There's nothing, on the surface, wrong with trading Carl Hagelin for Tanner Pearson. Nor with trading Daniel Sprong, when that predictably comes to pass. Nor with pushing Matt Murray's buttons. Nor with publicly questioning a team's chemistry. Nor with publicly, if subtly, criticizing Bryan Rust, Riley Sheahan and the rest of the non-scoring supporting cast.
Nor, certainly, could anything be wrong about extending the contract of Jim Rutherford, a successful, passionate general manager.
But put it all together, cram it into a six-week span, then keep threatening to do more and more and more ... and, if I'm being candid, the Penguins' management is starting to come across as pointlessly panicky.
You know, Mike Sullivan's got a word he'll whip out only on the rarest of occasions. To my knowledge, he hasn't yet used it in front of us reporter types this season, but it did emerge during one of those in-game, on-the-bench TV interviews with AT&T SportsNet's Bob Errey just the other night: 'Fragile.'
When this coach uses it, per my ability to discern, he isn't insulting anyone. He's referring to a collective psyche, a near-reflexive response to when things don't go well. He uses it in the opposite way that he'll use 'resiliency.' It's actually pretty graceful verbiage.
Well, it's appropriate at the moment. This group is fragile right now. And maddeningly inconsistent. And mistake-prone. And not producing anywhere near a peak that's been shown only through that perfect Canada trip. And now that Hagelin's gone, Sprong's about to go, Murray's been benched, the supporting cast still can't find the net and -- oh, hey -- Sidney Crosby's hurt, that fragility might now be tested unlike any other time in the Rutherford/Sullivan era.
So maybe the best path now would be to cool it.
Cut out the threats.
Put the No. 1 goaltender back in his net.
Put Pearson and, while you're at it, Zach Aston-Reese in position to make a genuine difference.
And from there, let one of the great leadership cores in our city's sports history do the rest. Because, unless I'm missing something, Crosby's still the consensus choice not only as the best hockey player in the world but also the game's greatest winner. And unless I'm missing something else, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Kris Letang, Phil Kessel and Matt Cullen have that trait in abundance as well.
Leave them alone now. Set down the weaponry. Stop wondering "if that chemistry is in there because I haven't seen it," as Rutherford reiterated. Don't just talk about "believing in what we have in that room," as Sullivan describes it. Act on it.
Rutherford's emotional. I get that. I appreciate it. I respect it. Sullivan's no different. But the message has been delivered in a big way. All of the messages, actually. And trust me, based on what I've witnessed over the past week, but particularly the other night in Newark, it's been received: Crosby looked near-catatonic after that 4-2 loss to the Devils. Malkin returned to the room after his shower just to speak to reporters -- a great rarity after any loss -- and did so with a moving show of support for Kessel. The latter dropped the gloves, for crying out loud. Letang similarly sat and exhibited full accountability. Hornqvist's been at this for days, and that was before his best friend was sent to Los Angeles.
They get it. They do. Now let them take care of it.
In the interim, make the supporting cast better. Because that current shortcoming isn't on the team's leadership or on "chemistry." It's on management and the coaches.
• The only fair assessment of the Hagelin-Pearson trade will be to let it play out, particularly as it applies to Pearson, whose season to date with the Kings -- no goals, one assist in 17 games -- is so far below his career norm that it's got to be seen as the exception.
I'll be most focused on his speed. Not to compare him to Hagelin, as that would be absurd, but just how well he'll adjust to Sullivan's hard forecheck that's a good bit different than the generally defensive posture of the Kings. And within that, I'll wonder if his broken leg from 2015 really did sap some of his speed, as some hockey observers have long believed, from his earliest NHL days when he was a huge part of L.A.'s championship in 2014 and an NHL All-Star the following winter.
At any rate, there's upside. The kid was an absolute beast back then.
