Kovacevic: Mario's fingerprints are all over this ... and that's always ideal

The names change, the narratives change, but the Penguins' guiding compass has stayed the same for the better part of four phenomenal decades.

When the Civic Arena could've become 'a parking lot,' to borrow Eddie Johnston's famous phrase, Mario Lemieux came along in the 1980s and became the greatest athlete our city's ever seen. When bankruptcy hit in the 1990s, he bought the franchise. When the on-ice product cratered in the early 2000s, he emerged from retirement. When the team lost its way in the 2010s, he fired Ray Shero and Dan Bylsma.

And now ...

Well, yeah, this was him, too.

Oh, Ron Burkle's an engaged and active co-owner, and he's long offered more than an open wallet to the process. And David Morehouse deserves far more credit than he receives on the business end. But when it comes to the hockey component, purely hockey, it's always, always, always Mario who's set -- or reset -- the course. 

And I'm here to tell you, based on a bunch of conversations I had Tuesday, that this whole series of moves -- from Jim Rutherford's resignation to the dual hiring Tuesday of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke -- absolutely wasn't an exception.

That's not to suggest Mario forced Rutherford out. He didn't. But he was the one with the greatest say as to whether or not Rutherford's contract would be extended beyond its June expiration. And if he'd wanted Rutherford to remain the GM beyond the next few months, without first having to prove that this team wasn't as awful as it currently appears, Rutherford would still be the GM. Because he'd have gotten his extension, he never would've been offended by operating as a lame duck, he never would've been worried he'd close out a Hall of Fame career by being fired and, of course, he wouldn't have walked out.

That's the primary reason he left, as I'd reported at the time, and that reporting was further supported Tuesday.

Mario could've changed that. Mario didn't want to. Which speaks volumes.

It didn't stop there. As Morehouse did his diligence in conducting several interviews for the GM vacancy, and he'd essentially settled on Hextall by late last week, per my information, it was Mario who chimed in, "What about Burkie?" And it was at that point that Morehouse, who'd already been in communication with Burke, mostly for assistance and advisement, including on Hextall, approached Burke anew about taking a wholly new position in the company, president of hockey operations.

Had Mario not put forth those three words, per a source, only Hextall would've been introduced to us yesterday.

Mario isn't the most vocal or visible owner in professional sports. He also hasn't been without his own flaws or mistakes along the way. But if there's one thing I learned in mid-2015, when he and Burkle invited me into an arena office to describe in riveting detail their reasons for firing Shero and Bylsma, it was how deeply invested both men are in the team's success. And when things aren't going well, they'll watch, they'll wait, they'll even fume ... and then they'll bring down the figurative hammer when the time is right.

The time is right.

As I've written ad nauseam since this season's outset, these Penguins we're witnessing are among the flattest, the most lifeless in recent memory. Whether it's the grisly goaltending, the decimated defense, the forwards flailing for direction or the locker room as a whole tuning out Mike Sullivan, whatever the cause, they've become borderline unwatchable. At times, an embarrassment:

Mario had seen enough. And even once Hextall was hired, he still wanted more. He already had hockey's ultimate badass goaltender, and he still wanted to add hockey's ultimate badass executive.

My goodness, imagine being those players and coaches reporting for practice this morning in Cranberry.

• Hextall's the perfect choice for all the reasons I've been citing for a couple weeks now, chiefly that he's shown to be capable of adding as needed immediately, while also building toward a firmer future. He did so in Philadelphia, where only now are the Flyers reaping the rewards of his longer-term focus.

Loved this no-nonsense line from Hextall about achieving both: "What we're looking to do is to make the Pittsburgh Penguins the best team we can this year. We'll see where it goes. We'll see how good we are. We'll see how our players respond, and we'll address things as we go along. ... You've obviously always got to look at the future, but you have to look at the present. The focus right now is on making the Pittsburgh Penguins the best we can right now."

Yep. But notice the emphasis on the current players responding. Good for him.

Because if these guys keep going as they are, they'll make any bigger decisions that much easier on him and Burke.

• Hextall came with as big a presence as any goaltender I've ever watched. That's not to say he was the best. He just had a presence. 

Those who've been following hockey long enough will know exactly what I mean: The whole building felt him there, clanging those pipes before every faceoff, hacking up the opponents (not just Rob Brown and Glenn Anderson, mind you), boldly stickhandling in a way the sport hadn't seen and, then, hey, being proficient at stopping the puck, too.

