Articles in Pittsburgh Penguins

fromm Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

Jeff Carter’s two little ones and his wife, Megan, were waiting Wednesday night when a line suddenly formed near center ice at UBS Arena.

As the Penguins played their season finale against the New York Islanders, a game in which they were competitive but lost 5-4, there were signs throughout the arena the 39-year-old was skating in the final game of his fantastic career.

Carter’s family had flown in from Pittsburgh to be there in person to watch him. They sat in a suite next to Jonathan Quick, his former Los Angeles teammate.

The Penguins made Carter a starter and Sidney Crosby briefly slid over to the wing so Carter could take the opening faceoff, a classy gesture by the captain.

During the third period, Penguins coach Mike Sullivan kept sending Carter over the boards, and his teammates forced passes to him whenever they got the puck. It paid off when Crosby set up Carter for the tying goal during the third period.

And then after the final horn sounded, the Islanders lined up in the neutral zone so they could shake hands with Carter, one of the NHL’s oldest active players.

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from Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

The Pens needed both the Red Wings and the Caps to lose Tuesday in order for their regular-season finale against the New York Islanders to matter Wednesday night. But that didn’t happen. So for the second consecutive season, the Pens will miss the playoffs after making them every year from 2007-22....

So the Pens had their chances to do better against the teams they needed to edge in order to make the playoffs. That’s to say nothing of losing 6-3 in Detroit on Oct. 18.

Or, instead, we could focus on the three games the Penguins lost with multi-goal leads against Calgary, Colorado and Columbus since the calendar flipped to March. Or any game they could’ve won if their 31st-ranked power play (14.6%) wasn’t so bad. Or if they could’ve been at least average among playoff-contending teams when it came to winning games in 3-on-3 overtime instead of failing to win in that period 12 times.

The point is, any time a pro sports team needs to rely on help to qualify for the postseason and fails to get it, it’s not about the help letting them down. It’s about what the organization itself didn’t do to secure a spot on its own.

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from Rob Rossi of The Athletic,

The previous day, a shipment of 19,000 Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads had not arrived in Pittsburgh as scheduled. Acklin remained calm, having no reason to believe there was any foul play involved. A trucking company representative in California said the bobbleheads would be in Pittsburgh the next day by 5 p.m.

“Initial word is the truck driver was having some engine trouble — that they had to pause overnight and it’ll be OK,” said Acklin, the Penguins’ president of business operations.

The time came and went, and still no delivery. While watching the Penguins-Senators game from his Pittsburgh home, Acklin received another call from the trucking company. There was no engine trouble. The bobbleheads had been stolen.

“They said, ‘Well, we don’t know all the details, but apparently the trucking company is in touch with’ — and this is the first time I heard the word — ‘the extortionists.’”

By then, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a California-based trucking company and a Hong Kong vendor were all pursuing the people who’d stolen the merchandise.

“They weren’t sure how they were lifted, but they were in touch with a group that has custody of them,” Acklin said.

And to verify the group had the goods and to determine whether to negotiate, Acklin said, the trucking company had to see if the bobbleheads “were still viable.”

“We’re dealing with a theft that sounds crazy,” Acklin said. “It felt like a story from ‘The Onion.’ When you tell it, it’s like an ‘Onion’ article.”

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NEW YORK, March 8, 2024 – New York Rangers President and General Manager Chris Drury announced today that the team has acquired defenseman Chad Ruhwedel from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for a fourth-round pick in the 2027 NHL Draft.

Ruhwedel, 33, has collected one goal and three assists for four points in 47 games with the Penguins this season. On Pittsburgh, the 5-11, 191 pounder’s 75 hits rank tied for fourth and his 37 blocked shots rank tied for sixth. In addition, his 2:01 minutes of shorthanded time-on-ice per game is the highest of his career.

