Jim Rutherford gave his annual post-mortem press conference yesterday and if you were on the fence about him remaining as general manager he did nothing to sway you back into his camp. The Penguins are 1-9 in their last ten playoff games and just like every other year he is talking about needing big change and how there is a plan. He says this every year. The big change needed is for him to be promoted to some not yet created position within the organization and to not be in charge of the roster moves anymore.
Let’s start with the one good thing he said, but don’t give too much credit because it is the most obvious choice he has to make every season
"I plan to move forward with the core," Rutherford said. "These are good players. They still have good hockey left in them. I always have to say, if some amazing trade comes along that makes sense for the Penguins now and in the future, you have to look at it. But I will not be actively trying to trade our core players."
Hey, it’s an improvement from last year when he left Malkin twisting in the wind, right? Remember when the team tried to play up Malkin being a problem last year? How Malkin had an “off” year, but was also over a point per game? The same Malkin who had a better points per 60 than newly acquired Maple Leaf John Tavares (47G 88pts)? Remember when they tried to use Malkin as a pawn in the center of the Mike Sullivan/Phil Kessel disagreements? At least he won’t have to apologize for his play or worry about his GM leaving him out to dry this offseason. Progress!
No kidding you aren’t going to trade the core, Jim. They are the reason you can bumble your way through the job year after year no matter how good or bad you do. The core is what earned you back to back Stanley Cups when you surrounded them with competent players. The core is also what has propped up your gross errors since June 2017. The core is why you still have a job. There are plenty of general managers who could make do with this core. Don’t ever forget Rutherford started with the following:
Sidney Crosby
Evgeni Malkin
Kris Letang
Brian Dumoulin
Jake Guentzel
Matt Murray
Marc-Andre Fleury
Tristan Jarry
Chris Kunitz
Bryan Rust
Olli Maatta
He inherited not only two of the best centers of the era, but two of the best centers to ever play the sport. That alone makes the gig easy. He inherited an amazing top defense pairing led by Kris Letang. Brian Dumoulin was provided by none other than Rutherford himself as an opposing GM. Not needing to find a top pairing? It sure makes things easier. He inherited not one, not two, but three starting goaltenders from Ray Shero. The gig keeps getting easier. He inherited the best winger of the Crosby/Malkin era in Kunitz. He also inherited Kunitz’s successor in Jake Guentzel. Bryan Rust is no slouch and Olli Maatta, well, he ate some minutes. There really aren’t a lot of overly difficult things to take care of once you get past what he already had/has.
I mean how hard could the job possibly be relative to his peers? How many general managers would have given up their jobs at the time to take over what Rutherford walked into? I can’t imagine many would pass it up. Hypothetically, how many GM’s now would trade their current situations for the 2014 Penguins situation? Maybe a handful? And that is because two of them (Vegas and Seattle) have the unique opportunity to start the team completely from scratch. The overwhelming majority would probably leave their teams in the dust to take over the Penguins core in 2014. You would be hard pressed to find another GM who walked into such an easy situation to manage in the history of the league.
And yet, is there ever a concrete plan? We hear about there being a plan, but is there? The 2014-15 season was a disaster. They couldn’t manage the cap properly and finished the year playing shorthanded because they couldn’t afford to dress a full roster. Was that part of the plan?
Rutherford then found great success filling in the pieces around the core he was gifted. He deserves credit for those moves. They were good moves. He had a good 24 month stretch filling in the pieces around the core. He was rewarded with two Stanley Cups. Things were going great. Was this part of a plan? What happened to the plan? If it was a plan then why do the opposite of the very successful plan? He completely bailed on the philosophy and logic that brought him two Cups. Who does that? Since then it has been a revolving door of minor hits and big misses. His general managing style can be summed up in four letters, ADHD.
Since winning the 2017 Stanley Cup it has been a revolving door of players he acquires and immediately discards. It could be more accurately summed up as throwing darts blindfolded than actually having a plan. Look how many there are:
Matt Hunwick, Ryan Reaves, Riley Sheahan, Jamie Oleksiak, Derrick Brassard, Tanner Pearson, Erik Gudbranson, Dominik Kahun, Alex Galchenyuk, and probably Nick Bjugstad. You might even have Jared McCann added to the list after his postseason performance.
Rutherford gets a lot of credit for “fixing his mistakes”, but every time he has to fix these mistakes it drains more and more assets from the pool. I have no problem with a GM using futures for a win now team like the Penguins. It isn’t the same when you burn through those assets to undo self-inflicted errors because you were aimless in your approach.
So what is the latest “plan”? Apparently, it is to get younger, but also not shake up the core. This should be interesting. Not because keeping the core is wrong, but is the team actually old? Didn’t he also just make the team older at the deadline just a few months ago?
