How I Wish the Penguins Could Break out of Mike Sullivan’s Mold
I’m going to start this post with a well-deserved shout-out to Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now for his outstanding article, “How the Penguins Can Change the Story, Be Competitive.”
To his credit, Dan scored a direct hit on some of our most egregious issues.
“The Penguins need to build a little hate, slather it with some anger, then top it off with a generous portion of coarse resistance,” he wrote.
Amen, Dan.
I confess, his article set my blood a boilin.’
For years I’ve been taking the team to task for its abject lack of fire and hunger, along with an almost pathological avoidance of physical play (and players). The latter due in no small part to coach Mike Sullivan’s restrictive personnel preferences.
Scrappy is okay.
Genuine toughness is not.
A “heavy” player in Sully’s book? Former black-and-golder Zach Aston-Reese. In stark NHL reality, a mere middleweight.
Ex-GM Jim Rutherford tried to introduce some real toughness and swagger to the lineup following our back-to-back Cups by adding heavyweight supreme Ryan Reaves and “The Big Rig,” 6’7” rearguard Jamie Oleksiak.