RALEIGH, NC.- Don Waddell, President and General Manager of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has acquired forward Jake Guentzel and defenseman Ty Smith from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for forwards Michael Bunting, Ville Koivunen, Cruz Lucius, and Vasily Ponomarev, as well as two conditional draft picks in the 2024 NHL Draft. As a condition of the trade, the Penguins will retain 25% of Guentzel’s salary.

from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

When the Oilers were winning five Stanley Cups in the 80’s, the Penguins were nowhere to be seen. Then, when Mario arrived, and later Sidney Crosby, the failing Oilers watched each of the Penguins' five Stanley Cups from the various lakes and golf courses of a hockey player’s summer.

Today, the contending Oilers tend to toy with the flagging Penguins, winning the last five meetings each by a decisive score. They beat Pittsburgh for fun most nights, whether it’s the 7-2 romp at Pittsburgh a year ago, or the 6-1 lickin’ the Oilers put on Pittsburgh Sunday night at Rogers Place.

Edmonton is quick and plays fast. Pittsburgh is slow, their best players ageing out.

The Oilers will be buyers as Friday’s NHL Trade Deadline approaches. The Penguins had better be sellers, nine points out of a playoff spot with three teams to pass.

On Sunday, the contrast was stark.

Good beat average by five goals, in a game you could replay 10 more times and not get a different result.

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The game highlights are below.

#68 goes to the rafters in Pittsburgh.

Watch the 47 minute ceremony below.

from Michelle Crechiolo@PensInsideScoop - Penguins Team Reporter

Leading into the ‘Celebrate 68’ festivities, many stories have been shared about Jaromir Jagr from those who know him best.

On Friday in the Rivers Casino ballroom, the Penguins legend himself took to the stage for a fireside chat with longtime Pittsburgh TV and radio personality Paul Steigerwald and former teammates Kevin Stevens, Phil Bourque, and Jay Caufield.

Jagr embraced the more intimate nature of the setting ahead of Sunday’s ceremony, which will take place in front of a sold-out crowd. He was relaxed and easygoing, cracking jokes, laughing easily and offering incredible amounts of insight – intriguing, touching, heartfelt, and funny – into different parts of his journey.

While they discussed many topics during the hour-long conversation, these are the stories that stood out the most.

Bourque talked about going over to see Jagr in Czechia, which was essentially the catalyst for all of this, as he helped his friend realize that Pittsburgh loves him – and said he’s going to feel that on Sunday. After a round of applause – which featured yells of ‘one more year!’ – Jagr shared his emotions surrounding his No. 68 being retired.

I never really played hockey for the trophies. To have a jersey retired was never my goal. Maybe that's the reason why I'm still playing (at 52). I don't think there's anything better in life than to not only play hockey, but if you do something that you love, I wish everybody could do it in their life. If your job is something you hate, and you just hate eight hours of your day, you’ve got 16 left, and you’re just killing your life. I was so lucky and so blessed that God gave me the ability to play, and my parents put me in that position and did everything for me to play hockey. So, that's why I kind of answered that I'm kind of afraid of it, they don't like me here. Plus, I don't really enjoy it… I don't know how to explain it. People will say, oh, he's crazy, why doesn’t he like that? I don't like that. I like to be on this side. I don't have to be seen. I just love the game. But on the other side, I'm so honored. When I think about it, I see how life goes by – people are just going to forget you in five years when you stop playing. That happens, because new guys come in. But this is going to be forever, you know? No matter if it’s 10 or 20 years later, when new fans come in, they’re going to look up and say hey, there was some Jagr that played here in Pittsburgh [laughs]. At least something is going to stay after I’m going to go.

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from Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

The Penguins gave up four goals in roughly nine minutes after a scoreless first and ended up losing the game 5-2. It’s the third straight defeat for the Penguins and their sixth in eight tries. Five of those six losses have come in regulation. So the Penguins aren’t even getting loser points.

