the team. This can only be interpreted as good news. I really thought that Justin Schultz was going to be week to week. Schultz took the ice in-between the Hornqvist/Rust skating session and the morning skate. The fact he was out there at all shooting a few pucks is encouraging.
Mark Streit might play
That's the good news. The bad news will be the defensive pairings if they hold true. Trevor Daley is back and will drag Olli Maatta back down with him
The "top two" pairings have not fared well on the possession front. Evidence from Corsica.
This is list includes all defensive pairings who have played 120 minutes together in any individual playoff season since 2008. This is the bottom of the list which includes 177 pairings. That means they rank 173rd and a 174th.
As far as Game 3 goes I don't foresee the Ottawa Senators abandoning their 1-3-1 forecheck and that is fine. Pittsburgh got better at navigating through it last game. Jesse Marshall with some fine evidence of this
Those are good examples of the success Pittsburgh had last game. Those things combined with heavy pinching from the defensemen in the offensive zone should fluster Ottawa and lead to more than the one goal the Penguins scored in Game 2.
Ryan Stimson continues to churn out amazing work. His latest work released today dives heavily into the Pittsburgh Washington playoff series and examines whether or not the Penguins were playing rope-a-dope with the Capitals
Ryan used a famous Billy Beane quote which I found very appropriate considering it is playoff time
To quote Billy Beane from Moneyball: “My sh*t doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f*cking luck.”
Ryan followed that comment up with
It’s not all luck as some would believe, but it does play a large factor in a small sample. The reason why we use the metrics we use is because over the course of a season, they do a better job of indicating which teams are truly better than others. Even then, it still takes nearly a full season for talent to win out over luck with regards to team points. Whether you use score-adjusted shots or expected goals to make your season predictions, they are both strongest at predicting the final season results around twenty-five to thirty games.
There's a reason that top 5 possession teams have dominated the Stanley Cup since 2008. There's also a reason the #1 possession team each year does not win it all every year. Small samples are screwy. It's what makes the playoffs so interesting. The teams that possess the puck more have a better chance of winning those small samples, but it isn't a 100% guarantee. Probability is difficult for some to comprehend. Pittsburgh being a legit underdog against Washington didn't mean they had a 0% chance of winning.
Here are some podcasts
Thanks for reading!
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