It's impossible to preview the upcoming season without talking about how last season ended, an embarrassing first-round playoff loss to the Flyers that doubled as the nadir for Pens fans in the last half decade. In the wake of that disaster there were a lot of conversations about what went wrong, and how we need to fix it: Fleury's workload, the D, the special teams, the coaching staff, all were brought before the court of public opinion this offseason. The lockout gave us all some time to forget about the Philly series, but shit did it all come rushing back as soon as we saw the first promo for Saturday's game. In my last-second preview, I'll address some of these things and air my opinions like every other jagoff in the city.
I'll start with the defensemen. I don't plan on wasting a lot of words analyzing the Pens' offense, because we pretty much know what we're getting there: Malkin and Crosby are going to be world-destroyers, Kunitz is going to score some big goals and get some big goals disallowed, Neal's going to score off the draw, every time, Kennedy, Dupuis, and Cooke will probably score 25 goals between them and it's anybody's guess how they're distributed. Somewhere between 1 and 8 wingers will get run next to Malkin and Neal and no one will like any of them and when Shero doesn't pull off a trade for Bobby Ryan, we'll hit whatever stage of loss it is where you start calling for more Eric Tangradi.
In any case, for all the talk that the Pens are built down the middle, Ray Shero has been obsessively stocking and restocking our blueline for the past handful of years. Defense allegedly wins championships, and Shero wants championships, and he has spent draft picks and cash money to build up what was supposed to be one of the deeper defensive corps in the league. Instead, what we got was a team that got lit up for 30 goals in a 6-game playoff series and a whole hell of a lot of uncertainty. Entering the season, we know our top 4 defensemen - even if we don't know what we'll get out of them - while our third pairing seems to be keeping seats warm for an invisible army of Bortuzzos, Despreses, Straits, Dumoulins, and Pouliots. That put the team in a strange position: we're ready to win now, but the defense is built for tomorrow. It would make sense to move one or more of these prospects for a solid NHL defenseman (or a WINGER FOR SID, c'mon when are we gonna get a WINGER FOR SID?) while their collective stock is high, but you have to wonder if Shero will pull the trigger. It seems to me that the thinking behind drafting so many promising defensemen is that a few of them are bound to pay off, and any busts will be counted as acceptable loss when we're running out a six-headed Lidstrom monster in 2018. If that's the plan, you don't want to trade one of those prospects and see them blossom on another team while you're stuck watching Carl Sneep (sorry Carl, nothing personal). To be honest, though, I can't pretend to know anything about any of those players, and we're fortunate that Shero is a lot smarter than me, so I'm going to leave those decisions up to him (you're welcome!). I would like to take this opportunity to put my man-crush on Olli Maata on record. I've never seen the cat play hockey, but I get a feeling about him. Take a look at him and tell me you don't feel the same way.
But let's talk about people who will actually be playing this year, starting at the top with Kris Letang. We've watched Letang grow by leaps and bounds, making Sergei Gonchar and Alex Goligoski expendable in the process, and he's been in and out of the Norris Trophy discussion for the past couple seasons. We've also seen him lose his composure on a number of occasions, including against the Flyers in the playoffs, when he embarrassingly tried to recreate Max Talbot's "Shhhhh" moment after picking a fight. Not to get all sports-bloggery on you, but he needs to grow up a little bit this season, and claim his spot as a leader of this defensive corps. Having depth on the blueline is important, but so is having at least one elite talent. A quick look at the most recent Cup winners bears this out: the Kings had Drew Doughty, the Bruins had Zdeno Chara, the Blackhawks had Duncan Keith and Brian Campbell, we had Gonch, the Red Wings had Nik Lidstrom, the Ducks had Chris Pronger AND Scott Niedermayer. Pens fans should know this all to well, but Paul Coffey isn't walking through that door. Larry Murphy isn't walking through that door. Sergei Gonchar isn't walking thr...actually, Gonch might be walking through that door (if there is any truth at all to the rumors that the Pens are considering reacquiring him, I would be thrilled to have him back. The fans love him, the players (Geno especially) love him, and we could just have him play DH basically, running the point on the power play and not doing much of anything else. Why the hell not?). Regardless, we pretty much know what we've got with Letang: a beautiful skater with great hands, a very good offensive game, a much improved shot, sound defensive positioning, and a growing mean streak. There's no doubt that he's got the talent, but the onus is on Letang this season to step up and be an alpha dog on the team. It will be fascinating to watch how he continues to manage that responsibility.
Then again, if Letang isn't interested in taking that leadership role, I could certainly see Brooks Orpik filling the void. He is the longest tenured D-man we have, respected in the locker room, and always seems to be the guy telling the media to CALM THE FUCK DOWN after any and every loss. I thought Orrpeck (to borrow Doc Emrick's pet name for him) had a breakthrough season two years ago; he stopped selling out for huge hip checks at center ice that stranded his partner in 2-on-1 situations and was playing as smart as I'd ever seen him. He was a rock for us in a hard-fought playoff series with the lightning that we ultimately lost, and I was pumped to see that Orrpeck anchor our defense. Then last year happened and hey, didn't he look shitty in that Flyers series? Yes, yes he did. He was caught standing around on a number of occasions, watching the Flyers score 30 GOALS IN 6 GOT-DAMN GAMES! Jesus! Okay, sorry, anyway, there's been rumblings that Orrpeck was dealing with injuries, and I'm hopeful that we'll see him get back to the level he was at before. When he's on his game, the entire defense is so much better.
...And the rest. I've wasted enough words on our top two guys, so I'll keep it short with the rest of the bunch. Paul Martin's season was, as we all know, bad, and he heard about it from within and without the organization. He got caught out of position chasing the puck an awful lot in his own end, and on the other end, he seemed to pinch at the most inopportune moments, and create no offense when he did. The dude is still a smooth skater who makes a good outlet pass, and if he can add discipline to his game, I think he can be a useful player - he almost certainly can't get any worse. He will likely miss playing with Zbynek Michalek, who was jettisoned out of town for a down season in which he was nonetheless one of our more dependable players. Who am I kidding, I'll miss Zibby. He had really become one of my favorite Pens, and it was tough to lose him for nothing but cap space.
Matt Niskanen really stepped up last season and exceeded expectations; as a throw-in to the James Neal trade, anything he contributes is gravy, and it was a shitload of gravy last year. He's a good puck-mover, and a smart player, and I'd like to see him get some more burn on the power play. Bylsma would be wise to squeeze as much he can get out of him.
Deryk Engelland I thought was also really solid on both ends last year. He's known as a fighter, but he really toned down that part of his game, dropping the gloves only when it made sense, and in the process he was a decent defensive defenseman. He also showed a low, hard slapshot that actually hits the net, something that was sadly lacking from our defense's repetoire.
Ben Lovejoy got humiliated in the playoffs, but he also had his face broken on 24/7 that one time, so let's call it a wash
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