A lot to talk about today, folks!
The Pens won in Tampa Saturday night. It was another come-from-behind victory, which is basically becoming the theme for this season. That makes six on the season…
Six.
Which reminds us of a time when you could turn off your television if the Pens were entering the third period behind by any margin. Seems like forever ago.
One year ago today, Mike Sullivan was named the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins. What a year it has been! pic.twitter.com/z2eUfoBdEv
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 12, 2016
Mike Sullivan deserves unlimited amounts of credit. Mike Johnston left this team at its lowest point we can remember since Dick Tarnstrom was playing 30-minutes a night, and Sullivan stepped right in and won a god damned Stanley Cup. One season later and we still can’t wrap our heads around it.
Every. Single. Player on the Penguins’ roster has seen their play and stats improve under Sullivan. And while we know how important Crosby, Kessel and Malkin are to this team, we also know that offense starts on the back end, and perhaps nobody has seen as drastic a turnaround under Sullivan as Kris Letang. To further both points, check out Jason Mackey’s article in yesterday’s PG…
“A few days after he replaced Johnston, Sullivan went to dinner by himself at Meat & Potatoes on Penn Avenue, Downtown. His tenure here did not have a fairytale beginning. Kris Letang was awful. Sidney Crosby was worse. The Penguins welcomed Sullivan with four consecutive losses while scoring a total of four goals.
As Sullivan sat in the restaurant, Letang walked through the front door. It turned out to be one of a few serendipitous encounters with the Penguins’ most important players that helped turn the season around.
“We talked for probably 25 minutes,” Sullivan said. “I shared some of my thoughts. He shared some of his. I think ‘Tanger’ and I in that conversation, we connected.”
Letang was a minus-14 with one goal and 14 points in 25 games under Johnston. With Sullivan, Letang was a plus-23 with 15 goals and 53 points in 46 games during the 2015-16 regular season.”
Sid’s the captain, Malkin the talent, Kessel the scorer, but this team rises and falls with Letang.
On to tonight…
Arizona is in town and, boy, oh boy, do they suck. They have won a grand total of nine games this season, and if it wasn’t for the OT loser point, would probably already be out of the playoff race. In December. They’ve won exactly one game in their last seven. Nobody has won less games on the season. Nobody is worse on the road. Nobody on their team is good. The bottom-half of the Western Conference looks like the bottom of a dumpster, and Arizona is the rolled-up diaper that’s covered in puke.
Their best player, Max Domi, injured himself in a fight last week and is out for the foreseeable. Their other player you may have heard of, Shane Doan, is more or less a skating corpse. Their goalie…
He’s the best they got.
Actually, the best players on this roster are the two guys who don’t even play in the league anymore. And honestly, those are probably the two best trades they’ve made this decade. The Coyotes have also won two (2) playoff series in twenty (20!) years. The Arizona Diamondbacks won more by their fourth year of existence.
Hockey bloggers like to point to this team as their lovable group of underdogs to cheer for after they hired a college kid who passed a calculus class to be their GM. When your captain Doan and your starting goalie is Smith, you don’t deserve to be cheered, you deserve to have your arena moved to the middle of the desert next to a strip mall. Did you know Glendale is dubbed the Antique Capital of Arizona? Makes sense! But anyway, saying anything at all about this team is good in any capacity while those two idiots are in high-ranking positions is like saying Italy circa 1920 would’ve been easy to get behind if it wasn’t for Mussolini. “If you look past him, what a likable rag-tag bunch! Good pasta! Trains ran on time!”
Go Pens.
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