People around the hockey world have been paying close attention to Jim Rutherford, curious what the Penguins general manager will do as his team’s losses mount.
The expectation, of course, is that Rutherford will make a trade. It’s perfectly understandable, too. Rutherford remains perhaps the NHL’s most aggressive general manager, and the Penguins have lost nine of their past 10 games.
But if you’re expecting Rutherford to do something with his team mired at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, it’s probably not wise to hold your breath.
“As we speak now, the guys we have now are going to have to figure out a way to get out of this,” Rutherford told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by phone on Sunday afternoon. “We have the players who can do it.”
Does that mean Rutherford is ruling out a trade?
No, it doesn’t. But it would have to be one that can legitimately improve his club — not simply for the sake of shaking things up or shipping out an underperforming player.
It’s a stance that’s not all that dissimilar from how Rutherford would be doing business at this point of any other season.
“We’ll always consider trying to upgrade our team if the right deal comes along,” Rutherford said.
2. There are several reasons why Rutherford feels this way.
The first is that trades are simply not easy to pull off at this point of the year, especially without getting fleeced by another GM.
“There’s not a lot of deals made at this time of the year,” Rutherford said. “It’s the more difficult time of the year to be making the kind of trades that you might think are necessary.”
3. Although he didn’t say it — it’s merely my own suspicion — there’s another factor working against Rutherford here: Even if he wanted to do something, given what he has to offer, it would probably be really, really hard.
Who can Rutherford move and have it make sense? It’s not a long list.
Let’s break the Penguins roster down into three categories: Those Rutherford wouldn’t want to trade, those he couldn’t and those who could potentially go.
That first group, to me, would involve: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Kris Letang, Jake Guentzel, Brian Dumoulin, Justin Schultz, Dominik Simon, Zach Aston-Reese, Chad Ruhwedel and Juuso Riikola.
The first seven are no-brainers. Simon has shown some promise and makes just $750,000; Aston-Reese is still young and has decent potential; Ruhwedel is a solid depth defenseman, especially for $650,000; and Riikola is just too new.
Among those Rutherford probably couldn’t move: Derek Grant, Daniel Sprong, Jack Johnson, Riley Sheahan, Matt Cullen and Tanner Pearson.
Sprong is the only conceivable possibility, although if it were easy, given the Penguins have made it known they’re listening, you think it would’ve happened already. I think the others are fairly obvious.
4. The group of possibilities is … well, tough. I’d say Olli Maatta, Bryan Rust, Phil Kessel, Derick Brassard and Jamie Oleksiak fit the bill.
Maatta is probably the most likely, but his speed is not flattering, and his five-on-five shot-attempt share of 46.00 percent ranks last among regular Penguins defensemen.
He’s been on the ice for 144 five-on-five scoring chances against, which qualifies as the second-most among Penguins defenseman. Letang leads at 146, but he’s played 333:22 to Maatta’s 284:07.
Rust has one goal in 19 games, and his five-on-five goals-for percentage of 39.1 ranks second-worst among regular Penguins forwards
Moving Kessel — who’s been one of their most productive offensive players — would send the wrong message to his teammates and the fan base, while Brassard has been hurt. The Penguins also truly believe he can help them.
Oleksiak is one of their only sources of physicality and has been in and out of the lineup a couple times.
I know some people might suggest moving Guentzel. I wouldn’t do it. His track record with Crosby and upside are too attractive.
5. It’s an imperfect situation for Rutherford, and he’s left with really only one option: to make the best with what he has.
I also excluded the goaltenders because trading Casey DeSmith would do nothing, and the Penguins remain committed to Matt Murray as a part of their long-term plans.
They could trade Tristan Jarry, but they would have to send dollars out given Jarry’s $675,000 salary-cap hit. The Penguins probably want the insurance, too.
6. All of that being said, Rutherford is not OK with how his team’s been playing. He’s as frustrated as anyone with how things have gone. But he is optimistic.
“Nobody feels good when you lose,” Rutherford said. “Everyone is looking for everything to change. Despite the fact that there’s been some big mistakes at crucial times in the game, there’s been some other good signs. We’re a team that’s struggling now. We find ways to lose.
“Most of the things are fixable. Even some of our guys who have gone through the runs and won Stanley Cups are making some critical mistakes. We just have to get some positives here at some point, get some breaks. Then I feel we’ll come out of it.”
