2014-15 Pittsburgh Penguins Preview

Five years after winning the franchise’s third Stanley Cup title, the Penguins flamed out in the playoffs yet again last season, taking a 3-1 lead over the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference semifinals before losing the next three games and the series.

Coach Dan Bylsma lamented his team’s lack of a “knockout punch” a year after acknowledging when the Penguins were swept in the conference finals by Boston that his team was built to win championships and anything less was a failure.

Bylsma, the team’s all-time coaching wins leader, was fired in June, not long after general manager Ray Shero was shown the door. The Penguins never missed the playoffs under Bylsma (six seasons) and Shero (eight), whose teams gained a reputation as regular-season contenders-turned-postseason disappointments.

Shero was replaced by former Carolina Hurricanes general manager and president Jim Rutherford, who then fired Bylsma and hired first-time NHL head coach Mike Johnston from the Western Hockey League.

So the leadership is different as the Penguins head into their second season in the Metropolitan Division, but the same question remains: Can a team that is clearly talented enough to win it all get back over the top?

FORWARDS – The talent, of course, starts on offense with centers Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, who were first and second in the NHL last season in points per game, with Crosby winning his second Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL MVP.

The Penguins have long had enough offense to assuage concerns about defense and goaltending in the regular season, but the output hasn’t always been there from a strictly statistical point of view in the playoffs.

Crosby, who averaged 1.30 points per game in the regular season with 36 goals and 68 assists in 80 games, averaged almost half that in 13 playoff games with one goal and eight assists. The goal, in Game 3 against the Rangers, snapped a 13-game playoff drought.

So Crosby receives much of the criticism for Pittsburgh’s flameouts, but Shero and Bylsma can equally be blamed for questions over the team’s perceived lack of depth.

In addition to Crosby and Malkin, 35-goal scorer Chris Kunitz is back. The team’s fourth-leading scorer last season, James Neal, was traded to Nashville for forwards Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling.

The Penguins also signed former 20-goal scorers Blake Comeau and Steve Downie.

DEFENSE – Breakout defenseman Matt Niskanen parlayed a career season for the Penguins into a seven-year, $40 million deal with the Washington Capitals in the offseason.

Longtime Pittsburgh defenseman Brooks Orpik also left to sign with the Caps as a free agent.

But Kris Letang and Paul Martin remain, as does second-year star Olli Maatta, and the Penguins brought in Christian Ehrhoff on a $4 million deal, adding him to a corps that improved from 12th to 10th in the NHL last season in goals allowed per game.

GOALTENDING – Pittsburgh also inked former Sharks and Coyotes backup Thomas Greiss to play behind career bull’s-eye Marc-Andre Fleury in net.

Fleury, 29, enters his 11th season for the Penguins with the same question hanging over his head: Can he perform well in the postseason?

A year after he was benched for the rest of the playoffs during a first-round series against the Islanders, Fleury, who is signed through this season, had an almost identical save percentage and goal-against average in the regular season and playoffs.

The Penguins also have 27-year-old Jeff Zatkoff, who played his first 20 NHL games last season with a .912 save percentage.

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE – The roller coaster isn’t a perfect metaphor for the Penguins. But a roller coaster built to wow that sometimes doesn’t perform as it should? That works quite well.

With so much talent on offense, the Penguins are all but guaranteed to make the playoffs. As always, the lingering question is what they do when they get there.

That’s what every Penguins season is about now, and this one begins with new blood at the top.

Johnston was previously an assistant with Vancouver and Los Angeles and had a lot of success in the WHL, taking the Portland Winterhawks to four consecutive league finals. Rutherford was in charge of the Hurricanes when they won the Stanley Cup in 2006.

Is it the shakeup the Penguins needed? It will almost certainly take more than 82 games to find out.

Categorized in: NHL