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Penguins Roundtable Part II: The Forwards
by Tony on 09/01/10 at 07:11 PM ET
Comments (2)
Last week’s Part I of our annual Penguins Roundtable discussed the new-look defense. This week Part II will focus on the forwards.
Once again, the participants:
Rick Moldovanyi (RM) - The Pensblog
Jesse Marshall (JM) - Faceoff Factor
Brian Metzer (BM) - From The Point
Mike Colligan (MC) - The Hockey Writers
Sean Leahy (SL) - Yahoo! Puck Daddy
Jimmy Rixner (JR) - SB Nation Pittsburgh
Tony Ferrante (TF) - The Confluence at Kukla’s Korner
For all of the moaning about the Penguins’ wingers and specifically the need for that elusive “scoring winger for Crosby” (I’m as guilty as anyone), the Pens scored the 5th most goals in the NHL last season, and the 4th most at even strength.
That said, the Penguins will need to replace veteran forwards like Bill Guerin and Ruslan Fedotenko. Unless GM Ray Shero makes one last roster addition before training camp, the Pens may be forced to hope that forwards like Tyler Kennedy or Max Talbot, both of whom struggled last season, can fill a top-six scoring forward slot.
Without providing all four lines, how do you feel about the Penguins’ forwards, and what do you see as some potential problem areas?
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(RM) - In the salary cap world, a team can’t afford to have three top level centers and a roster of quality wingers. We all know that. However, scoring even strength goals hasn’t really been a problem for the Penguins recently and it doesn’t look like it will this year either.
That said, the Pens offense outside of Crosby and Malkin will depend on three things:
1) Whether or not Jordan Staal is healthy and if he’s moved up to play alongside Malkin. If Malkin and Staal click once again, it could be big.
2) Pascal Dupuis will more than likely find himself back on the first line beside Crosby and Kunitz. How he handles this role will determine how effective that first line is. Crosby and Dupuis play well together, but he’s far from the elite goal scoring scoring winger we’ve all been waiting for.
3) The Talbot/Kennedy/Tangradi situation. One of these players will find himself on the second line with Staal and Malkin. Will any of them rise to the challenge? Personally, I feel that Matt Cooke could see some time on that line as well, especially if the aforementioned three players struggle.
The Penguins’ offense should be fine. After all, it’s not like Fedotenko and Ponikarovsky lit up the scoreboard last season. Guerin will be missed, but his departure leaves an opening for a younger player to step up. Whether or not anyone does will remain a question, possibly the biggest question heading into training camp.
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(JM) - When you have this much money tied up two superstar centers, you’re going to have to be thin somewhere. For the Penguins, the constant haunting is stemming from the wing position. Chris Kunitz is truly the only perennial scoring threat on the top two lines as a winger, but he’s also no Dany Heatley either. The good news for the Penguins is that they were plagued with injury last year, and should have better performances out of some of their young stars. Max Talbot was out for the first three quarters of last season with various recurring issues, and Tyler Kennedy had his mystery “undisclosed” injury that sporadically kept him out of the line-up and clearly affected his play. Not that either of those two should go on a 25+ scoring rampage, but depth is never bad. It’ll be interesting to see what Dan Bylsma does with Evgeni Malkin. If Staal moves up a notch, Malkin could be our big winger that we’ve been looking for all this time.
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(BM) - It seems that the question comes up every season that Sidney Crosby has been in the league—especially since he has been joined by Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal – who are they going to get to play wing on the top line? Though it seems that the role is filled year after year by revolving door of average wings, the Penguins still manage to finish amongst the league’s leaders in goals scored. That is a tribute to their three center system and the fact that their superstars lurk down the middle. Crosby and Malkin, albeit in an off year, scored the bulk of the Penguins goals last season. Though the dynamic duo didn’t have a teammate that notched more than 21, they got fairly consistent production from the rest of the line-up, as 10 other players scored 8 or more goals.
Yes, losing someone like Bill Guerin will hurt this team, but it will do so more in the form of the leadership he provided on and off of the ice. It was time for him to move on. Ruslan Fedotenko was an abomination last season and though he was a popular player during the team’s Cup run two years ago, there is a reason that he is still sitting on the sidelines waiting for his next job. Their combined goal production of 39 goals should easily be offset by the probable second line pairing of Malkin and Staal.
This will also be a make or break season for the likes of Max Talbot and Tyler Kennedy. There are players waiting in the wings to take their roster spots and they will really have to show that they belong on this team… and yes that may entail playing and producing on the top two lines. I think that each player is capable of at least 20 goals, which would be more than the team is probably penciling them in for at this point. It isn’t perfect situation, but when you look at all of the bodies that the team has to work with they should be able to build some pretty effective lines. If a problem is to emerge, it may come not on the top two lines, but on the bottom two, where there are 7 or 8 players jockeying for bottom six jobs on the parent team.
Though there isn’t a ton of sexiness behind the big three, the Penguins have intriguing options sitting in the cupboard and it is going to make for an interesting training camp.
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(MC) - Every team would love to add a “scoring winger”, but when you have $17.4m tied up in two forwards your options are limited. GM Ray Shero has adjusted his strategy in recent seasons as he’s realized there’s no reason to take a risk on a $3m+ free agent winger (Miroslav Satan). Instead, he can sign three or four high-risk, high-upside options for the same amount of money. He just needs one to pan out and he’s fine as opposed to rolling the dice on a higher priced option that may or may not work out.
