Weekend Takeaways: Pain in Pittsburgh shows no sign of ending for Penguins

How painful can things get in Pittsburgh?

On Friday, teams gunning for the 2024 Stanley Cup made the final additions to their lineups ahead of the trade deadline. The Penguins, meanwhile, shipped out a homegrown sniper for a collection of young players they hope produces one or two meaningful NHL careers.

On Saturday, Pittsburgh visited a team it used to battle with for Eastern Conference supremacy — the Boston Bruins — and were trounced 5-1. The next day, on home ice, the Penguins were blanked 4-0 by one of the top teams in the West, the Edmonton Oilers.

Pittsburgh is 1-6-0 in its past seven games and has scored just 10 goals — 1.4 per game — in those outings as it craters toward a second straight silent spring.

The Penguins haven’t missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons since they whiffed for the fourth straight campaign in Sidney Crosby’s rookie year of 2005-06.

So where is this all going?

What we know is there’s an overwhelming sense all Steeltown renovations done by first-year Penguins GM Kyle Dubas will be done without touching the legacy core of Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.

Look, if the supreme goal of all involved is to ensure none of those guys ever wear a different uniform, that’s just fine. There’s enough credibility on all sides to justify that stance. The Penguins have won as many Cups as any non-Original Six franchise (five) and their current trio of heroes — especially Crosby — is obviously entrenched in the pantheon of that great sports city’s biggest stars, from Roberto Clemente to Terry Bradshaw to Mario Lemieux.

But let’s just all be realistic about what this blind devotion means.

Whenever I hear about teams that want to get good again without the pain of some serious losing, I always imagine a person telling me he or she wants to get in great shape without going to the gym or changing their diet.

I mean, sure.

Certainly we’ve seen some successful turnarounds that would be deemed re-tools rather than rebuilds. The Los Angeles Kings never traded Anze Kopitar or Drew Doughty when they were bad a few years ago and they’ve been labelled a legit Cup contender at times this year.

Right in the Penguins’ own division, the New York Rangers famously wrote a letter to fans in 2018 about taking one step back to take two forward and by 2022, they were two wins from making the Cup final.

But these are in no way identical situations. Kopitar and Doughty were in their very early 30s when L.A. began to turn over the roster and, for what it’s worth, the Kings have yet to win a playoff series since claiming the 2014 Cup and, if they’re not careful, could wind up being the final Western Conference team to even make the post-season this year.

The Rangers, meanwhile, are the Rangers and a lot of extremely good players want to play at Madison Square Garden. Adam Fox used the leverage afforded him as a star NCAA player who could pick his spot after his senior year to push his way to the Blueshirts; Artemi Panarin chose New York as a free agent. Basically, the best defenceman and best forward on the team came to the club under somewhat unique circumstances.

So how are the Penguins going to do with two guys who will be 37 next fall (Letang and Crosby) and a third (Malkin) who will be 38? Players of Panarin’s calibre rarely make it to the open market in hockey and, even if one did, is the opportunity to play with these three in the twilight of their careers going to lure him to Pennsylvania?

This isn’t the National Football League, where you can smoke one draft class and put three difference-makers in your lineup four months after selecting them. This isn’t he National Basketball Association, where really, really good players are acquired for a boatload of futures with astonishing regularity.

The NHL just doesn’t have that kind of star movement.

It’s a tribute to Crosby, in particular, that Pittsburgh still isn’t among the dregs of the league. That means, in all likelihood, the Penguins won’t be drafting up where they got Crosby and Malkin any time soon, but rather trying to find a series of success stories like that of the player they just dealt to Carolina three days ago, Jake Guentzel.

Guentzel was a third-round pick in 2013. Four years later he scored 13 post-season goals on a Penguins team that won the 2017 title. That’s about as good as that type of story can go and there was still nearly half a decade between drafting Guentzel and lifting the Cup.

And how many versions of Guentzel does this team — which has a better points percentage than just four other Eastern squads — need to become a contender again?

Three? Four?

Again, if making sure Crosby, Malkin and Letang are forever Penguins is the top priority, fair play. It’s just that, if you’re a Pens fan, seeing them remain in black and gold better be enough because it’s nearly impossible to envision a spectacular final act coming.

Other Takeaways

• We’ll have to wait a bit for the injured Guentzel to make his 'Canes debut. The same goes for new Knight Tomas Hertl, who is expected to play his first game for Vegas a bit before the end of the regular season.

As for some guys who did don their new colours this weekend, Anthony Duclair went 1-1-2 with the Tampa Bay Lighting, Vladimir Tarasenko bagged a brace and a helper to boot with Florida ,and Noah Hanifin — in his second game as a Golden Knight — got on the board with a pair of assists.