That’s not good for a team that is struggling to climb the Eastern Conference standings from 12th place into the eighth and final playoff spot. That gap currently stands at seven points, with four teams between the Pens and the East’s second wild-card spot.

And Sullivan was left without answers as to what went wrong in the Penguins’ latest failed attempt to get back on track.

“This one’s a tough one for me to assess coming off the bench. Usually I’ve got a pretty good feel. It wasn’t like we were under siege or anything. We just gave up some untimely goals,” Sullivan said.

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via the Pittsburgh Penguins,

The Pittsburgh Penguins have signed forward Jesse Puljujarvi to a two-year contract, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.

The two-year contract runs through the end of the 2024-25 season and carries an average annual value of $800,000.

Puljujarvi, 25, signed a professional tryout with Pittsburgh on December 10 and has played in 13 games with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League this season, tallying four goals, five assists, nine points and a plus-8.

If Crosby should suddenly pull a 180 when he comes back from this 10-day break and says, “You know what? We aren’t winning. I do want outta here. Trade me,” I would have a problem with that....

I’m not naive enough to think that Crosby absolutely, positively has to stay in Pittsburgh until he retires. He has stated that would be his preference. Fenway Sports Group has stated the same thing. Unfortunately, if Gretzky can get traded, Crosby can play elsewhere too. Should Crosby make that move himself (for the reasons Hayes points out) when his contract expires after the 2025 season ends, so be it.

Crosby’s status as the franchise’s greatest and most important player, aside from Lemieux, will be unimpacted. He will have given 20 years and three championships of service. And if he wants to play somewhere else after that, with a franchise that is closer to Cup competition, then we’ll just have to deal with it.

-Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Sidney Crosby. Benz has more on this topic.

from Mark Madden of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

The Penguins slowed down noticeably in the third period at Vegas.

That couldn’t be because they spent three nights prior there, could it? Why did the Penguins get to Vegas so early? They had their rookie party, but don’t really have any rookies. They canceled practice Thursday.

The Penguins aren’t collapsing but aren’t improving.

The same problems linger with no end in sight. They’re poor three-on-three, having lost their last three overtimes. The power play has converted just six times in its last 50 attempts.

The penalty-kill is excellent, having conceded just four goals in its last 36 tries.

The goaltending is good if inconsistent.

The bottom six don’t contribute enough, but you can’t get blood from a stone.

Lesser lights on defense like Ryan Graves, P.O Joseph and Chad Ruhwedel have experienced slight upticks in play. (Emphasis on “slight.”)

But the Penguins really have just three skaters they can count on: Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang and Jake Guentzel. Marcus Pettersson, too, in a Steady Eddie-type fashion. (Guentzel, a free agent at season’s end, might get swapped by the March 8 trade deadline unless the Penguins make a compelling on-ice case to keep him. So far, they’re not.)

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from The Daily Faceoff,

With the Pittsburgh Penguins struggling and sitting seventh in the Metropolitan Division with a record of 14-13-3, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss the acquisition of Erik Karlsson and how it has not been the fit the Penguins ultimately were looking for.

Frank Seravalli: My loser is the Pittsburgh Penguins acquiring Erik Karlsson. They have struggled well this year and we have documented their powerplay issues. For a team when you look at the Eastern Conference standings, is in thirteenth place, it’s kind of tough for one of the oldest rosters in the league to add a player of Karlsson’s age who isn’t putting up the point total at the pace he was last season at 100 points.

Frank Seravalli: The fit has not been fantastic on the powerplay and to think about three more years of Karlsson at $10 million per year and giving up your first-round pick already in the process when you might miss the playoffs again, I don’t know how the Penguins dig themselves out of this. I’ve said it before not revisionist history, when I looked at the Penguins last year I didn’t say they needed a 100-point defenseman and powerplay specialist to come in and help that team. I don’t see it then and I don’t see it now.

