CRANBERRY, Pa. — Jim Rutherford and Mike Sullivan stood shoulder-to-shoulder Thursday afternoon, symbolically presenting a unified front during their season-ending press conference at the Lemieux Sports Complex.
It was a departure from seasons past when the coach and general manager had traditionally held separate sessions with the media. Then again, this locker cleanout day, the final time the 2018-19 Penguins would convene, was unlike previous seasons. In 2016 and ’17, there were celebrations to be had.
“In those years, we were a team,” Rutherford said. “We were a very tight-knit team. I didn’t see that this year almost from Day 1. I didn’t see a point where guys came together as a team. I wonder if it’s because there’s too many guys content with where they’re at in their careers after winning a couple Stanley Cups, and is that a signal where some of that has to be changed, where you have that eagerness again?”
Even last season’s second-round loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champions was somewhat tolerable, if not understandable. But what Rutherford and Sullivan made abundantly clear on Thursday was that an embarrassing first-round sweep to the Islanders was not acceptable.
“They played the right way. They were eager to win. They were determined, and the Penguins weren’t,” Rutherford said, putting his team on blast.
It was a wildly disappointing ending for a team that was expected to make a legitimate Stanley Cup run and one they believe can still contend for a championship.
“I don’t think as is, but the window is still open,” Rutherford added. “It should be open for more than one year, also. I’ll say the obvious based on how things finished: We’re not going to be able to do it the way we finished.”
Exactly how they go about rectifying that situation will be the biggest storyline of the off-season. The ramifications of what happens this summer could potentially alter the direction of the organization for a decade. Two years removed from consecutive championships, the Penguins would seem to be at a crossroads. With a team that is heavy on aging stars, do they retool with what has brought them unparalleled success in the cap era or do they begin the process of a rebuild? It’s not an easy question and one that Rutherford still seems uncertain about.
“I don’t know yet because we’re still a little bit emotional with the disappointment of how this ended,” the GM said 48 hours after the Penguins’ Game 4 loss to the Islanders. “I think the best thing for me to do is take a little bit of time to think through this. I’m in the middle now of meeting with as many people who have input in our organization as I can, from the coaches to hockey ops to ownership. That will take a little time to work through that. Some big decisions will have to be made. Obviously, there will be changes in our team.”
What those changes could mean is hard to say. Outside of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel and Matt Murray, Rutherford could be listening to offers on pretty much anyone else, including Phil Kessel, Patric Hornqvist, Olli Maatta and, yes, even Kris Letang.
Compounding the difficulty in trying to get younger, faster and cheaper in one summer is that the aforementioned veterans, all part of the 2016 and ’17 teams, are under contract through at least 2022, and all but Maatta have some form of no-movement clauses on their existing deals. The Penguins’ only unrestricted free agents — Matt Cullen, Chad Ruhwedel, Zach Trotman and Garrett Wilson — are all expendable players. Despite that, Rutherford said it won’t affect the way he approaches this off-season.
“We have a lot of good players and players who have good resumes, players who have won Stanley Cups and players who have contributed big to that,” he was saying. “Depending on what changes we decide to make, we have valuable assets to make some of those changes.”
That remains to be seen, of course. But it’s not only the roster that needs changed. The way they play — more specifically, how they defend — has to change too, according to Sullivan. Since coming to Pittsburgh in December of 2015, Sullivan installed a system based on speed and a quick transition game. Though the Penguins are older up front, Sullivan says the system doesn’t figure to change much, if at all. But they do need to get back to being a team that generates its offense from defense.
“I think the area of our identity that we’ve lost a little bit is the hard-to-play-against aspect,” Sullivan said. “We can look at past experience to try and learn from, and can look at the current experience to learn from. When we’ve had success as a group with the very same core players, we were a team that could score goals. But what I think what went unnoticed or not discussed much was that we were hard to play against. We had back pressure on the puck. We had sticks. We defended hard. We limited opportunities at the net. There was all kinds of aspects of our game that made us difficult to play against.”
Though his team was outscored 14-6 by the Islanders, scoring just one goal in each of their final three losses, the bigger problem, according to Sullivan, was the Penguins’ lack of defensive awareness and careless decision-making with the puck.
“To win in the playoffs, you can’t be a high-risk team,” he said. “You’ve got to have a certain discipline to your game on both sides of the puck. It’s not all about scoring goals. I know there was a lot of talk about the fact that we didn’t score, but when I look at the way the series was played, it wasn’t so much that we didn’t score as much as the opportunities that we gave our opponents were high-quality, and we didn’t force them to have to work for it. As a result, when you give someone that many 2-on-1s, for example, those are pretty high-quality chances that NHL players are going to score.”
• Rutherford said that he’s yet to open negotiations for a contract extension for Matt Murray. The goalie, who will make $3.75 million next season, can become a restricted free agent at the end of next season.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins’ locker cleanout, Cranberry, Pa., April 18, 2019 – MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