• Hanifin’s Knights downed Detroit 5-3 on Sunday, handing the Wings their fifth straight defeat, all 60-minute losses. Meanwhile, Patrick Roy’s New York Islanders leapfrogged Detroit for the final playoff berth in the East by posting their sixth straight win in Anaheim on Sunday by a 6-1 count. New York has been averaging five goals per game during this hot run, led by the scorching top line of Bo Horvat between Brock Nelson and Mathew Barzal. Don’t look now, but not only have the Isles squeezed past the Wings, they’re only four points back of Philly for third in the Metro with two games in hand (and one in hand on Detroit).

• Speaking of Philly, it was almost too rich to see John Tortorella get the boot — and initially refuse to leave the bench — on a night he was back in Tampa as the team inducted two players into its Hall of Fame — Dave Andreychuk and Brad Richards — from the 2004 title-winning squad ‘Torts’ coached. Let’s just say the, uh, passion he had as a 45-year-old coaching Andreychuk and Richards is still with him 20 years later at age 65.

• Stick tap to Valeri Nichushkin, who scored the OT winner for Colorado against Minny on Friday night in his return to action after spending time in the NHLPA’s player assistance program. It was the Russian’s first contest in two months.

Related, perhaps the extra-time setback inspired Minny to do what we saw on Sunday, when the Wild — facing the Predators in a fourth period and needing all the regulation/overtime wins it can get — yanked goalie Marc-André Fleury for a 4-on-3 advantage that resulted in Matt Boldy’s game-winner. Just freakin’ awesome.

Weekend Warrior

The Bolts sure did the ’04 boys proud on Saturday, drubbing Tortorella’s Flyers 7-0. Darren Raddysh wrote his name into the Tampa record books by having the first five-assist night by a defenceman in team history.

Red and White Power Rankings

1. Vancouver Canucks (42-17-7) All the focus is, of course, on Thatcher Demko. The goalie departed Vancouver’s 5-0 thrashing of Winnipeg on Saturday without any obvious injury and we should learn more about his status very soon.

2. Winnipeg Jets (40-18-5) Tyler Toffoli, acquired on Friday from the Devils, should make his Jets debut Monday night when the team hosts the Washington Capitals, which can be seen on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ at 7:30 p.m. ET.

3. Edmonton Oilers (39-21-3) Darnell Nurse, who had not hit the back of the net in 24 outings, registered the second two-goal game of his career on Sunday afternoon with a pair in Pittsburgh during Edmonton’s 4-0 blanking of the Pens.

4. Toronto Maple Leafs (37-19-8) Ilya Samsonov got the win on Saturday in Montreal and, given how much he was struggling professionally and personally right after Christmas, it’s just something else to realize he’s now 12-2-0 in his past 14 showings with a .913 save percentage.

5. Calgary Flames (31-28-5) It was a brutal weekend for the Flames, who were drubbed 5-1 in South Florida on Saturday and 7-2 just 24 hours later in Carolina. That said, Yegor Sharangovich scored in both games, has seven goals in his past six contests and 27 on the year.

6. Montreal Canadiens (24-30-10) The Habs have 18 games left after being downed by the Leafs Saturday. With Jake Allen finally dealt, how many games will 24-year-old Cayden Primeau get between now and the end of the year? If Montreal is set on a battery of Primeau and Sam Montembeault next season, presumably the Canadiens would like to get the former seven or eight more starts this year to get him more reps after the three-goalie situation lessened everyone’s playing time for three-quarters of the season.

7. Ottawa Senators (25-33-4) The offence has completely dried up during Ottawa’s most recent excruciating stretch of the year, a losing streak that became a seven-gamer on Saturday with a 2-1 loss Saturday in San Jose. The Sens are averaging just two goals per game during this dubious seven-game run.

The Week Ahead

• After recently seeing Sidney Crosby a couple times, the Oilers will host Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals on Wednesday. This obviously hasn’t been the kind of season we expect from Ovi, but he does have 28 points in his past 26 games. He’s on a five-game point streak right now after collecting an assist in Saturday’s 4-1 win over Chicago.

• Cue the tribute video: Noah Hanifin’s fourth game with the Vegas Golden Knights will be Thursday in Calgary.

That same night, we’ll get an 2023 Eastern Conference final re-match when the Panthers visit Carolina.

• John Tortorella, having been given a two-game suspension for his outburst, will be eligible to return to Philly’s bench when the Flyers visit Boston on Saturday afternoon.