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from Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

When Penguins president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas sat down Tuesday in Tampa with broadcaster Josh Getzoff for his weekly radio show, Dubas said Wednesday would be “a massive game for us” following a frustrating loss in Philadelphia, and “indicative of where were at” as a team.

Dubas added that he felt their response their next time out would “be instructive to how we dictate the course of where we go in the second half of the year.”

Well, if Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning really was an indication, the only excitement this spring will be at the NHL’s annual draft lottery.

The Penguins answered Dubas’ candid comments with another sloppy, uninspired performance. They were outplayed in all three phases at Amalie Arena.

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from Tim Benz of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

Coach Mike Sullivan’s power play was 0 for 3 (with one total shot on goal) in that regard Monday, extending the club’s drought to 11 straight games without a power play tally. That stretch has featured 29 consecutive empty opportunities.

That’s despite the fact that the team’s power play units can include the likes of Sidney Crosby, Jake Guentzel, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang and Bryan Rust.

“I’ve been asked that question a lot recently,” Rust said of the power play. “If I had a really good answer for you, I would give you a really good answer. Everybody who’s on that unit, (has) been on that unit, thinking about that unit, coaching that unit, is really upset with how things are going. We’re trying our best to get going, and things aren’t going. So, we’ve got to just keep working.”

The team’s two consecutive OT losses to the Flyers have been particularly galling through the lens of the power play. Just one man-up goal in eight tries could’ve made the difference between a regulation win against the cross-state rivals and an overtime defeat in both cases.

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from Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

Two years ago, he was pumped to sign with the Red Wings in his adopted home of Michigan, where he played junior hockey with the Plymouth Whalers.

He would get to play with one of his good friends, Dylan Larkin, and some of the other Detroit players with whom he trained in previous offseasons. And fresh off a season in Carolina in which he was a Calder Trophy finalist, he was getting a chance to be a No. 1 netminder for the first time in the NHL.

But after a promising start, things went off the rails. He got lit up several times that first season. Then Detroit demoted Nedeljkovic to the minor leagues in 2022-23. He spent three months in Grand Rapids, waiting for a call back to the NHL. It came in March. He played better. But it was too little, too late.

Looking back on his time with Detroit and where things went wrong, Nedeljkovic admitted this week that he put too much pressure on himself to perform.

“And when things weren’t going well, it just kind of snowballed,” he said. “Mentally, I wasn’t able to get out of my own way. So I really just tried to take a step back this summer, enjoy every day and look at every day as a new day and a new challenge to be better on the ice, in the gym and mentally, as well.”

Nedeljkovic has gotten a fresh start with the Penguins, who signed him to a one-year deal. So far Nedeljkovic has clicked with goalie coach Andy Chiodo, who preaches the mental side of the position perhaps even more than technique.

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from Mark Madden of t5he Pittsburgh Penguin Review,

When the Penguins kept the core three together, it guaranteed the Penguins would ultimately go splat.

A few disclaimers:

• Trading Evgeni Malkin in, say, 2018 for the huge return he would have fetched would have been no guarantee that the Penguins wouldn’t go splat. But it would have provided a legitimate chance to rebuild around Sidney Crosby and maybe win again.

• The Penguins may not be going splat just yet, though warning signs are plentiful. It is, however, 100% inevitable.

• The Penguins won’t avoid going splat, however temporarily, via changing their on-ice method. They refuse to do that. They will play fast despite getting slow. (Barring a coaching change.)

• Going splat is no insult to your precious fandom. No team wins forever. The Penguins were legit threats to win the Stanley Cup every year between 2008-18, doing so three times and making another final. Be grateful.

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from Dave Molinari of Pittsburgh Hockey Now,

The sample size is small, just nine games, but the Pittsburgh Penguins figure that’s enough time to assess what Erik Karlsson can give them.

“He is the player we thought we were getting,” coach Mike Sullivan said.

Well, to some extent, anyway.

