There will be changes, Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford promised on Thursday afternoon at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, admitting he was probably stating the obvious.
How serious will those be?
That’s the million-dollar question and one Rutherford himself is still pondering.
“I don’t know yet because we’re still a little bit emotional with the disappointment of how this ended,” Rutherford said. “I think the best thing for me to do is take a little bit of time to think through this.”
Further assessing the 2018-19 season and figuring out how to fix what went wrong will be a focal point for Rutherford in the next days and weeks, although he apparently didn’t need a ton of time to point out something he thought this year’s group lacked.
In 2015-16 and 2016-17, Rutherford said, the Penguins were a team, a tight-knit bunch that obviously hoisted the Stanley Cup together twice. Since then, something has changed. Or at least that’s what Rutherford worries has happened.
“I didn’t see a point where guys came together as a team,” Rutherford said, talking about this past season. “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?”
Let’s pause there for a second.
Look up and down the Penguins roster, and there are 11 players left from those Cup-winning teams: Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang, Olli Maatta, Justin Schultz, Matt Murray, Bryan Rust, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Phil Kessel and Matt Cullen.
The “where they’re at in their careers” part of that probably eliminates those in their 20s and also Cullen, a 42-year-old who’s top 20 all-time in games played and likely retiring.
Your candidates, then, are Letang, Crosby, Malkin, Hornqvist and Kessel, right?
It’s hard to call Hornqvist complacent with anything. Crazy, maybe. Unproductive over the final 39 games, where he scored three times, sure. But not complacent. The same with Crosby.
That would leave Rutherford with Malkin, Letang and Kessel. Could Rutherford be looking to trade one of them?
That answer isn’t going to come a couple days after the season, and it’s not going to come without Rutherford having all these meetings.
It does appear, however, that Rutherford took note of what the Islanders had — a bunch of younger guys who were OK playing a less sexy style of hockey — and may shape the Penguins that way.
“There’s a bunch of things that were different between the Islanders and the Penguins,” Rutherford said. “They played the right way. They were eager to win. They were determined, and the Penguins weren’t.”
Getting that sort of determination back will require a few calculated moves from Rutherford, who doesn’t have any significant unrestricted free agents with which to part.
The GM also doesn’t appear overly eager to blow up his defense, although while he addressed its quality, he didn’t address quantity.
As currently constituted, the Penguins have Dumoulin, Letang, Maatta, Schultz, Erik Gudbranson and Jack Johnson under contract for next season and beyond, plus Marcus Pettersson as a restricted free agent they’re going to sign.
It stands to reason that someone could be gone.
“I think our defense is probably the best now that it’s been since I’ve been here as a group,” Rutherford said. “You always like mobile defensemen. You like guys who can move the puck. We have at least one guy on each pairing who can move the puck. Now we have guys who can have some pushback.”
For Rutherford to make this work, he’ll need to make moves similar to what he did on Feb. 1, when he acquired Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann, a pair of building blocks.
“The window’s still open,” Rutherford said. “It should be open for more than one year also. But we’re not going to be able to do it the way we finished.”
Or started, for that matter, as the Penguins languished along during the first six weeks of the regular season. There were other rough periods, too, which also did not sit well with Rutherford.
In March, when the Penguins went 10-3-3, the Penguins seemingly found their game. They achieved offensive balance. Their goaltending was really good, with Murray basically playing every night. Bjugstad and McCann shined. Despite a few key injuries, they played a responsible, buttoned-down game.
Then when the playoffs rolled around, the Penguins weren’t the same team. They weren’t responsible with the puck. They didn’t play a game that was conducive to winning in the playoffs. The offense dried up.
“The inconsistency … we still got 100 points, but it wasn’t a comfortable 100 points,” Rutherford said. “Our team played as a team in March. We were tracking toward being a good playoff team, then we ran up against a team that was more determined and played the game the right way. We played higher-risk.
“It was there. We saw it in March. It could certainly be there in the future.”
So as he holds meetings and thinks about the realistic possibilities for how he can retool his roster, Rutherford will keep that sort of stuff in mind, how a group of young and hungry Islanders were more of a “team” than the Penguins.
And with two-time Cup winners growing complacent as the apparent root of the problem, it could certainly make for an interesting summer.
“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,” Rutherford said. “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.”
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: April 18, 2019, 6:01 p.m.