Penguins General Manager Jim Rutherford spoke with the media again about the Simon Despres trade.
But observing Despres in high-leverage situations — a concern management had when it exchanged the 23-year-old former first-round pick for Ben Lovejoy at the trade deadline — got Rutherford thinking.“If I had a chance to make that trade today, as we speak, I wouldn't make it,… Rutherford told Trib Total Media on Wednesday.
In trading Despres, Rutherford acknowledged, then and now, that he could come to regret the move. But he wanted a right-handed shot and experience for the postseason. The Penguins' glut of highly drafted defensemen since 2009 also has left NHL-level openings at a premium.
“We have a lot of young defensemen coming,… Rutherford said. “I knew at the time, over time, the trade would certainly be in Anaheim's favor. But at the time we made it, and the reasons we made it for, I still feel it was the right thing to do.…
Those aren’t old quotes, they are new ones. They sing the same song though. Pittsburgh royally screwed up. Everybody knew it the moment the trade was announced including the guy who had the power to make the decision. You just can’t operate in that fashion.
The Penguins have a General Manager that knowingly makes trades that don’t maximize the value of his assets. In a hard cap salary system that is unacceptable. You can get by making the playoffs with moves like that but if the Stanley Cup is the ultimate goal, which last time I checked it was for the Penguins, you don’t have wiggle room to make gross errors like that trade. Every little bit counts and the window to win isn’t endless. You certainly can’t be the one that is nudging the window close sooner.
There are many ways to go about creating a championship roster once you have the hard to get pieces like Crosby, Malkin, and Letang on the roster. Pittsburgh didn’t go about it correctly with Ray Shero and they aren’t off to a great start with Jim Rutherford either. Both men have failed to place value on young, capable, and cheap players. Value can come in the form of actually playing those players or it can come in the form of what you receive in a trade.
Despres could have fit in either category, but ended up in neither.
If there were indeed off the ice issues that made Pittsburgh want to move Despres out of town that is acceptable, it happens. However, it has literally nothing to do with the return they targeted back for him.
There was nothing that forced Pittsburgh into acquiring a bottom pairing defenseman who has already reached his low ceiling as a player. A ceiling that this same Pittsburgh franchise already valued at a fifth round pick when they traded him away in 2013. Ben Lovejoy is the same player now as he was on the day of that initial trade, but he gained “experience… which of course trumps actual ability to some. Simon Despres is now getting great “experience… while being one game from the Stanley Cup Final playing over 20 minutes per game in all situations.
Currently Pittsburgh needs to get better at the forward position. There are some internal candidates for fourth line play, but nobody that is on the cusp of making a higher impact than that. Instead of having the ability to trade a player like Despres for that area of need they have a valueless Ben Lovejoy.
But wait it gets better:
Rutherford hinted that losing a young defenseman could shape the Penguins' plan for next month's draft, although he admitted those meetings are still in their formative stagesWe're getting to the point where the younger defensemen who were being developed, most of them are going to get moved into the big team,… Rutherford said. “It may sound strange, but our strongest position is defense from a youth point of view. We may be in the position where we need to start replenishing them more than any other (position) because those guys are getting moved up.…
That sounds like you think it does. They are thinking that they have to draft more young defensemen to make up for dwindling pool that they now have. I’m sure that is music to most Penguins fans ears.
Pittsburgh isn’t a team with many draft picks so it isn’t exactly an ideal situation that they have to restock what was a position of strength while never addressing their position of weakness.
Trading a player like Simon Despres away for basically nothing doesn’t close Pittsburgh’s Cup window, but it does give you a peak into the thought process of how the team currently operate and quite frankly it isn’t good enough.
The Despres trade wasn’t an isolated moment of not maximizing value on the roster.
Rutherford’s first big move with Pittsburgh was moving James Neal for Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling. Hornqvist was great with Pittsburgh. However, instead of trying to acquire a draft pick on draft day Rutherford placed value on a dime a dozen bottom six forward who he proceeded to overpay by at least double what he was worth.
Paying a fourth line level possession player 3.3M to be the third line center is not good value.
Plucking a player like Mark Arcobello who scored 17 goals while being accompanied by decent possession numbers for 600k was good value. Waiving him 10 games later not so much.
Not signing Daniel Winnik cheaply in the summer and then paying a premium for him at the trade deadline is not great value.
Trading a fourth line player void of offense talent but great in shot suppression like Marcel Goc for a player void of offensive and defensive talent like Max Lapierre is not good value.
On their own each of these moves could be argued as miniscule and not damning. Add them up and it becomes an issue. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Every little bit counts and there wasn’t enough good (Comeau, Cole, Perron, Ehrhoff*) to offset the bad this past season.
*Injuries ruined what could have been great value. GM not at fault for that.
The culmination of these missteps resulted in a less than desirable position for the team at the end of the year.
Pittsburgh was forced to play with a roster that only had five defensemen because of cap issues. Rutherford’s value assessment wasn’t nearly good enough to avoid this.
Injuries certainly played a role, but you can’t control those. You can control how you value players and what you sign them for. Not paying attention to detail in this department is a recipe for disaster as a cap ceiling team.
Maximizing value is the name of the game for NHL General Managers in the current hard cap landscape. The man running the Pittsburgh Penguins doesn’t seem interested in it.
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