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Poorly Constructed Depth Leads To Star Players Owning the Blame |
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The Penguins didn't play bad in their past three losses. The Chicago game went down to the wire against a top level team, the Washington game was fine until they pouted about a non-call, and last night after a slow 1st period littered with penalties they outplayed Columbus for large stretches especially in the third.
You could say the results have not matched up with their level of play. It does happen.
So while there does seem to be a little bit of bad luck playing out here I still maintain this is a top heavy team. Not because of salary cap restrictions but because the organization as a whole continues to show they lack basic understanding of analytics when targeting depth players.
When Nick Spaling at 2.2M is one of your better bottom six players you are doing a terrible job. Spaling is a basic vanilla positional player and he can't be one of your better guys on a team with Cup contention on the mind.
The people who think Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang are the problem don't matter. Don't listen to them. They are stupid, so incredibly stupid.
Last night a prime example. Sidney Crosby rocked a CF of 22 and a CA of 5. That is tremendous. He got robbed on a great glove save. He scores that and the simpletons shut up because they can't separate process from end results.
It is a FALLACY that the Penguins cannot fill a proper roster because of Crosby and Malkin's salary. Get with the times and trust the numbers. Or keep riding the 3.3M Brandon Sutter train. See which one works better...
Betwen Sutter and Scuderi the Penguins have 6.6M tied up in below replacement level players. That is how you run out of money, not paying your best players.
Stop fighting a losing battle. The insistence to go on hunches and eye tests gets you crappy bottom six players. The proof is right there for anybody not stubborn enough to see it.
Anybody in the league can identify high end talent there is no skill in that. The Penguins even lucked into the hardest talent to find.
The Crosby/Malkin era could go down as an underwhelming disappointment and it will be because their upper management's hunches and eye tests couldn't fill out a proper roster.
The good news for Pittsburgh is that they have mostly all of the difficult parts already acquired. The easy part should be filling out the depth. And while they may not figure it out this year they still have the ability to quickly revamp things.
Crosby, Malkin, and Letang's don't grow on trees but Daniel Winnik's do. Go find them and stop blaming the star players.
fans should be upset, but not at the players. They should be upset at management and their failure at what should be the easy part of the job. It started with Shero but cannot continue with the current regime. It is a joke that Crosby and Malkin should have to share the ice with Sutter, Lapierre, Adams, and Sill. Where are you going with that? The funny part is that they had players like Goc, Arcobello, and Klinkhammer (at least he was traded for Perron) who are all cheap and more effective than the previously mentioned players.
The alternative is to blame the stars and start shipping them out ala Boston. And as Adam Gretz researched, the road doesn't look so bright for the Bruins anymore because of it.
Thank for reading!
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