Pittsburgh Penguins Training Camp Battles. Room For Youth?
After a few months of horse trading, the Pittsburgh Penguins Training Camp 2015 opens this week. With physicals tomorrow and sophomore Head Coach Mike Johnston’s first practice of the season scheduled Friday, the Penguins enter camp with loads of forward talent and yet unmade decisions. Unlike most teams, the Penguins issue up front will not be if Johnston possesses someone to fill a role, but how many choices.
All-Star acquisition Phil Kessel will garner most headlines, locally and internationally. Russian free agent Sergei Plotkinov will garner attention from coaches anxious to provide Evgeni Malkin with a Russian playmate, and fans will debate the third center battle between Eric Fehr and Nick Bonino. However, decisions on battles to be third line wingers and the fourth line could do as much to define the 2015-16 Penguins as the decision on which line to place Kessel.
Assuming a Top 6 of Perron-Crosby-Kessel and Plotkinov-Malkin-Hornqvist, there will be more than 10 players battling for four unsettled spots. Veterans Chris Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, and Matt Cullen will battle physical players Bobby Farnham and Tom Sestito, and young talent like Scott Wilson, Oskar Sundqvist, Conor Sheary and even once heralded Beau Bennett for those precious open spots.
Which philosophy will Johnston and the Pittsburgh Penguins ultimately choose? Will they attempt the holy grail of the salary cap age, four scoring lines? Will Johnston use physical players on the third line and roll a fourth line, which plays more than 10 minutes per night while specializing in puck possession and defense? The Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks chose this strategy. Will Johnston have the courage to use a few of those unsettled spots to round the roster specifically with youth and grit?
The extraordinary off-season job of remaking a stale roster by GM Jim Rutherford has provided Johnston the tools to choose from all of the above and proceed with NHL caliber players. However, the path he will choose and the one they need are, most likely, diametrically opposed.
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For comparison sake, much of last season the Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks used pestering Kris Versteeg and punishing 6-foot-4, 235-pound Bryan Bickell on the 3rd line. On the 4th line, the unpredictable Daniel Carcillo played with emerging puck possession youngsters Marcus Kruger and Ben Smith, who was dealt at the deadline. Carcillo’s career effectively ended with concussion and injury issues last spring, but not before he logged 40 games for the ‘Hawks.
It is this philosophical decision and ability to properly mix talent, youth and physicality, the Penguins organization has failed for much of the Crosby-Malkin era. Like soup without a pinch of salt, homemade marinara without a few basil leaves, or a fall beer without pumpkin spices, to lack youth, strength, or physical play is typically to fall flat.
There are not advanced stats to quantify the energy a player like Bobby Farnham can bring to a lineup, though there are stats which show the positive number of power plays created. There are not stats to measure how a few young guys, desperate to stay in the NHL, change the locker room. Pucks and thus games are won in those extra steps. Nor are there stats to measure how many fewer liberties or more space opposing teams would give to Sidney Crosby with a ham-fisted player, who knows his role without being told, like Tom Sestito lurking.
In fact, it is the common refrain from talented, but unsuccessful teams that “we’re too easy to play against”. Superior talent, without supporting intangibles, will be overwhelmed. It is why the heavy Boston Bruins, Los Angeles Kings and Blackhawks have traded Stanley Cups since 2010.
Players like Farnham or Sestito won’t make advanced stats devotees salivate. In fact, they often bring derision, but it is beyond the numbers those types of players make their mark, literally and figuratively.
Oct 19, 2013; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Deryk Engelland (5) and Vancouver Canucks left wing Tom Sestito (29) fight during the first period at the CONSOL Energy Center. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Indications are the Pittsburgh Penguins believe the game is changing and four scoring lines are possible. Rutherford has stocked the cupboard with enough successful veterans, like Cullen, that Johnston will be able to create four lines with minimal risk of youth or guys who struggle to put the puck in the net. In the high pressure world of professional sports, it seems predetermined Johnston will follow the siren song of veteran over youth. Known over unknown. That approach will be successful for much or all of the regular season.
Unfortunately, regular season success at the expense of playoff success is a song Penguins fans have heard before. If the Penguins organization recognizes the need for youth and strength, the wealth of assembled talent could allow the Penguins to continue experimenting, competing and evaluating well into the season.
Finding a different mix of production, youth, and physicality will create a new song, which could well result in a dramatically longer season than previous. The necessary ingredients are present. Ignoring those ingredients, as it appears may happen, will result in the same type of ending which has become common since 2010.
Next: One Big Miss for the Pens This Summer