7. Rutherford really does believe the Penguins are going to snap out of their funk. The biggest question is when that will be, and he hopes that it doesn’t come too late.
“I believe we’ll come out of it,” Rutherford said. “I hope at that point we haven’t dug too deep of a hole. I don’t believe we will have.
“It doesn’t feel good now. It doesn’t feel good to anybody. I think the players are trying as best they can. But when you’re losing, it seems like you’ll never win. When you’re winning, it seems like you’ll never lose. We’re just going through as tough a stretch as I’ve ever seen.”
8. Team speed has been a popular thing to question with the Penguins lately.
Are they as fast as they were? Has the NHL caught up?
I asked Rutherford whether there was any concern that his team has gotten slower.
“How do you think we looked in the third period [Saturday]? Do you think we looked fast?” Rutherford said.
I answered that, yes, I thought the Penguins looked fast in the third period against the Senators. Rutherford also referenced that Canadian road trip, where the Penguins went 4-0, and my wife gave birth to our second son, Teddy.
“You had more important things to do than go on the Canadian trip, but I’m sure you watched the games on TV,” Rutherford said. “Did we look fast? It’s not about whether you have the speedy skaters. It’s about the type of game that we play.
“Because of the funk we’re in, we’ve become way too tentative. We sit back. We’re afraid to make mistakes. We’re afraid to close the gap. We’re afraid to forecheck.”
9. I think there are a couple issues at play.
One, let’s not discount the fact that, yes, other teams have caught up. It would be stupid to deny that.
The Penguins have also lost Carl Hagelin and Conor Sheary since June, and they’re without Schultz and Crosby at the moment. Until Saturday, they had been without Brassard.
Maatta’s skating is certainly not his strength, and you’d be insane to think that Johnson resembles Letang.
But we still need context.
The Penguins aren’t playing with the lead much. In their 12 losses, they’ve led after the first period just five times.
They’re also routinely making boneheaded plays with the puck, and, as Rutherford said, they’re too tentative.
“You’ve seen this team, the group of guys we have now, play with speed,” Rutherford said. “You have to play an uptempo game. You have to get the puck out of our zone quicker because teams are forechecking us.
“We have to control the play in the offensive zone with puck pressure. That’s when the team looks like it has speed. This group is capable of doing it. We just haven’t done it.”
10. It’s interesting how defiant — OK, [ticked] off — most people around the Penguins get when someone suggests they’re not as fast or that playing a speed game isn’t as much of an advantage for them as it used to be.
Coach Mike Sullivan has done it. Letang, too. I think it comes from an understandable place — that it’s a gigantic part of this team’s identity under Sullivan, a point of pride.
“I don’t know why people question our speed game,” Letang said when I broached the same topic with him.
Letang cited managing the puck at the blue lines, too many times making careless plays with it and how they’ve really struggled to get untracked for an extended period of time as reasons why their speed game might lack at times.
“But our speed is still there,” Letang said. “I still think we’re fast. No question about that.”
11. In talking about his team and what was bugging it — being tentative and whatnot — I said to Rutherford that his team looked like a hitter in baseball who was too busy thinking about his hands or stride and not enough about what pitch might be coming.
“That’s a perfect analogy,” Rutherford said.
It’s also applicable to Murray, Rutherford said.
The Penguins franchise goaltender has certainly struggled, and we’re getting to the point where there might be entirely too much technical information going into his head.
“They work in practice on little technical things,” Rutherford said of Murray and goaltending coach Mike Buckley. “I see it more as a thing where it’s too much thinking instead of having playing and fighting through it.
“It appears to me that there’s too much thinking going on as far as the fundamentals of playing the position.”
12. Here’s what I would do: Play Murray one of these nights without giving him a scouting report or telling him much of anything about the opponent. Just let him play and have some fun.
In baseball terms, the dude needs to bunt for a base hit. He needs to experience something positive and think less.
I understand not wanting to play him a ton right now because he’s not giving you the results. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to let him work his way back.
And hey, the results sort of stink when he’s thinking a ton about everything. So why not try the opposite?
13. It will be interesting to see how Rutherford’s relaxed stance on trades applies to Sprong.
After four games spent as a healthy scratch and the trade reports that trickled out along the way, it’s no longer a secret that they’re willing to do something with the 21-year-old right wing.
