Craig Patrick has often shared his recollection of how, in trading Mark Recchi in the winter of 1992, he knew he was sending a future Hall of Famer to Philadelphia and refused to be bothered by that because he knew his defending Stanley Cup champions were sagging, he knew his roster would benefit from selling a surplus to address a shortcoming, and he had confidence the Penguins could still -- with a push -- roll through another playoff run.
Which, of course, they did, with the ultimate result.
My friends, Jim Rutherford needs to be the Patrick of 1992 pretty much as soon as possible.
Because it's getting cold outside, and every passing flat-line performance -- notably the 4-0 thorough waste of time with the Ducks on this Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena -- painfully illustrates that this roster is well past worrying about its next third-line center.
It's going to take more. Much more.
It's going to take sending out bona fide pieces in a major trade or trades, possibly even a foundational piece or two. And it'll probably take more than that, if you're of the mind -- and I'm getting there -- that maybe what's needed most is a transfusion of the supporting cast with a few energy-type AHL forwards.
Not that the latter would be easy.
"Hard to do with roster restrictions," as Rutherford told me after this game, and he's right. The salary cap and waivers aren't any GM's friend when moving players up and down.
Still, whatever's done has to happen on a significant scale.
Unless, of course, anyone wants to see more of this:
Or, for that matter, to hear more of this:
"We all need to look in the mirror and be better," Mike Sullivan spoke with surprising calm to a roomful of reporters afterward. "We've shown signs of it, where we put some games together, where we're playing to the identity that we've had when this group has had success. But we haven't done it nearly consistently enough."
Seen and heard all that before?
Yeah, well, the needle's stuck for a reason. It's Christmas Eve, and the Penguins are saddled with more losses than wins -- 18-15-4 is really 18-19 with the so-called loser points included -- and they're looking not only like a team that won't make the playoffs ... but also one that won't come close.
And that's for the simple reason, at least from this view, that they don't come close in anything anymore on the ice.
Rewind all those golden chances stopped by endless great goaltending, dissect all their defensive breakdowns, isolate on a single culprit like Kris Letang -- and boy, did he earn those rare boos he heard Saturday -- but this all comes down to the ugliest truth of all: They lose almost all of their footraces. They're slow. They're sluggish, even static. And they aren't mentally sharp, either.
We don't have to wonder what this team is when it's fresh. We've witnessed it right before both of those parades: They're in opponents' faces, all over the puck, cycling through the attacking zone to keep possession, defending with equal vigor ... they're basically what those gutty Golden Knights are now, except with generational stars at the forefront.
These Penguins aren't those Penguins. They've got no gas. No oomph. Nothing but the odd burst.
And with all due respect to these past two summers, they won't -- no, can't -- achieve that again as currently constructed. This won't be about adding Jordan Staal or any such uber-two-way center and addressing a solitary blank on the depth chart. There are a bunch of blanks, and that's because the whole lot of them is now The Skating Dead, basically.
Get this: The bulk of this group has now logged exactly 250 games since the 2015-16 opener in Dallas in a span of 808 days. That's an NHL game every 3.2 days ... including the offseason!
That's not an excuse. It's an irrefutable fact, one that's defining everything we're watching.
After this game, all the players stayed put at their stalls for several extra minutes while having a heart-to-heart with Sullivan, the coaching staff and each other. The emphasis was on the slow starts, as usual.
As Olli Maatta told me when I asked about the fatigue factor, "I don't know. Things just aren't going our way. And it's not easy to win if you fall behind."
I asked Letang, too: "I think, right from the start, we were not playing the right way, holding onto pucks ... we didn't get the puck deep ... and we kind of sunk in our game."
Sullivan stressed it, as well, when asked about following up that passionate Columbus showing with this stinker: "It's disappointing. We were hoping we'd get some traction from it, you know? Obviously, it didn't work out that way. It's tough when you start the game the way we started. We spotted them two goals."
In the first 10:35, no less.
"We, as a group and as a coaching staff, have got to do a better job of being prepared for the drop of the puck," Sullivan continued. "When you get down two goals early, it makes for an uphill battle. And there's been a fair amount of those this year."
That's all well and good. It's not like the slow starts aren't a problem. But they're a symptom, not the cause. And squeezing sticks into sawdust won't solve that. Only new players will, either via major trade or via mass promotion.
To the latter, I won't push for Daniel Sprong. Not yet. The Penguins' development people have a proven record, and I'll trust their judgment that promoting him now could stunt his progress. Believe it or not, that matters more than a short-term team need. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin won't be around forever.
However, as was vibrantly illustrated in training camp and the preseason, there's no shortage of organizational firecracker sizzle among the younger prospects at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, even if most lack top-six NHL skill. At least they'd offer something rather than the current nothing. Teddy Blueger, for example, wowed the Pittsburgh coaching staff with his ability to create in traffic, and he's scored three goals the past two days. Thomas Di Pauli's been efficient at both ends, and he's popped nine goals in 24 games. He's also fast and comes with loads of grit.
Listen to what Di Pauli told our Taylor Haase a couple weeks ago: "Something the Penguins value is speed and grittiness on pucks and getting on pucks first, and that’s what the coaching staff is trying to instill in every player down here in Wilkes-Barre, too. The more you can show off your speed and show that you can protect the puck with speed, the better your chances are to get called up.”
Right. Players like that. Two or three, preferably.
Remember how the cumulative recall of Bryan Rust, Conor Sheary, Scott Wilson and Tom Kuhnhackl rattled the veterans out of a lull two seasons ago?
Remember how so little was expected from those kids right until ... you know, they were raising the Cup in San Jose?
As for trades, to put it bluntly, Rutherford needs to put everyone on the table. At least onto his potentially available pile. Everyone except Crosby and Malkin. He needs to recognize, as Patrick did a quarter-century ago, that the roster in front of him won't pull off a three-peat. And that he can't just move Ian Cole, who was back in the lineup only because Matt Hunwick was ill, though he'll surely be the first. He'll need to go big. Partly because he'll need to compensate for having less than $1 million in cap space. Partly because he needs to move some of these beaten bodies as badly as he needs to replace them.
This will be new for Rutherford, at least in his Pittsburgh tenure. Revisit his in-season acquisitions at the past two deadlines, and they've mostly been of the Ron-Hainsey-for-a-second-rounder variety. He hasn't had to do anything more, just the same as Sullivan hasn't had to do any more than urge everyone to simply try harder.
The latter approach won't cut it now. The fire gets rekindled for a night, maybe when a seriously annoying opponent like the Blue Jackets grabs everyone's attention. But when it's the Ducks ... pfffffft.
Sullivan can lay all that on himself, as he did again Saturday, saying, "Part of my responsibility as their coach is to make sure that identity is clear and defined, and we haven't played enough to it this year."
But only Rutherford can put the actual air back in that balloon.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Ducks, PPG Paints Arena, Dec. 23, 2017. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPSWHAT'S BREWING
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