Only one more day to go until the defacto Eastern Conference Finals begin. Here is some information to chew on today.
Chris Kunitz and Chad Ruhwedel are back as full participants at practice. Chris Kunitz seems destined to return to the lineup while Ruhwedel will probably have to wait for his opportunity.
Kunitz was practicing on the fourth line on the left wing while Carter Rowney and Tom Kuhnhackl were rotating on the right side. This is the correct move. Chris Kunitz is still one of the Penguins best 12 forwards and if he's healthy he should be playing. He brings a flexibility on the fourth line that Rowney and Kuhnhackl can't and that's the ability to play up in the lineup in an emergency.
Chad Ruhwedel had an OK season on the bottom pairing and I wouldn't scoff at it if he were to replace Trevor Daley in the lineup, but that just isn't going to happen. Personally, I'd rather see Mark Streit replace Daley, but that isn't happening either.
Carl Hagelin was also back at practice
Hagelin was not a full participant in practice, but it is the next step in his progression. Getting him back would be a big boost to the lineup just from a possession standpoint. The dynamic of Hagelin/Kunitz is better than Rowney/Kuhnhackl.
Here is what game score tells us about the playoff matchups
Pros for the Penguins are that Carl Hagelin and Chris Kunitz should widen the gap with their advantage at the forward position. Also, Pittsburgh's best are slightly better than Washington's best up front.
The cons are everything else. Washington is way better defensively and in net. The Capitals were a top five team in CA/60 this season while the Penguins were in the bottom third. This fact helps Washington neutralize the Penguins advantage at the forward position because Washington's forwards should get a lot of good looks because of Pittsburgh's less than stellar ability to defend this year.
Here is another good news bad news for Pittsburgh
Good news is that they have the second best odds to win it all this year. The bad news is that their current opponent is the team with the highest probability to win it all.
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Here's a little bit something off topic. Last night I saw an interesting Twitter thread about NHL front offices I wanted to share
It goes on:
Almost 60% of NHL GMs played in the NHL. Another 25% are the children of NHL execs. That's a tiny pool to be picking from. The remaining spots are filled by guys who didn't make it to the NHL, guys with long track records as total insiders, and John Chayka. The irony is that the pool used to be larger. In 1969, you had 12 teams and Scotty Bowman, Sam Pollock, Tommy Ivan and Wren Blair were GMs. The average age of an NHL GM was 46 in 1969. Today it's 54. MLB went 52 -> 44. NHL GMs are the oldest of the big 4 sports. So we literally have a 30-team league with 30 GMs who were educated at the same school. Per 'Contact' - surely there must be others to hire. Seems strange that 50 years ago a guy on your softball team who liked hockey could become GM (Sam Pollock) but today options are narrower.
One item that always shocked me: the spread of outcomes in drafting round 2 onwards indicates no skill on the part of teams i.e. randomly shuffling picks 31-250 gave you same spread of games played, etc... Groupthink - recruiting from a small pool - enables this. If I look at MLB, the major accomplishment is driving down player share of revenue without a true salary cap. View it as legal collusion: bring in people not wedded to groupthink, they don't overpay crappy players conventional wisdom says are good. As a GM, you need 5-7 years to pull off your strategy but need to face the press after ~5-7 games. Playing it safe lets you keep your job. Winnipeg's a great example. Absurdly loyal fan base. No downside to taking risk. Went with all hockey men and are just as bad as Atlanta. I don't know Kevin Cheveldayoff, but he didn't draw the same conclusions as Billy Beane did from being a failed 1st round pick!
At any rate, there's still low-hanging fruit, people with a better approach will clean it up, and the GM mix will change soon enough
I thought this was a well-thought out "rant" about the current climate in the NHL. It says a lot about why the product is the way it is and why the NHL doesn't change too much which isn't a great thing.
Some podcast material for you
Thanks for reading!
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