The Penguins' loss to Montreal in the qualifying round for this year's Stanley Cup playoffs was one of the biggest disappointments in franchise history.
Not surprisingly, the performance of just about everyone associated with the on-ice product in that series came in below expectations, too.
But as dispiriting as some of those individual showings were, none were sufficiently lackluster to earn anyone a spot on the Penguins' list of all-time flops. Which is to say, players of whom much was expected but who accomplished very little.
Or. in some cases, nothing.
Given that the Penguins have been around since 1967, there is no shortage of candidates for membership in that club. After all, every team has had personnel who were counted on to do great things, but never even made it into the same area code as abject mediocrity..
Sometimes, injuries or other medical issues have sabotaged a promising player's career and prevented him from producing to his potential; Stefan Bergqvist, Johannes Salmonsson and Beau Bennett are good examples of that. More often, though, it's that guys projected to be impact players in the NHL simply proved that they should have gotten into another line of work.
As with any all-time team, the selections that follow were quite subjective, and based on personal expectations, as well as actual contributions by the player or coach in question. The choices were finalized after consultation with two veteran Penguins followers; Tom McMillan is a long-ago beat writer who now is the Penguins' vice president of communications and Bob Grove is a former beat writer who also was a member of the Penguins' radio broadcast team.
COACH
Pierre Creamer. He was the coach of Montreal's top farm team at a time when the Canadiens' organization was the most admired in the league, and landing him looked like a major coup. However, long before the signature moment of his season behind the bench -- when Creamer failed to realize with a minute to go in overtime of the Penguins' regular-season finale that they had to win to keep their playoff hopes alive -- it became painfully clear why the Canadiens hadn't made much of an effort to keep him.
Dishonorable mention: Ivan Hlinka. An absolute legend in international hockey circles during his days as a player and then a coach in the Czech Republic, he appeared to be an inspired, or at least intriguing, choice when the Penguins hired him in 2000. Alas, his passion for the game and hockey acumen didn't seem to make it through Customs, although his fondness for beer and cigarettes got across the Atlantic with no problem.
CENTER
Derick Brassard. The Penguins thought they were bringing in the ideal No. 3 center to play behind Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin when they acquired Brassard from Ottawa in 2018. Everything about his history said they were right; everything about how Brassard performed after he got here showed they couldn't have been more wrong. Brassard never accepted his third-line role, and it couldn't have been more obvious in his performance.
Dishonorable mention: Kris Beech, Max Lapierre.
No, we didn't forget: Shane Endicott, Chris Wells
LEFT WINGER
Robert Dome. When the Penguins invested their first-round choice in Dome in 1997, the thinking was that spending the previous two years in the International Hockey League had prepared him to step directly into the NHL. More than two decades later, Dome still hasn't made the transition. He ended up playing just 53 games in the league, and the most memorable thing he did in Pittsburgh was to get drafted here.
Dishonorable mention: Mark Major, Janne Pesonen. Major was big and tough and showed decent hands in junior hockey, so it seemed like a good move when the Penguins used a second-round draft choice on him in 1988. Trouble is, it took nearly a decade for him to reach the NHL, as he played both of his career games in the league with Detroit in 1996-97. The Penguins thought Pesonen could be a reliable scorer when they signed him as a free agent out of Finland in 2008. He wasn't. At least not in the only seven NHL games in which he appeared before returning to Europe.
No, we didn't forget: Dave Capuano, Ryan Stone.
RIGHT WINGER
Dwight Mathiasen. It was quite an accomplishment for Eddie Johnston, then the Penguins' general manager, to convince Mathiasen, who was coming off a 40-goal season at the University of Denver and was one of the top college free agents on the market, to sign here. Mathiasen scored one goal in four games when he was fresh out of school; trouble is, he didn't get any in the 29 games he played for them over the following two seasons, which were his last at this level.
Dishonorable mention: Lee Giffin, Jacques Cossette. The Penguins' miserable luck with second-round draft choices borders on legendary, and these two guys did more than their share to make that legacy happen. They combined for nine goals in 91 NHL games, eight of those by Cossette -- a junior teammate of Pierre Larouche with the Sorel Black Hawks -- in 64 appearances.
No, we didn't forget: Jonathan Filewich, Konstantin Koltsov, Roman Oksiuta, Andrew McBain.
DEFENSEMEN
Derrick Pouliot, Ross Lupaschuk. These two guys had a lot in common, although they took different routes to the Penguins; Pouliot was a first-round draft choice in 2012 and Lupaschuk was acquired from Washington in the Jaromir Jagr trade in 2001. Both were right-handed shots. Both came to the Penguins with reputations for having strong offensive games. And neither came close to contributing as much as expected.
Dishonorable mention: Pavel Skrbek, Ed Van Impe. The Penguins traded up to get Skrbek in the second round of the 1996 draft. Nothing he did in his 12 career NHL games, four of which were spent with the Penguins, suggested they should have bothered. Van Impe was on the long list of washed-up Flyers foisted off on the Penguins from the other side of the Commonwealth in the mid- to late 1970s.
No, we didn't forget: Noah Welch, Ron Meighan, Lex Hudson, Carl Sneep
GOALIE
Antti Niemi. It's not often that a player who appears in just three games makes it onto a franchise's all-time list of any sort, but if there ever was a guy who merited that kind of recognition from the Penguins, it's Niemi. Not so much because he lost all three of those games, but because in the process, he put up a save percentage of .750, a number that suggests the only thing he did well was to get out of the way of pucks.
Dishonorable mention: Craig Hillier, Gordie Laxton. These two were, in different eras, first-round draft choices who were supposed to be the franchise's goalie of the future. Turned out that neither ever had much of a present with the Penguins, let alone a future. (Hillier did, however, blaze a trail for another native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia to join the Penguins in 2005, nine years after they drafted Hillier.)