"I think going younger, where guys are eager to prove themselves to get to a certain point in their career, but doing it cautiously so we can transition on the fly and still be a contending team,"
Well… here’s a thread about age and Rutherford’s current plan
So your options look like Hornqvist and Johnson. That’s it. Zucker and Tanev were literally just acquired and they’re probably two of the guys who JR likes the most as far as “playing hard.” Rust led the team in goals. Dumo top pair.
then at the deadline kahun was flipped for sheary and they acquired 40 year old marleau. now it’s time to “get younger” again. so are we going to acquire a 24 year old this fall and then deal him for jason spezza next february? i’m having trouble grasping the concept of age
It is just easier to process Rutherford through the lens of not having a plan than to try and figure out whatever the “plan” actually is.
Last, but certainly not least let us not forget how petty Jim Rutherford is. Nothing is beneath him. He is sold by some as folksy and forthcoming, but it is a façade. He will leave a legendary player like Malkin out in the wind. He will immediately trade a guy like Oleksiak because he got knocked out by Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson a guy so far inside Rutherford’s head he voluntarily derailed what made Pittsburgh win back to back championships for pathetic and meaningless revenge. Oleksiak failed to provide Rutherford his blood lust and was jettisoned. How’d that work out?
Rutherford will slander another organization for why they had the audacity to bench Jack Johnson. He will claim he knows the “real” reason they handled a player on their roster. He will then proceed to watch said player crush his own team in comically bad ways in back to back years. You showed them.
Yesterday, he added more petty moments to his resume.
Really? Game 4 was terrible, but are we really to believe the team didn’t care? Are we really to believe the team wanted to purposely lose to get back to their families? Because that is what the implication is here. There is no sugarcoating what he said. Are we even sure the passive approach in Game 4 wasn’t tactical? There were ample opportunities for F1 to attack, but clearly held back. The entire game reeked of trying to win by one goal. It didn’t work. This comment is pathetic and it is unacceptable to make towards the players. What makes it even crazier is the Penguins played well enough that in a different timeline they could have actually swept the series.
The remark above was a general pot shot at the entire team. He took things to the next level with Justin Schultz. He made it personal for no reason at all.
No, I absolutely do not expect Jim Rutherford to lay into Jack Johnson publicly. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to bash an asset you still have to manage. I absolutely do expect Rutherford to treat Justin Schultz, a pending UFA, with a basic level of respect. There is no reason to take this shot at him. Justin Schultz was a useful player for the Penguins during the Cup runs. I mean, one would think it is why Rutherford immediately extended him to a three-year contract after the 2017 championship in the first place…
So what changed for Rutherford to be this mad at him in the first place? Schultz’s deployment and quality of teammate changed. Mike Sullivan abandoned the usage that originally made Schultz useful to the team. Justin Schultz didn’t “get better” in Pittsburgh. He was exactly the same player he was in Edmonton. His deployment changed and the results got better. Then he got the Edmonton deployment in Pittsburgh and his results were really bad. For that you put him on blast on the way out the door? It is really embarrassing and says a lot about Rutherford’s character when you combine it with the other things he has said and done in the past.
People don’t pick on Jack. People pick on his on-ice play because he is a professional athlete and it comes with the territory. They pick on the people who enable his bad on-ice play. And as Sean said, opponents pick on him because it is literally their job to pick on him. We actually have samples of Justin Schultz being successful with the Penguins. Where is Jack Johnson’s successful example with any team?
Don’t confuse this as Rutherford defending Jack Johnson, either. Rutherford is defending himself by proxy. It was a clown signing and there is absolutely no counter argument to dispute it was a clown signing. To keep defending the move is to try and absolve himself from the laughable mistake he made in the first place.
The spotlight needs to be on Rutherford. The on-ice results speak for themselves the past three years. They have also spoken for themselves in his prior job. The mistakes he makes aren’t new. History is repeating itself.
Part of what made the 08-09 team successful was its offensive-oriented defensive unit that moved the puck well. With Joni Pitkanen, Joe Corvo, Frank Kaberle, Anton Babchuk, and Dennis Seidenberg each playing important roles throughout the season, that team got the puck up the ice well and had a defensive unit that could put up points.
Then, Rutherford let Seidenberg walk in free agency, let Babchuk walk to the KHL, and bought out Kaberle. He replaced them by bringing in Alberts, signing Aaron Ward in unrestricted free agency, and adding Jay Harrison.
You mean he bailed on what was working?
The overarching theme that runs through these five seasons is the complete and total lack of a sense of direction to Rutherford’s team building approach. He made moves suggestive of a win-now strategy with a core group wasn’t capable of winning now.
A lot of Rutherford’s best moves in this era (trading Kaberle, Ruutu, Gleason) were simply undoing the catastrophic decisions he’d made previously, and that’s never a good thing coming out of a general manager.
The undoing of mistakes? Sounds familiar!
Old habits die hard. Old habits will continue unless something intervenes to stop them.
The only thing propping up the Penguins from turning into the 2009-14 Hurricanes right now is the core Ray Shero left behind. We are seeing all the bad traits Rutherford had in Carolina repeating themselves in Pittsburgh. The Penguins are running out of assets for Rutherford to burn as he keeps fixing his own errors. They are running out of time to make things right. They need to run out of patience for a guy who hasn’t done a lot right in three years. That would require a plan and the Penguins only pay lip service to those.
Thanks for reading!
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