Karlsson’s offensive output, two goals and four assists, isn’t bad, but that’s nowhere near the pace that would be required for him to match the 101 points he put up in San Jose last season, when he earned his third Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman....

“I think there’s another level to his game,” Sullivan said. “We’re going through a little bit of a feeling-out process, but (Karlsson) is a guy who can drive offense. He can drive offense 5-on-5. He can drive offense on the power play. That’s what we envisioned when we acquired him.

“We’re working through a process here to try to capture his very best game. … We all have seen elements of his ability to drive offense. We’re hoping we’ll get a little more consistency with that throughout the course of a 60-minute hockey game, but he’s a guy we’re excited about having and we have to figure out how to maximize his ability level.”

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from Dave Molinari of Pittsburgh Hockey Now,

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ record says they are in denial, that losing six of their first nine games this season is irrefutable evidence of the kind of team they are.

The look in their eyes and the firmness in their voices conveys a very different message.

Players remain adamant that they have performed better than going 3-6 would indicate. That, as Ryan Graves put it succinctly after practice Tuesday, “we just keep finding ways to lose.”

No one can dispute that they’ve been very good at that so far.

Their 4-3 loss to Anaheim Monday night at PPG Paints Arena, when the Ducks not only survived an extended 5-on-3 power play for the Penguins late in the third period, but scored a shorthanded game-winner with 12.8 seconds left in regulation, was the kind of defeat that could not only leave a mark, but tattoo an indelible impression on the psyche of the losing club.

“Those ones sting, when they go that way,” Sidney Crosby said.

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from Mark Madden of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

ESPN recently ranked the NHL’s Top 100 players and came nowhere close to getting it right.

Fifty experts were said to have been consulted. But I doubt the guy that did it even knows 50 experts. He’s a low-budget hack who tweets more about Star Wars than hockey. He gets paid minimum wage so ESPN can give Pat McAfee a trillion dollars. He’s exemplary of ESPN’s bare-bones commitment to hockey.

John Buccigross immediately said on X that he had not been consulted for the list. That reveals something.

Buccigross is excellent. But when you get past him, Steve Levy, Linda Cohn and maybe a few others, the hockey acumen at ESPN drops off a cliff.

The Pittsburgh Penguins got badly dissed in the rankings, most grotesquely via Evgeni Malkin being left off altogether. Not even honorable mention.

Malkin, 37, isn’t in his prime, though he started the season with seven points in four games to rank second in NHL scoring as of this writing.

But Malkin is for sure better than Tomas Hertl, Ryan O’Reilly, Owen Power, Sergei Bobrovsky, Morgan Rielly, J.T. Miller … you’ve got to go up several dozen from the bottom of ESPN’s list before you even run into any remote debate.

The previously cited low-budget hack then did a podcast where he admitted having erred by not including Malkin. In wrestling parlance, this is called shooting yourself into a work. Hey, I thought this was the result of polling 50 experts. Why are you apologizing?

Malkin was also left off the NHL’s all-time top 100 when the league celebrated its centennial in 2017.

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from Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

Is it just me or are we giving too much of a pass to a team that is living off its Stanley Cup wins in 2016 and 2017?

Those championships were incredible, but they seem like a lifetime ago.

The Penguins missed the playoffs last season for the first time in 17 years. No big deal, right? That impressive streak wasn’t going to last forever. But how about the previous four seasons when the Penguins were eliminated in the first round? Their record in those four series was 6-15.

Yes, awful.

I would have made a lot of money the past five seasons if I had violated my No. 1 rule when it comes to the Penguins:

Never bet against Sid and Sully.

I still have a hard time betting against Sidney Crosby and Mike Sullivan. Crosby is one of the five greatest players of all-time. Sullivan is a Hall of Fame-caliber coach. I can’t respect a coach or a player more.

But the two — especially Crosby — are running out of time for their team to be a legitimate Cup contender.

This season has to be their last, best chance.

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