It also doesn’t make sense to sacrifice assets and the money required to trade for a high-priced winger right now. Chemistry is impossible to predict and you can’t tell if a certain player will click with Crosby or not. That’s the beauty of Shero’s deadline deals. The wingers he’s traded for all had expiring contracts which allowed the Penguins to see if a player fits or not before committing to a full season. Bill Guerin worked out two years ago and he was retained for another season. Alexei Ponikarovsky didn’t fit, but the damage was limited. The Penguins let him walk and put that money to use to shore up other needs this summer.
The problem area I see is depth, especially if injuries mount. The Penguins can’t afford to lose Crosby, Malkin, or Staal for extended periods. San Jose gets a lot of heat for falling short in recent seasons, but the past two springs they’ve had star players (Heatley, Marleau) suffering through injuries at playoff time. The Penguins have been fortunate to suffer their critical injuries during the regular season, but that’s the huge risk I see with such a top heavy set of forwards.
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(SL) - Until the Pens’ salary cap situation becomes a bit more manageable (whenever that day comes), we’ll have to live with Ray Shero’s “plug in and play” mentality regarding the forwards. As much as fans would like to have top-flight wingers for the top two lines and for Sid, look who they won the Cup with in 2009—not exactly HoFers around Crosby.
Now with about $1.7 million left until the cap ceiling, I’d expect them to stay pat, hopefully get something out of Eric Tangradi in his first year and hope that Tyler Kennedy and Max Talbot step up their games. Come the 2011 trade deadline, you can sure Shero will once again dip into the market for someone to flank Sid and Geno on the top two lines. Hopefully this time around the cost will be a little less than giving up Luca Caputi for Alexei Ponikarovsky last March.
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(JR) - We all know the Penguins weakness are their wingers, but if Chris Kunitz can stay healthy he is solid, reliable and a 50-60 point guy. Pascal Dupuis always gives an honest effort and can chip in goals here and there. Add Sidney Crosby and that’s a first line that’s tough to play against, good down low and in the corners and is a scoring threat while not sacrificing anything defensively.
Throw Jordan Staal and Evgeni Malkin together for the second line and then use any combination of Max Talbot, Eric Tangradi Tyler Kennedy or any other forward who’s playing hot. Malkin’s due for a bounce back year, and Staal had his career high goals total as an 18 year old on Malkin’s wing, so no matter who fills out the 2nd line it ought to be a much better situation for Malkin this season than it was last year.
It’s also important to remember: the team only has to survive like this until February. If no more free agency signings are made, Pittsburgh’s likely to have about $1 million in cap space, even if they decide to keep 13 forwards and 7 defensemen full-time on the NHL roster. This will give a lot more flexibility for trade deadline pickups than in past seasons. GM Ray Shero has made it a staple to upgrade his forwards at the deadline, and I’d definitely expect it again.
As long as 2011’s new face(s) are more effective than Alexei Ponikarovsky, the Penguins should be set up nicely (personnel wise at least) for a chance at another deep run in the playoffs.
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(TF) - Everyone makes good points when mentioning the salary cap, it would be quite difficult to bring in the classic sniper that playmakers like Crosby and Malkin would love to play with. So for the most part any talk of the Penguins bringing in forwards like Paul Kariya were basically poppycock right from the start. But while Bill Guerin had lost a step or two, Ruslan Fedotenko had an absolutely horrendous year and Alexei Ponikarovsky was a bad mistake, it’s not like the players that are currently listed to replace them are going to automatically light the lamp on any sort of regular basis. Tyler Kennedy has been mentioned as a possible top six forward, but he did a whole lot of skating and not nearly enough scoring last year, albeit battling injuries. Speaking of injuries, Max Talbot had a year that he’d like to forget, and there is no guarantee that he’ll rebound to a level that Head Coach Dan Bylsma would like to see on his scoring lines. There’s also been lots of chatter around the Penguins blogosphere about rookie Eric Tangradi not only making the roster, but securing a winger spot as well. While the Pens haven’t had a decent power forward since Ryan Malone (almost said Kevin Stevens) and we as fans would love to watch Tangradi blossom under either Crosby’s or Malkin’s wing, I doubt that either Bylsma nor Shero would rely on that possibility as a probability. So unless something drastically changes before October 7th, it appears that the scoresheets will read Crosby, Malkin and everyone else.
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Uggh. I hate all this talk of Staal moving up to play with Malkin.
- The strength of the third line was puck possession, and that it was also a scoring threat. I don’t know why people think Talbot can move up there and still have an effective third line. If Talbot can get healthy, maybe he can surprise me. But more than likely, the Pens will have a third line that had over 50 goals to a 3rd line that will be lucky to get 30 goals. Can you imagine if the Pens have a 3rd line of Asham/Talbot/Cooke? That line would never score a goal.
- A big part of the problem is Tyler Kennedy. As I said above, the ability to cycle and control the puck was the strength of the third line during the Cup run. Many times, TK ruins the chance to cycle because he enters the zone and fires a weak wrist shot into the goalies chest. He does not have a good enough shot to shoot from anywhere (like Ovechkin), but he does it anyway. He is a cycle-killer. No chance for puck possession when he is in “shoot everything” mode.
- Everyone is all about moving Staal to wing to play with Malkin, or moving Malkin to wing to play with Staal. Why do that? If Staal plays wing, you are killing what he is known for - being a very good two-way player. Why take away Staal’s defensive skills by putting him on the wing? The same goes for Geno - he is an underrated defensive player. He is also a rover that goes all over the ice looking for loose pucks. He is puck hungry, and he’ll go wherever he needs to in order to get it - behind the net, in the corners, it doesn’t matter. He can’t do that if he is moved to wing. I think moving Staal or Malkin to wing and putting them on the same line is an awful idea. Although I have been wrong before.
Posted by Link_Gaetz on 09/02/10 at 06:16 AM ET