Penguins Update: Is Rutger McGroarty the new Brooks Orpik?
No sooner do I announce my semi-retirement from blogging then I get an idea for an article.
I know. The incongruity of it all…lol.
Anyway. A thought occurred to me this morning and I figured I’d commit fingertips to keyboard and flesh it out. To wit…is recently acquired Rutger McGroarty the new Brooks Orpik?
No, I haven’t lost my mind. And, yes, I fully realize the former is a forward with scoring pedigree while the latter was a decidedly stay-at-home defenseman possessing little in the way of offensive chops.
It’s the type of player they are that begs me to draw my comparison, not to mention the accompanying shift in organizational philosophy.
But first, step into the WABAC machine with me and travel back in time. In the late 1990s, then-GM Craig Patrick kept rolling the dice on skill-oriented Euros with his first-round picks. To that end, Robert Dome (’97), Milan Kraft (’98) and Konstantin Koltsov (’99) came and went in fairly rapid succession, each without having much impact.
Then…during the 2000 Entry Draft, Patrick made a hard right turn at the draft table and selected Orpik with the 18th overall pick.