Kris Beech seems to officially have doned “Jason” status. No matter what the Penguins do, he just keeps coming back. Maybe this’ll finally be the year where he outperforms Jags at the NHL level.
Judging by the headline, in which the fact that he’s native to Pittsburgh is so prominently touted; we’re guessing not to expect too much from Thomas. Looking at his numbers; it seems like he might be a streaky goal-scorer. 8 goals in 24 games, in 2006-07, really isn’t too bad considering how little ice time he was likely seeing. It’s probably safe to say he will be in Wilkes-Barre come September, but who knows, hopefully he’ll surprise us all.
Only picking up Stone for a year was a bit of a surprise to me, as it seemed to be popular opinion that he would seriously compete for full-time NHL status this fall. Maybe they want to keep him motivated by dangling the longer (3 years, even) deal over his head down the road.
The Atlanta Thrashers, much like the previously discussed Tampa Bay Lightning, suddenly are linked to the Penguins, after years of mostly merely co-existing. With that fateful deadline deal of Army, Crusher, Espo (he deserves a played out nickname, too!) and a first round pick in exchange for Marian Hossa and Pascal You-Me-and-Dupuis (sorry — I let my Chris Berman get out, it can be difficult to put him away); the Pens instantly became a lot more — and a lot less — interesting.
Upon seeing that Hossa really was genuine about his desire to play for a contender, it looks to be a very shrewd trade on Atlanta’s part. Clearly, if he rejected $2.4 Billion to play for Edmonton — a team with at least annual hopes of making the playoffs – he wasn’t going to be resigning with an Atlanta team with one playoff appearance in its history. Sure they didn’t get back any bonafide stars, but how much can you really expect for a rental player with a history of playoff failure? Colby Armstrong is great in the locker room, and seems to resish his role as a jack-of-all-trades pest. It’s not entirely a coincidence that the Penguins began to win midway through Sid’s rookie year once Colby was called up. Winning teams are dotted with Colby Armstrongs; it just so happened that the Penguins already had Max Talbot and Gary Roberts. We all know what Erik Christiansen brings to the table, a nearly automatic shootout touch that is among the very best in the league. The jury is out on Angelo Esposito, but he has the world of “upside.” Lastly, the used that first round pick to pick up another young center. Following in the trend being set by Detroit and Pittsburgh of needing to be strong down the middle to be able to win.
The Good: Going forward, they still have the second best pure goal scorer in the NHL, in Ilya Kovalchuk. His skill alone will win Atlanta a handful of games this season. At the ever important goaltender position, Kari Lehtonen has no doubt shown flashes of excellence, and even posted some pretty impressive numbers last year, considering how poorly the team did. They kept their young core of players in tact, and would be hard-pressed to regress.
The Bad: See: the Good. Keeping the young core of players together is great when the young core is Sid, Geno, Staal, Fleury, etc. It’s another thing when it’s Ilya Kovalchuk and others. It’s a gamble; no different than what Tampa Bay did. It’s merely philosophical differences. Atlanta chose to bank on its young nucleus improving — Tampa seems to have wagered that they wouldn’t. The really ugly thing about Atlanta (no jokes, please) is that they finished so poorly. Having winners, like Army, is great; but no amount of character can make a team win if there just isn’t talent.
Bottom Line: Look for this team to mirror what some of the mid-2000s Penguins teams did. Start out terribly — that’s an understatement — but finish with a moderate flurry to climb themselves out of the basement.
Talk about creativity. Predicting Tampa to finish 30th, again; and LA to finish 29th, again. Chances of that happening two straight years are pretty slim — and lets be realistic, it probably won’t happen again. However, to that I say that if I was predicting what I thought or hoped could happen, I’d pick the Penguins to win the Stanley Cup every year. Instead, I’m making my picks based on where I see that each team is most likely to finish.
To clarify; Tampa bad moved laterally, at best, in the off-season; and LA didn’t seem to do much to improve either. Sure, it’s possible, hell even likely, that one of these two teams will jump and finish within 5-10 points of a playoff spot, or maybe even sneak in and get steam-rolled by one of the juggernauts — but what’s the point of writing, or reading, wild-ass predictions with no logic behind them? If you had to bet $1000 on one of these teams making the playoffs, would you do it?