Only they haven’t. And now Sprong is back in the lineup, skating for the past two games a line with Rust and Grant.
Does Sprong playing hurt or hinder his value?
14. For what it’s worth, Sprong had a decent game Saturday in Ottawa. He finished with five shot attempts five-on-five and produced a team-high three scoring chances.
“I thought his game in Ottawa was good,” Rutherford said. “I thought it was a good step in the right direction. He put himself in position to get some chances, had a couple of them and rung one off the iron.”
It’s certainly an imperfect situation. I think Sullivan is hesitant to move Sprong up in the lineup because he wants him to earn it. I think it’s hard for Sprong to earn a promotion because he’s not really playing with people who help him produce.
For whatever reason, too, there seems to be a hesitancy to try Sprong with either Crosby or Malkin. And the Penguins also can’t realistically send Sprong to the AHL.
“I feel that he probably needs just a little more development … but not a whole lot,” Rutherford said.
“We’re like everybody else. We’d love to see him in the lineup and doing well. He’s still a young guy. His game is still developing. He’s going to be a good player, and he’s going to score goals.”
Will that be here? Stay tuned.
15. Moving on …
When Pearson, the Penguins’ newest acquisition, began his OHL career with the Barrie Colts in 2010-11, his father, Tim, made him change the curve on his stick.
Tim Pearson works as an equipment manager for Bauer Hockey.
Previously, with the Waterloo Siskins of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League, Pearson said he used a blade that resembles what Crosby uses now — ridiculously straight.
“As you get to higher levels, you have to get it off quicker,” Pearson said. “Obviously a big curve can help you do that.”
16. Pearson arrived in Pittsburgh with a few descriptors: He’s a former first-round pick; he’s won a Stanley Cup — with L.A. in 2014; he can skate a little; and he’s got an above-average shot that he’s willing to use.
I approached Pearson on Monday morning to ask about his shot and to see if he thinks it’s any different.
“With the straight curve, you obviously learn to use your wrists more,” Pearson said. “Then once you get a bigger curve, it comes off maybe a bit hotter. Maybe that’s the rumor.”
To his credit, Pearson looked good Monday and put four shots on goal. A bunch has gone wrong with the Penguins recently, but it looks like they may have found a pretty decent fit with Pearson.
17. You also probably noticed that Pearson switched his number from 70 with the Kings to 14 in Pittsburgh. Turns out there’s a story there, too.
Growing up, Pearson said every hockey-playing kid on his street wore 14 — including him. But when he made his NHL debut during the 2013-14 season, Justin Williams already had the number.
“Obviously I wasn’t going to take [14] from Justin Williams,” Pearson said.
So he kept the number he was given, 70, and the Kings won the Cup that summer. You don’t mess with a winner.
“When you win, you’re not really changing anything,” Pearson said. “I kind of stuck with it. I was given the chance to go back to it, so I did.”
Pearson said he has heard from a few Kings fans who wanted to see him play with Malkin and Hornqvist and recreate “That 70s Line” of a couple years ago when Pearson played with Tyler Toffoli and Jeff Carter.
“That was floating around Twitter, especially with the Kings fans,” Pearson said. “It’s good to go back to your childhood roots, too.”
18. With Matt Cullen out “longer-term” because of a lower-body injury, I’m curious whether 24-year-old center prospect Teddy Blueger finally gets a chance.
Before the season, in speaking with local reporters in his office at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, Rutherford made it clear that Blueger was ready; he simply needed an opportunity.
Blueger has also delivered during a solid start. In 17 games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Blueger has five goals and 11 points while playing all situations and, according to assistant general manager Bill Guerin, putting up solid faceoff numbers.
It’s hard to imagine Grant will be around past this year. Time to find out what they have in Blueger.
19. Number of the week: 44
That’s Kessel’s goal pace through 19 games, which would be a career-high for him. (Kessel had 37 twice while he was in Toronto.)
Kessel, who leads the Penguins with nine multiple-point games thus far, is also on pace for a career-high 104 points. He’s never before been across the 100 threshold.
20. Non-hockey Thought of the Week: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Spend some time with family, eat a ton of food and be grateful.
I know I can’t wait to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with my wife and sons and eat a bunch of turkey before shipping up to Boston on Black Friday.
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: November 20, 2018, 1:00 p.m.
Updated: November 20, 2018, 1:20 p.m.
