Jim Rutherford’s more a sniper than a general manager.
He sees the target, squints his eye, squeezes the trigger and … blam!
This target, of course, had been in his sights for months, ever since the Penguins won that second consecutive Stanley Cup and subsequently lost the entirety of their center depth with the departures of Matt Cullen and Nick Bonino. And those months … all … those … months … had been excruciating for him.
Trust me, I’d seen it.
“We’re trying,” Rutherford would tell me, walking along the lower concourse after a game a couple weeks ago.
“It’s not there,” he’d offer another time. “I don’t know if this will happen.”
“Just no market,” came the reply in Calgary months ago.
And the more his roster struggled, or sleepwalked, or however one would characterize the Penguins’ catatonic state back then, the more that burden built. Because he put it on himself, not anyone else, to give this extraordinary collection of talent the best possible chance at a three-peat.
So hey, kids, meet Derick Brassard.
The trade itself wound up multi-layered and multiple levels of insanity when it was finally consummated after the NHL initially rejected it. And it won’t be perfect when it’s evaluated, particularly when it’s rewound to prior moves that led into it.
Who cares?
As Rutherford worded it to reporters late Friday night in Raleigh, N.C., “Why not? You’ve seen him play?”
Mm-hm. Best center on the NHL trade market by a mile. Best fit for this roster’s depth chart. Best fit for the Mike Sullivan system.
Nothing but the best.
That’s how this man does business.
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Brassard isn’t a great player. He’s a very good player. Good enough to be on the Senators’ second line, good enough to slot comfortably behind two living legends in Pittsburgh, good enough that he’s making a $5 million wage in the prime of his career, and he’s achieved all this:
Great isn’t what was needed. But then, neither was good.
These Penguins didn’t just need to fill a vacancy. Although they’ve performed far better since the calendar flipped to 2018, they’re still coming off two long playoff runs and, thus, still prone to a reprise of that catatonic state. And although Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have excelled of late and stayed surprisingly healthy, given the history of both, they’ll still need support in the future, or even to be replaced if they go down, the way Cullen and Bonino would do.
Something a little extra was needed. Not Mark Letestu. Or Jean-Gabriel Pageau. Or, with all due respect for his contributions last summer, Carter Rowney. Because now, the Penguins are great at first-line center, great at second-line center, great at third-line center and even great at fourth-line center, if keeping each status in context.
“We’ve tried to get more depth at center and get more insurance there,” Rutherford would continue Friday. “Our centers have played pretty well, but you’ve got to have a lot of strength at center and when we felt we had chance to get a guy like this … this is a good addition.”
Nope. Not good. Great. In context.
I began publicly pining for Brassard last week when the Senators were in town and he was their best forward. I ramped that up Thursday after watching Sullivan’s reshuffled lines at practice and envisioning how well he’d fit. And only a few hours after our Chris Bradford reported Friday morning from Raleigh, N.C., that Rutherford was going all-in on Brassard, that’s precisely how it went down.
All-in, as always, comes at a cost.
Ian Cole’s a two-time champion, and among the hardest-earned of the group. He threw himself in front of pucks like no one else, not just on the team but in the entire league. He embraced every facet of his job like few others, on and off the ice. He was the Patric Hornqvist of the defense. He’ll be missed.
But he also is about to become an unrestricted free agent, and there’d been zero movement from management toward keeping him, with the Penguins’ defense already carrying a price tag of $25.5 million annually, roughly a third of the payroll. If anything, he’d already begun getting pushed to the perimeter by Sullivan — for reasons I’ll never fully understand — and was a stunning healthy scratch for weeks before his recent resurgence.
Matt Hunwick’s now No. 6. Chad Ruhwedel’s No. 7. That’s not the depth that was there yesterday, but it’s hardly devastating.
Rutherford dealt from depth.
Filip Gustavsson, the 19-year-old goaltender who was the Penguins’ second-round pick in 2016, is fresh off leading Sweden to gold at the World Junior Championships, and he really was the leader with a 1.81 goals-against average and .924 save percentage. It’s looking like Rutherford’s scouts made a fine pick. But the Senators had been openly searching for goaltending behind Craig Anderson, and the Penguins are in no need of any such thing with Matt Murray, 23, and Tristan Jarry, 22, representing the league’s youngest tandem.
That hierarchy still holds true, with Casey DeSmith as a third option, and Daniel Sprong blissfully remains part of the future in Pittsburgh.
Again, Rutherford dealt from depth.
The first-round pick will be felt, first in June when the scouts sit idly at the table yet again. But both Gustavsson and Sprong were found in similar settings, each a second-rounder who was the Penguins’ top pick. Jarry was one of those, too. They’ll once again have to dig a little deeper.
And Ryan Reaves and the Vegas component … hey, cost of doing business. In this case, quite literally, since the league clearly wasn’t going to approve the Brassard component, which was all that mattered.
Reaves fared just fine while here, but he wasn’t a guarantee to suit up during the playoffs, particularly with the emergence of Aston-Reese. There’s a reason Reaves was rotating as fourth-line right winger in practice Thursday, and that’s because Sullivan saw this, as well.
Now, if one wants to follow the trail back to a first-rounder having been given up for Reaves last summer, it’s not so hot. A lot’s left the building.
But I’ve been repeating this point again and again and again the past few weeks, and it’s probably worth one more: The goal isn’t to win trade grades here. The goal is another Cup. The goal is history.
This approach is all to the GM’s inestimable credit.
It’s not at the root of the process, though. That root, all through the rejections these past few months, was that he felt, even though he’d just built back-to-back champions, even though his work had brought so much joy to so many, that he was letting everyone down. Because he hadn’t done his best to prepare this team for a third run.
Think about that.
Think about that, and you’ll understand what drives a winner.
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The trade deadline is 3 p.m. Monday, so Rutherford might not be done. He could still conceivably look to bolster Crosby’s left wing over Dominik Simon, given that the coaching staff clearly doesn’t see Zach Aston-Reese as the choice. Maybe that’s now sailed with the Devils grabbing Michael Grabner late Thursday night, but maybe it hasn’t.
I don’t see another major move. The Penguins are still close to the cap, so it would likely have to be Conor Sheary for another winger, and there isn’t much point in that. And I’m of the mind that the defense is set, too, even without Cole. These guys won a championship without Kris Letang and with Cole going half the playoffs with a broken hand.
If we’re fussing over who’s No. 6 or 7 on a corps, that, as the cool kids say, qualifies as a first-world problem.
If this is it, this is plenty good enough, certainly from a glance at the standings. If the two best teams in the East are the Lightning and Bruins, those are opponents the Penguins can beat, albeit not easily, over seven games. If the next-best team is the Maple Leafs, as the standings suggest, sorry, but those kids aren’t ready. And if we’re talking about the Capitals again, for crying out loud, that’s pretty much a bye at this point. The West has a wildly intriguing mix at the top — enough that Vegas got downright dirty with Winnipeg about this very transaction — but nothing that should terrify anyone.
The Penguins are back. They achieved that themselves these past few weeks, but their builder just cemented it.
I loved this line from Patric Hornqvist to Bradford Friday night, “Obviously, we’re going for it. That’s the kind of organization you want to play for, the kind that always wants to get better. That’s what we try to do every day on the ice, too. Now, the management stepped up and got us a good player. It’s fun to play for this organization.”
No need to overthink any of this.
