With Ray Shero and Dan Bylsma paying the price for the Penguins underachieving one too many times since winning the Stanley Cup finals back in 2009, there will be even more pressure on Pittsburgh captain and superstar Sidney Crosby next season. Crosby already admitted after the Pens’ most recent playoff loss, that he could’ve been better and helped prevent his team from blowing the 3-1 series lead they had over the Rangers in the second round of the playoffs. He will now face even more scrutiny as he plays for his fourth coach in Pittsburgh since his rookie season in 2005. But the man who many have compared Crosby to since his early teens believes he is ready for the increased pressure and credited him for accepting blame after the Penguins lost to the Rangers.
“That’s part of being the go-to guy,” the legendary Wayne Gretzky told Hockey Night In Canada columnist Mike Brophy. “You get to hold your hands out and accept the flowers when you are successful and you’d better be able to stand there and take the heat when things aren’t going your way.
“I was really proud that he stood up and said he didn’t play great and he wasn’t hurt,” Gretzky added. “I’m kind of tired to listening to players at the end of the playoffs making excuses that they weren’t physically at 100 percent because nobody is. Everybody plays with injuries. One year, Kevin Lowe played the entire playoffs with a cast on his wrist with a broken wrist. That’s part of it. This time of year, you hope you can overcome that exhaustion by the emotion and excitement.”
That’s high praise from ‘The Great One’ but well deserved. Say what you want about Crosby but no one can claim that he has ever shied away from criticism or refused to face the music. Now the key will be to have a spring where he doesn’t have to do that and to help his team once again play to their potential as they did in 2009.
— Crosby has now played for Eddie Olczyk, Michel Therrien and Dan Byslma. Who will be his fourth coach? Well my Penguins sources are quiet right now but I would keep an eye on their AHL coach John Hynes who has done a splendid job grooming Penguins prospects with the Wilkes Barre-Scranton Penguins. Also, Rangers assistant coach and former Penguin Ulf Samuelsson could be a sleeper candidate even with many reports linking him to the open job in Carolina.
–By no means is Jim Rutherford a bad hire as the Penguins new general manager but he was by all means the safe hire. A better but yes riskier hire might have been NBC hockey broadcaster and former Penguins assistant coach Pierre McGuire. A league source confirmed to “Murph’s Musings” that McGuire was offered the job but as many reports stated after Rutherford was hired, McGuire rejected the offer because he wanted more stability than the three-year contract Rutherford accepted. What this scribe can’t understand is the harsh criticism McGuire received for wanting a longer contract and for simply being a candidate for the job. Shouldn’t any incoming GM have the right to want more time to right the ship he’s been hired to take over? Also, there’s a feeling around some hockey insiders and league sources that Penguins ownership made it clear to all candidates that they wanted to play a more prominent role in hockey operations. That is their right and good for Rutherford if he is OK with that. But he is in the twilight of his management career and the younger McGuire would’ve been taking on his first GM job. McGuire had every right to want full autonomy if that was indeed to accept the offer. He also didn’t deserve the constant bashing on Twitter or repeated cheap shots from Pittsburgh Tribune columnist Dejan Kovacevic who should learn more about the subject of his bashing before firing away.
–What was great in the eyes of this scribe was the increased role that new assistant general managers Tom Fitzgerald and Billy Guerin will now have. Yes this Massachusetts native is always happy to see other Bay State natives succeed but these are two very good hockey minds and class acts.
–During the regular season, Fitzgerald told me on “Murphy’s Hockey Law” that the Penguins had no plans on trading defenceman Kris Letang but didn’t rule it out completely either. This is just a hunch here and complete speculation but that may change this summer and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Montreal native is moved. Obviously P.K. Subban‘s contract is the priority for the Canadiens but if they had the money after they locked up Subban, would they be willing to take on Letang’s contract which has seven years left on it and carries a $7.2 million cap hit annually?