And I'd felt somewhat the same way in my limited dealings with him as the Flyers' GM. He's got a commanding presence about him.

To repeat: Imagine being those players this morning.

• Burke ... man, I'm speechless on this one. Still.

I've made no secret of my disagreements over the years for his hockey stances and decisions, mostly while he was Gary Bettman's right-hand man in New York. I've often singled him out as a symbol for the NHL's undying dinosaur mindset that, from my perspective, jeopardized the health of its players beyond their playing days. I've expressed, in no uncertain terms, that the league would be better off without him.

In the same breath, I'm comfortable expressing that, for as gruff as his exterior can be, Burke's got a robust history of genuine kindness, of receiving loyalty in return and, aside from hockey, of being a proud and vocal supporter of equal human rights across the U.S. and Canada:

To boot, his extraordinary bluntness could make for a beautiful fit with Pittsburgh, where we don't just embrace that sort of thing ... we expect it.

In the short term, I'd say for sure, his arrival's a blessing.

• To put that another way: You've now officially heard/read for the last time anyone blaming Malkin's struggles on his wingers.

• Lots of folks will latch onto Burke's remarks two months ago as a TV analyst that the Penguins "aren't close to championship-caliber in my mind. So you're better off getting good fast, or getting bad fast. The muddy middle is nowhere to be." And they should. In the media, we're trained to speak our minds filter-free.

Take it with a grain, then, that he spoke this Tuesday when that came up: "I'm not going to back away from anything I said in my media role. But I also think that when you have pieces like we have here, you've got to try to win."

Morehouse made crystal clear from the day Rutherford resigned that the Penguins have no appetite for a rebuild, and I believe that's all that was reflected here. No one associated with the team -- as opposed to, you know, a media role -- has anything to gain by burying the current group 11 games into a season.

• How will Hextall and Burke coexist?

Both addressed that by citing what they felt is a sound working relationship, but the reality is that Hextall's the main actor here. Hextall will answer to Burke -- and Burke to Morehouse, by the way -- but the construction of the roster, the trade dealings and so forth will be the day-to-day domain of Hextall.

As I was reminded from within the organization throughout the day, Burke's position was created for him. They wanted to add the person far more than the position.

• My prediction: We'll hear a lot from Hextall when things are going swimmingly, a lot from Burke when they aren't.

• More than one person made mention of Craig Patrick's bold hirings in 1990 of 'Badger' Bob Johnson and Scotty Bowman, the latter to a position that didn't matter in the slightest -- director of player development -- as compared to what he brought just by being around. Patrick, never one to feel threatened, surrounded himself with potential successors then and later into his career with Herb Brooks and others. He simply wanted good hockey minds nearby.

• The full 17-minute session:

• One non-accident through the entire session with Morehouse, Hextall and Burke: Every reference to the Penguins' core included Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. 

“You’ve got players here in Malkin and Crosby and Letang," Hextall spoke at one point. “We want to be as good as we can be right now with three of the best players in the world.”

When the outside hockey world, including Burke himself as a TV analyst, references the Penguins' stars, the only players mentioned are Crosby and Malkin. Just saying.

• What does this mean for Sullivan?

Eh, it's hardly ideal.

Sullivan's got no history or connections with either man, and they hadn't even connected at the time of the announcement and interview session Tuesday. Beyond that, every new GM's first major move when something goes awry is to replace the coach. So if the Penguins don't considerably pick up the pace and soon, it'll be far easier to change one figure behind the bench than to purge players.

We'll see. My own belief is that Sullivan's an outstanding coach in the NHL, and he's done extraordinarily well when given players who match his system.

• Stop with the he's-a-Flyer nonsense already. Sure, Hextall spent most of his career at the wrong end of the commonwealth, both as a player and as an exec, but he also spent a half-dozen years of his childhood in Pittsburgh --  his dad Bryan, a Winnipeg native, was a forward for the Penguins -- and the Hextall family shared a Green Tree apartment complex with Roberto Clemente and a few other Pirates. One day, he and his buds managed to convince two other tenants, Manny Sanguillen and Rennie Stennett, to join them for a game of street hockey.

How's that?

Wait, we've got a ton more on Hextall's background coming in a Tom Reed piece later this week, and it's awesome.

• On that note, the two GM positions that Hextall's now held in the NHL have two things in common:

1. Both were in Pennsylvania.
2. He was still his team's best goaltender.

Sorry not sorry, as the cool kids say.

• Big game on the Island tomorrow night, eh, boys?