Pens ownership and upper management doesn't advice from this board

[canuckhal]

Playoff exit blamed on injuries to defensemen . Rutherford, Johnston and core players returning. Pens haven't been able to score last three playoffs they have lost. Wish I had faith in Rutherford, but I don't.

 

[Fox Chapel Lion II]

One year of Rutherford was more than enough. You see what he accomplished in Carolina - 5 straight years out of the playoffs. Dude is in WAY over his head.

Remember the search process both for Rutherford and for Coach Johnson? It was absurd, and they wound up with like their tenth choice. Mario needs to take hands-on control and get this straightened out. You have to do it now with no wasted time - critical point in the careers of Sid, Geno, MAF and Letang. You can't piss away their best years.

 

[fairgambit]

One year of Rutherford was more than enough. You see what he accomplished in Carolina - 5 straight years out of the playoffs. Dude is in WAY over his head.

Remember the search process both for Rutherford and for Coach Johnson? It was absurd, and they wound up with like their tenth choice. Mario needs to take hands-on control and get this straightened out. You have to do it now with no wasted time - critical point in the careers of Sid, Geno, MAF and Letang. You can't piss away their best years.

Right on the money.

 

[VaNtyLion]

Playoff exit blamed on injuries to defensemen . Rutherford, Johnston and core players returning. Pens haven't been able to score last three playoffs they have lost. Wish I had faith in Rutherford, but I don't.

On GMJR: The roster he had envisioned and built was 22-6-2 midway through December and went on a run of 11-2-2 in Feb-early March. In between and after those runs, they spent prolonged time without key pieces of that roster due to injuries: Maata was lost for season; Hornqvist and Comeau each missed extended time and Ehrhoff would suffer an injury that would effectively end his season, Malkin would miss several games in his first injury spell too and again down the stretch. Finally came the knockout punch with Letang. Point here is, JR actually had a pretty solid roster in place when all of its pieces were healthy as was evident in those two stretches where 87, 71 and 58 were all well. They were 33-8-4

Where criticism of JR is entirely justified was with the 2nd half moves that did not pan out and inexcusable mismanagement of the cap. Again though, how much were those injuries effecting everything else? IMO, it was considerably but that doesn't mean I don't make a change since JR was never a long term move.

On Johnston: the guy played the hand he was dealt all year. With healthy pieces in place they ran a good, solid puck possession game and he kept a totally depleted team neck and neck with the top team in the league come playoffs. Ultimately, with so much turnover from moves or injuries it was very difficult to maintain chemistry to the point the team looked identity-less far too often. Coaching was well down the team's issues

Whatever happens this off season, I think the need to seriously overhaul their scouting staff that has been incompetent in drafting forward contributions and Lemieux needs to be front and center to regain trust of the fans. His absence during last summers circus was inexcusable

 

[Fox Chapel Lion II]

On GMJR: The roster he had envisioned and built was 22-6-2 midway through December and went on a run of 11-2-2 in Feb-early March. In between and after those runs, they spent prolonged time without key pieces of that roster due to injuries: Maata was lost for season; Hornqvist and Comeau each missed extended time and Ehrhoff would suffer an injury that would effectively end his season, Malkin would miss several games in his first injury spell too and again down the stretch. Finally came the knockout punch with Letang. Point here is, JR actually had a pretty solid roster in place when all of its pieces were healthy as was evident in those two stretches where 87, 71 and 58 were all well. They were 33-8-4

Where criticism of JR is entirely justified was with the 2nd half moves that did not pan out and inexcusable mismanagement of the cap. Again though, how much were those injuries effecting everything else? IMO, it was considerably but that doesn't mean I don't make a change since JR was never a long term move.

On Johnston: the guy played the hand he was dealt all year. With healthy pieces in place they ran a good, solid puck possession game and he kept a totally depleted team neck and neck with the top team in the league come playoffs. Ultimately, with so much turnover from moves or injuries it was very difficult to maintain chemistry to the point the team looked identity-less far too often. Coaching was well down the team's issues

Whatever happens this off season, I think the need to seriously overhaul their scouting staff that has been incompetent in drafting forward contributions and Lemieux needs to be front and center to regain trust of the fans. His absence during last summers circus was inexcusable

Excellent summary. The injuries were killers to what was shaping up as a powerful team. Where I go ape with Rutherford is his late-season acquisitions. When you get yourself into such a jam with the cap that you have only 5 Dmen on the roster, that is flat out incompetence. Especially since his acquisitions stunk and did not do jack. Rutherford was out of bullets to such an extent that we could not even bring in somebody off the scrap pile to take some shifts.

Somebody has to pay the price for this. And it might as well be Rutherford walk the plank.

 

[PhillipintheValley]

The Lovejoy trade is the one that I really can't understand. That made no sense from the get go. The Cole acquisition was good in my mind. I thought he played well. The Winneck and Perron trades, looked good on paper, but both contributed little down the stretch.

 

[lionlurker]

David Morehouse doesn't take advice from anyone, least of all from the little people. He's an arrogant putz who's rise to power and control has coincided with the downhill slide of the organization as a whole. They've gone from an organization who did everything right, to one that seems to do everything wrong. His fingerprints are all over this mess.