Wanna blog? Start your own hockey blog with My HockeyBuzz. Register for free today!
 

Why Are The Pittsburgh Penguins Still Playing Hockey?

May 28, 2016, 9:58 AM ET [73 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Pittsburgh Penguins are back in the Stanley Cup Final representing the Eastern Conference. It has been seven long years since the last time this has happened. What happened during the 2015-16 season was so much different than each of the past seven years?

There are a number of important factors that have lined up nicely for the Penguins this year that didn’t in the past.

Injuries

For the most part the Penguins have been very healthy during their 2016 Playoff run. Trevor Daley breaking his ankle was very unfortunate but it isn’t on the same level of injury this team has suffered in the past (no offense to Trevor Daley).

The Pittsburgh Penguins have been the walking wounded for quite some time. This injury chart speaks volumes



Sidney Crosby had some form of an ailment heading into each a playoff year from 2011 to 2014.

In 2010-11 the Penguins played the first half of the regular season without Jordan Staal. They played the second half of the season without both Sidney Crosby (concussion) and Evgeni Malkin (knee). The trio of centers only played three total games together that year. You mean a top line of James Neal on the left wing, Mark Letestu at center, and the corpse of Alex Kovalev wasn't good enough?

2011-12 saw Crosby limited to just 22 games towards the end of the year. He was still recovering from the David Steckel hit.

In 2012-13 Sidney Crosby was having a Hart Trophy caliber season until Brooks Orpik hit him in the face with a slapshot. Crosby returned in time for the playoffs but he had to wear that cyborg mask until the Eastern Conference Finals.

In 2013-14 Sidney Crosby had a wrist ailment which saw his goal scoring rates plummet at the most important time of the year.

In 2014-15 the Penguins had to play without many of their top six defensemen. The defense corp. had Paul Martin, Ben Lovejoy, Ian Cole, Rob Scuderi, Brian Dumoulin (not this year's version), and Taylor Chorney. It should have had Kris Letang, Olli Maatta, Christian Ehrhoff, and Derrick Pouliot available, but they were all out with injury.

This year the team is relatively healthy outside of the Trevor Daley injury and he was able to play every game to this point with the exception of the final few against Tampa Bay. Evgeni Malkin probably isn't at 100% but whatever he's at is still functional. He is on a five game point streak.

The injury situation certainly isn't like it was last year. If it was they wouldn't be playing right now.

Depth

Injuries and depth kind of go hand in hand. When you are missing a lot of players you really start to test the depth of an organization. The problem in years past with the Penguins is that even when fully healthy their depth left a lot to be desired.

Bryan Rust was the Game 7 hero in the Eastern Conference Finals. Something like that just wasn't going to happen with a player like Tanner Glass for two reasons. The first is that Tanner Glass is bad at NHL hockey. The other is that prior coaches would dress him in front of younger players IE: Beau Bennett while he was actually healthy and ready to play. The Penguins desire to commit themselves to veteran depth players has also cost them many draft picks over the years which took its toll on the farm system as well.

Pittsburgh has started to lean more on their farm system and allow those players to learn through playing at the NHL level. They are also not wasting more draft picks in trying to fill these roles on the team. It is starting to pay off.

Play to strengths

During the Ray Shero era and the beginning of the Jim Rutherford's tenure the Penguins were enamored with trying to be "tough to play against". To them that meant physicality. They thought their strength was being strong. Some of the roster decisions associated with this mantra led to having guys on the team that either lacked foot speed or puck skills and in some circumstances, both. Halfway through the 2015-16 season Jim Rutherford went all in on acquiring players who were fast and could also make plays with the puck. The additions of Carl Hagelin and Trevor Daley acquisitions highlight this approach. The Penguins stopped playing strength and started playing to their strengths. The change from Mike Johnston to Mike Sullivan also highlighted this new approach. Mike Johnston had the team playing not to lose. They lost their offensive drive because they were always worried about defending. Mike Sullivan took the reigns off much like Dan Bylsma did when he replaced Michael Therrien in 2009. The new approach is the right one and the results speak for themselves so far.

Goaltending

This position has sunk the Penguins in the playoffs on a number of occasions. It can't be denied. Pittsburgh had serious goaltending issue in the playoffs from 2010-13. That is four years of way below average play all in the prime of Crosby and Malkin's career. Even the Stanley Cup winning season didn't really have great goaltending. It just wasn't as horrific as some of the other years.



Marc-Andre Fleury was good in both 2014 and 2015 but in those years the team was suffering from some of the other ailments list above which made good goaltending a moot point.

This year the team has a lot of things going for them and they have received quality goaltending from Matt Murray.

There have been a lot of reasons over the years why it took the Crosby and Malkin led Penguins seven years to return to the Stanley Cup Final. In 2016 they haven't had to deal with those issues and it is the reason they are still playing hockey into June for the first time since 2009.

****

Brand new Hockey Hurts podcast includes a Stanley Cup Final preview as well as a discussion about Team USA's roster selection process. You can find that here

You can support the podcast here


Thanks for reading!
Join the Discussion: » 73 Comments » Post New Comment
More from Ryan Wilson
» Penguins earn victory on Jake night
» A salute to Jake Guentzel
» Sid puts on show as Avs dig out of hole
» A dud in Dallas
» My thoughts on Dubas' thoughts