Having fun trying to find Brock McGinn on the rink?
Or admiring Jeff Carter's early retirement?
Well, get used to that and all else that's dragging down the Penguins' miserable bottom-six forward mix because, based on what I've learned since we last saw the club before the ongoing bye week, not even that sickly 6-4 loss to the Sharks -- who give new meaning to the term 'shark tank' -- has moved Ron Hextall into any mode beyond status quo.
No, for real. Once the full team, maybe minus the lone All-Star Sidney Crosby, retakes the ice Sunday for a scheduled 4 p.m. practice in Cranberry, the only changes anyone's anticipating are the possible returns of players who've been hurt, notably that of Tristan Jarry. And that's it.
Since writing my kinda unkind column off the San Jose loss, led by questioning Hextall's recent whereabouts in both the literal and figurative senses, I've been informed that he spent the latter part of last week in Vancouver, British Columbia, scouting the annual Canadian Hockey League prospects game, 'along with several other GMs,' as was duly noted. On the other occasions, he was similarly scouting younger players, including those who are already the Penguins' property.
There's no expectation, the further information came, of any significant move, much less a trade.
Why not?
Plain and simple, Hextall and Brian Burke, who continue to walk in lock-step, persist in liking the roster. And where the bottom-six forwards are concerned, the management view is that those guys need to score more. Not that, as a whole, they're the polar antithesis of Mike Sullivan-type players. Not that they largely lack energy, fire, grit and even routine defending capabilities. Nah, they just need to score more.
Hey, I just ask the questions.
MORE PENGUINS
• Know who'd have been at least a partial solution to this problem?
I'd certainly have taken a flyer on old friend Evan Rodrigues, who'll be back on PPG Paints Arena ice next Tuesday as a member of the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche. He's got 11 goals and 15 assists, he's still capable of filling roles from the first line to the fourth, he's working power plays and penalty-kill, and he's as smart and sound defensively as ever.
Oh, and he was signed out of free agency for one year and $2 million. Or less than two-thirds of what's currently being burned on Kasperi Kapanen.
As to why Rodrigues wasn't kept, this is what I've heard:
As I reported that night from New York, Sullivan was deeply disappointed in the above retaliatory penalty in Game 5 against the Rangers' Ryan Lindgren, but that feeling also apparently lingered into the summer, amplified many times over by it costing the Penguins a chance to seal that series that night.
Regardless of how anyone feels about that being an influence, this also is true: Rodrigues scored a goal in Game 7 that gave the Penguins a third-period lead, one that was lost in part by a flagrant McGinn giveaway. Which, presumably, was a less egregious act than a superior, better-valued player losing his cool for a split-second.
STEELERS
• It's no secret that Mike Tomlin and much of his staff spent an inordinate amount of time studying offensive and defensive lineman at this week's Senior Bowl practices in Mobile, Ala. They might as well have bought a billboard down there.
What won't be reported anywhere else, though, is the extent to which they loooooooooove Tennessee right tackle Darnell Wright, a 6-6, 335-pound, four-year starter who emerged as a five-star scholastic recruit out of Huntington, W.Va. And don't sweat the position. He's played all over the line.
All I can share on this for now. Sorry.
• Management considers outside linebacker to be more of a need than most might realize. And this little bullet point will soon take on more meaning, as well.
• More detail on Andy Weidl's role in the upcoming NFL Draft, which I initially broached in last week's Insider: The board's his to build, along with, obviously, the voluminous input of his scouts, Omar Khan and Mike Tomlin. The picks will be executed by Khan, but here again, with the voluminous input of the scouts, Weidl and Tomlin.
It can't be overstated how influential that board's been over the years for the Steelers. Kevin Colbert's not in charge anymore, of course, but he'd constantly cite how the team calmly awaits its pick, looks at the board, considers need, then selects. He's made it sound at times as if all the hard thought's invested well before that weekend.
Look, there's a reason no one's ever comfortable describing this process.
PIRATES
• There are countless reasons I've been reporting for months that 2023 wouldn't be the year management would take winning seriously, but chief among them was -- surprise! -- money. Right or wrong, they never saw this calendar year as the one to have any dramatic increase in payroll.
Sure enough, they won't: The 2022 team wound up costing $61,196,070 in actual money paid to major-league payroll. And my current projection for the 2023 opening-day payroll -- based on the current $54,612,500 committed to 12 signed players, plus Ji-Man Choi's pending arbitration figure, plus another 12 minimum-wage guys -- is roughly $65 million.
That's an increase of, uh, $4 million. Or one Yoshi Tsutsugo.
Let's hold off the parade.
• No more major signings are expected between now and the reporting of pitchers and catchers to Bradenton, Fla., in a dozen days.
• What has changed is the verbiage being used. All the talk is about prioritizing winning, augmenting the young players to assist in that winning, and that sort of stuff.
Being that nothing of the kind had been spoken by Ben Cherington or Derek Shelton for the better part of three years -- and at the outset of this very offseason -- I've got cause to believe this has come from Travis Williams, who got used to a whole lot of winning in his time with the Penguins. Even then, Williams has maintained a conspicuously low profile in his role atop the Pirates' corporate structure, but he, too, has been talking the same way when engaging fans this winter.
Last I checked, talk is talk. A $4 million payroll increase is a punt. A $4 million payroll increase in which Andrew McCutchen comes home is a punt with a pretty bow on it.
• All that said, I've heard -- though I wasn't able to formally confirm -- that ticket sales are going well.
Never forget that, in all businesses, perception is king.
• Thanks for reading the franchise feature. That's never taken for granted.
