Tonight marks what should be the last game the Pittsburgh Penguins will ever play at the Joe Louis Arena. There is always the chance that the two teams could meet in the playoffs, but that is incredibly unlikely because of both the current playoff setup (divisional) and the fact that Detroit is probably not going to make the playoffs.
They are dead last in the conference right now.
How did this happen?
It's been a slow decline over the years, but their impressive playoff streak is likely over after 25 years. From 2007-09 I think they were the best team(s) of the salary cap era. Pittsburgh's victory over them for the 2009 Stanley Cup was very fortunate.
Detroit is suffering from their older stars either slowing down (Zetterberg), leaving (Datsyuk), or losing them for health reasons (Franzen). Ken Holland has done a very bad job of managing this transitional period. He fell in love with signing bottom six caliber players to a lot of a term and more money than they are worth. The attempt was to rebuild this team on the fly, but things look to be falling way short.
Now that the entire league scouts in Europe the likelihood of Detroit finding two late gems like Zetterberg and Datsyuk to catapult success are minimal. This is a team between a rock and a hard place. They should be rebuilding, but they have so much money tied up into bad contracts it makes things difficult to shed. There is also the fact that Holland might not believe they need a rebuild which would keep Detroit in a brutal cycle of mediocrity as they enter their new building.
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Pittsburgh is coming off their first back to back games that they have lost in regulation since the first week Mike Sullivan took over the Penguins. Sullivan is big on the concept of resiliency and that is a big reason why the team is able to bounce back the way that they do. Hockey is strange sometimes with the results of the game, but I would be surprised if the Penguins process didn't look a whole lot better tonight than it did against Ottawa on Thursday.
Thanks for reading!
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