Barring a trade up, the Penguins will not be selecting in the first round of the NHL Draft for the fourth straight year. That eclipses the former mark of three years in a row without a No. 1 pick from 1977-79, when then-GM Baz Bastien, an impulsive sort, perennially dealt away his top pick in favor of proven veterans.
That strategy didn't work then, as Bastien's teams won one just playoff round during his tenure. But it certainly hasn't hurt Jim Rutherford. At least not yet, anyway. Dealing away picks, or assets, is just the price you have to pay to win two of the last three Stanley Cups:
• The Penguins haven't had a first-round pick since 2014 when Rutherford — hired just three weeks earlier — selected Kasperi Kapanen with the 22nd overall pick.
• A year later, Kapanen — who never played a game in a Pittsburgh sweater — was flipped to Toronto, along with the Penguins' 2016 first-round pick (30th overall), as part of the package that netted Phil Kessel.
• In 2015, Rutherford shipped his first-rounder (16th overall) to Edmonton to land David Perron, who was later used to acquire Carl Hagelin.
• In 2017, Rutherford dealt his first-round pick (31st overall) to St. Louis to acquire Ryan Reaves, who was then used to land Derick Brassard from Ottawa in a three-team trade with Vegas.
Obviously, Hagelin and Kessel were integral parts of the Penguins' consecutive championships. That alone makes those deals well worth it. And though Brassard didn't yield the desired result immediately, who's to say he won't next season or in 2019-20?
The Penguins' window to win with a core group that is now on the "wrong" side of 30 is closing but it shouldn't be shut for another 2-3 years. With that in mind, and an ownership group that's been willing to spend to the cap ceiling, Rutherford has been right to play for the here and now. He's gone all in on July 1 and at the trade deadline, most recently to get Brassard.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the Penguins would like to have a soft landing whenever it is that the primes of the careers of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Kessel, et al, run their course. They have proven early-to-mid 20-somethings like Matt Murray, Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust and promising youngsters like Daniel Sprong and Zach Aston-Reese to help cushion that fall.
But if Penguins history has shown anything, it's that the next best thing to being "all in" is to be "all out." The organization effectively gamed the system in the mid-80's to land Mario Lemieux and were fortunate again in the early 2000s to land Crosby and Malkin. Those were generational superstars, first and second overall picks, that don't come around often.
"Tanking" was the word that was used in Lemieux's time but more recently it's become known as "trusting the process." The Penguins were just ahead of their time in that regard.
As they found out then, there is no worse place to be in the NHL than purgatory, a middling team that is routinely on the playoff bubble.
Take, for example, the Rangers this past season. New York had qualified for postseason play each of the last seven years, had reached the conference final three times and the Cup Final once, and even had a decent chance of making it eight straight postseason appearances this year but management, realizing it wasn't going to be a legit contender, decided to pull the chute on the season before the Feb. 23 trade deadline.
Quitting? Maybe. But also sound strategy in the long run.
Eventually, of course, the Penguins will have to fall in line and begin a rebuild.
Rutherford, 69, might not even be the GM when that time comes. Until then, the Penguins should still be all-in. If that means dealing the first-round pick in 2019 and '20 to land a bottom-pair defenseman or an upgrade on the wing, so be it. For now, that’s the Penguins' best course of action.
Despite advancements in video and scouting, despite the evolution of conditioning and training, despite the widespread use of analytics and its probabilities, the NHL Draft remains a 50/50 proposition at best. Even in the first round.
Projecting how an 18-year-old's game will translate to the game's highest level several years down the road is difficult, if not almost impossible.
The NHL is not the NFL or the NBA. The latter two leagues' top prospects have played at least one to three years of college and are usually -- but not always -- more physically, emotionally and socially mature. The NHL Draft is almost entirely a crapshoot of 18-year-olds in rounds 1 through 7.
If you're not drafting first through fifth overall, you might as well be drafting 53rd.
• Man, life comes at you fast. I used this space just a few days ago to say that Marc-Andre Fleury should get the Conn Smythe, win or lose. To be fair, I prefaced that by saying that it was Fleury's if he didn't "melt down." Well, I didn't expect him to maintain a .947 save percentage, but these last three games kind of qualify as a meltdown.
• To be fair to Fleury, it's kind of hard to win when your team scores five goals in the last three games. Full marks to the Capitals and what they've done defensively with their 1-1-3 to absolutely suffocate the Golden Knights. Washington took it next-level defensively in Games 5 and 6 against Pittsburgh and again in Games 6 and 7 vs. Tampa Bay. The Capitals have been great throughout the Cup Final.
• Would a Washington championship somehow vindicate the Penguins? Uh, no. Pretty sure the Penguins knew how good the Capitals were even before this year's second-round series. Seeing Tom Wilson lift the Cup will not make anyone feel better about anything in Pittsburgh.
• After missing a wide, wide open net in the first period Monday night, James Neal lost the title belt. Evander Holyfield is and will always be the only Real Deal. If Neal scores that goal, it's a different game.
• Vegas' fourth line -- the one with Ryan Reaves -- has been its best line. That's not a compliment.
• OK, so if Washington goes on to beat Vegas, that will leave St. Louis, Buffalo, Vancouver and Arizona (formerly Winnipeg) to be the only four teams to enter the NHL prior to 1980 that have yet to win the Stanley Cup.
• Man, I can't stand Brady Tkachuk already and the soon-to-be Boston University freshman has yet to be drafted. The kid could play for my team any day.
• Cool is Vegas' cheesy pregame show. Uncool is Pat Sajak and Sting.
• Anybody see Rutherford having a burner account on Twitter? Nah, me neither.