• Hagelin's productivity will always be suspect, his feet always performing at a level his hands couldn't match. But let's not omit the obvious concern in this trade: However fast or slow anyone thought the Penguins were beforehand, they're now officially slower. And less proficient on the penalty-kill, which quietly has been the NHL's sixth-best through the early going at 84.0 percent.
• Much attention was given locally -- and rightly so -- to the Penguins' reaction to losing Hagelin. But it probably also speaks well to Pearson's character that the reaction was little different from the Kings after their practice yesterday in El Segundo, Calif.
"It sucks," Drew Doughty told reporters there.
"It sucks, obviously," Jeff Carter said.
“Your first thought is that you lose a friend and a teammate,” Dion Phaneuf said. “That’s the tough side of the business."
Willie Desjardins, the interim head coach in L.A. since John Stevens' firing two weeks ago, might have had the most compelling comment regarding Pearson: “He was a good player, for sure. He was really frustrated on the bench last night. He was a guy when I came in, I thought that’s a guy maybe you could target to get him to turn it around and get going. I don’t think that happened.”
• The least compelling comment, by the way, had to have been Anze Kopitar's assessment of Hagelin: "I know he's very fast."
• This was fun ...
• Rutherford's extension by three years was eminently deserved, as mentioned above. But I did find the timing to be kind of odd, as the Penguins are usually so much more deft at that sort of thing. Rolling him out for an impromptu press gathering a half-hour before a practice, the morning after another hard loss on the road, with the team struggling as it has, only to have Rutherford awkwardly inform everyone attending that he'd just executed a trade without offering specifics ... again, this isn't how they tend to operate.
It felt erratic, and it only added to that broader panicky sense.
The announcement easily could have waited.
• The Penguins are two points out of the Eastern Conference's basement, currently occupied by their curious new nemesis, the Devils. That sounds bad. It actually is bad. But they're also five points out of third place, they've played two fewer games than most teams, and even the Lightning, their conference-leading opponent tonight at PPG Paints Arena, is only eight points away.
Also, Thanksgiving's more than a week away.
• Plus, it seldom seems to merit mention that this team's played most of this season without two major pieces in Derick Brassard and Justin Schultz. Those weren't casual losses.
• Cullen's got a goal, two assists and 23 shots in having played all 16 games. He's 42, as we all know.
He's also got a 40.88 Corsi For percentage -- which tracks team shots for/against while a player is on the ice -- that's the lowest among all regulars in the lineup, though it should be stressed that he's taken 97 defensive-zone faceoffs compared to 23 at the other end, so he's used differently than most players.
Still, he hasn't been at his best, as he acknowledged in a talk we had in Newark.
"It's important to know there's a lot of hockey left, 60 games or so," Cullen told me. "Especially early in the season, it's easy to magnify certain things because you just want everything to go perfectly from the beginning, and we all know that doesn't happen. So it's about keeping that perspective. In my mind, anyways. If you focus on, 'Man, I've gotta score now,' or 'Man, we've got to win every game by five goals,' that's when you bog down."
I asked Cullen if he and Rutherford had ever discussed that he'd have his game count managed in any way this season.
"We never had that conversation, no. Every summer, I prepare myself to play every game. For me, for whatever reason, my game usually improves as the season goes on. I like playing. The more I play, the better I get."
• Sure, there can be more trades. Maybe there should be more. But at this stage, I'm not getting the sense of anything beyond Sprong. There's absolutely no indication from the inside of anything imminent -- or even being seriously considered -- at some massive scale.
Rutherford wanted a shakeup and, with Hagelin, he feels he got it.
• Why Murray tonight?
Because he's the better player. Because he's the starter. Because it's got to be that way for this group to win another championship. And above all, because he, like the rest of these guys, gets it.
• Hagelin deserves to be remembered for more here than an empty-netter, but his amazing description of what that sprint down Nashville ice meant to him will rank as my favorite interview with him. And that's saying something. Consummate professional, too.
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