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Joe Starkey: The Penguins’ eternal conundrum

Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

Joe Starkey: The Penguins’ eternal conundrum

Mixing defense with offense. Many have tried. Not all have succeeded.

“We’re a very tough team to coach, a team that was known for offense. He taught us how to play defense.” — Mario Lemieux, upon the passing of Badger Bob Johnson in 1991.

The more things change, right?

Once it was Mario and the boys entertaining crowds across North America, lighting goal lamps like pinball machines, only to find that in the biggest games defense mattered more. And they didn’t play it well enough to sniff a championship, let alone win one, until Badger Bob came along.

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Johnson spoke of his new team making “too many offensive decisions.” So he struck a balance. He would allow his stars to be stars, but he demanded responsible defensive behavior, in all its various forms.

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Badger Bob mixed the magic formula, all right, one every Penguins coach after him has tried to recreate. Some to great success. Others not so much.

Coaching this team is a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is that you’re gifted with some of the most talented players on earth.

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The curse is that you’re gifted with some of the most talented players on earth.

Hence, the Penguins’ eternal conundrum: How does one instill a defensive mindset without stifling the stars?

Lean too far one way (Kevin Constantine, Michel Therrien), and you’ll be banished for killing creativity (less scoring means more boring).

Lean too far the other way — Dan Bylsma’s later teams, last year’s club — and you’ll be crushed for ignoring the fact that defense still wins Cups.

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Bylsma added the perfect dose of creative freedom when he arrived. His potion was perfect, but only for a few months.

Sullivan mixed a powerful brew. One that lasted. But by last April he was looking behind the couch and under the car seats for his recipe book. His team still won a lot. The Penguins have won for most of the past 30 years. But the same habits — risky puck management, ill-timed pinches and jumps, poor effort — resurface often.

In a word, it’s called a relapse.

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I presented the quandary to general manager Jim Rutherford this way in a radio interview Tuesday:

“As long as I’ve been covering the Penguins, the conundrum seems to be, how do you let the skill players flourish and be themselves and still play responsible defense? The numbers show you guys gave up more odd-man breaks than any team. So is that one of your top priorities, to put that more in balance?”

Rutherford: “Well, if we want to get back to having a parade, that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

He expounded: “I mean, we all like up-tempo hockey, offensive hockey. But at the same time, we gave games away last year. It wasn’t good. It never felt good. And we don’t have to (play like that). We can play our same style but just play a little bit smarter at certain times, especially on the power play. It’s way too risky. But we have good enough players to make that adjustment. It’s been pointed out to them loud and clear from the first day of camp. I sat in the meeting with the players when Mike Sullivan addressed them, and that was the key point he made.”

So the fix is more about changing players’ mindsets than anything related to Sullivan’s system?

“Yes,” Rutherford said. “There’s not a lot we have to change. We just have to be more focused and make better decisions. We have to be stronger mentally.”

I hear that. But a mind can be a difficult thing to change. If it were that simple, why didn’t the Penguins make better decisions last year? Why have they finished 14th and 20th the past two years in goals allowed?

I have to at least wonder if tactical changes will be needed to create more of a built-in defensive structure.

New forward Dominik Kahun confirmed Wednesday that Sullivan’s camp priority was underscoring the need for a more responsible brand of hockey.

Good to hear. But did you watch the preseason finale against Buffalo? Odd-man breaks galore. Evgeni Malkin losing his mind. Somebody should have called for an intervention.

Maybe it was just a preseason fluke. Or maybe, like last year’s opener against the Capitals (a 7-6 win), it was a harbinger of loose times ahead.

What’s truly confounding about this team’s on-and-off relationship with intelligent hockey is that its captain, Sidney Crosby, remains the best two-way player in the world.

Why won’t they follow his lead?

Or will they?

In 2014, when Team Canada won Olympic gold in Sochi, these were Crosby’s first words to Pierre McGuire: “We played great defensive hockey.”

If a team of All-Stars can dedicate themselves like that, in the name of winning, so can the Penguins. They’ve done it before (albeit with a different cast).

Hey, has anybody seen that recipe book?

Joe Star­key: jstar­key@post-ga­zette.com and Twit­ter @jo­e­star­key1. Joe Star­key can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show week­days from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.

First Published: October 2, 2019, 9:32 p.m.

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