Now, onto fact-backed predictions…
The Good: A quick glance at the Kings roster shows four solid, young forwards in Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, Alexander Frolov and Patrick O’Sullivan. If nothing else, these guys should at very least get better. They got a couple of solid young defensemen in the past entry draft, and Erik Ersberg came on strong down the stretch, easily posting the best goaltending numbers of anyone to see prominent time in a Kings sweater this past year.
The Bad: Sure they’ve got a few young forwards in the Show already, but what else? As we’ve seen with Ryan Whitney, Brooks Orpik and Rob Scuderi, young defensemen take time to develop. Even worse, as we’ve seen with Noah Welch, sometimes they don’t develop at all. Those young defensemen could form a great blueline duo someday, or they might never make it into the NHL. Eitherway, it will be some time before we find out. Furthermore, raise your hand if you feel completely comfortable with a young goaltender who’s only NHL action is about 25 games worth? Outside of Ersberg, former Penguin, now TV Star, JS Aubin is past his prime (did he ever really have a prime, though?), and LaBarbera didn’t exactly hold down the fort last year.
Bottom Line: The Kings are not unlike the Tampa Bay Lightning in that they have some serious talent up front, but very little anywhere else. They get the nod ahead of the ridiculously rebuilt Bolts because I’d rather have one potentially good goaltender on my roster than zero.
Predicted finish in 2008-2009 finish: 5th Pacific Division, 15th Western Conference.
I tried. I really did. I wanted to just limit myself to one post a day, not shoot my load all at once. But, alas, I have too many ideas floating around up there; so I can’t help myself. Day number one gets an apparently not-so-rare double-header of posts.
I’ll try to go team-by-team for how I feel about their off-season. Well do it by the reverse order of how I see the teams finishing for the upcoming season.
Additions: Steven Stamkos, Ryan Malone, Gary Roberts, Mark Recchi, Vinny Prospal, Radim Vrbata, Adam Hall, Olaf Kolzig, David Koci, Wyatt Smith, Scott Jackson, Evgeny Artyukhin, Brandon Bochenski, Andrew Hutchinson
Losses: Dan Boyle
Front-Office: Fired John Tortorella, Hired Barry Melrose, Greg Malone, Rick Tocchet
The Good: The line of Vinny Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, and presumably Ryan Malone, will be one of the better ones in the Eastern Conference. As we know, Malone is a great player in front of the net, and brings a lot of different things to the table — toughness, penalty killing and physical play. Stamkos should be able to step in and contribute at a pretty high level immediately, and Prospal is, if nothing else, a pretty solid regular-season player. Also, shaking up a team that finished last in the whole NHL can’t be a bad thing. At very least, they can’t do worse. But, perhaps, they can do the exact same…
The Bad: This team is completely devoid of any quality defensemen. If the Penguins have proven anything over the years, it’s that offense may sell tickets and be fun to watch, but it doesn’t win. Tampa Bay gave up the second most goals in the league in 2007-08, and they’ve apparently decided to try to fix that by bringing in a bunch of past-their-prime forwards and players who played well above themselves in contract years.
Adding to that, the ownership group here has all the signs of being among the worst in the league. They’ve alienated, and since traded, their best defenseman, in Dan Boyle. Followed that up by firing a solid coach in John Tortorella only to replace him with a clown. Brought in nothing but offensive players, and genuinely seem to have no plan for the future. Don’t be surprised if a few years from now, we see these guys complaining about not being able to keep their heads above water financially and wanting out.
Bottom Line: Lecavalier, St. Louis, Malone and Stamkos will be fun to watch. But these guys will end up on the wrong side of far too many 6-5 shootouts to make any noise.
Predicted finish in 2008-2009: 5th, Southeastern Division. 15th Eastern Conference.
This is the first post here at the newest Pittsburgh Penguins blog.
Since (hopefully) you’ll be reading for some time to come, let me first give you some background information about myself…
I’m a 22 year-old college student, at the moment, and have been watching the Pens since I was 5 years old, when they won cup #1, back in 1991. I had season tickets for about five years, from 1999 – 2004. Of course, I had the great luck of seeing Mario Lemieux’s first game back; and also lucky enough to see Dick Tarnstrom’s reign as the Penguins best player.
I made the genius decision to start the blog during the off-season; so, yeah, it’s probably going to be some lean times for the next few months. Whenever there is news, you can be sure that I will write about it as quickly as possible, though. Hopefully, by the time the season has started, I’ll have honed my writing skills enough that it doesn’t resemble something done by a little kid.
