The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs start today, lacking your Pittsburgh Penguins after a 16-year run of appearances, and thoughts turn to the future.
If you were paying close attention, the Penguins have been leaking oil in terms of being a contender for several years. Yes, they had been able to keep that playoff appearance streak intact, but they also had lost in the first round of the postseason the past four years.
Those three Stanley Cup wins, in 2009, 2016 and 2017, are fleeting memories. In some ways, it is better that the Penguins whiffed on the playoffs entirely this season, if only to bring into focus this is a roster in need of a shakeup if there is to be another Cup run anytime soon.
There are some glaring parallels to the Steelers, who have missed the playoffs three of the past five seasons and haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016 campaign.
Further back in Steelers history, those great rosters of the 1970s were kept intact too long in the search for one for the thumb, as in Super Bowl rings.
Only after the roster was completely reshaped and some rough seasons had transpired, did the Steelers ever return to Super Bowls.
This Penguins team was shockingly streaky, alternating stretches of good hockey with runs of putrid play. It is somehow appropriate that the playoff absence was all but locked in when the Penguins suffered an explicable loss to a struggling, bad Chicago team, a home game for the Penguins that was played with all the chips on the table.
The season-ending loss to another bad team, Columbus, was a mere exclamation point.
The Penguins are top-heavy, with the stars producing and precious few others sharing the load. Defensively, the Penguins are sloppy. Teams legitimately contending for the Stanley Cup have lots of quality depth and consistent defense.
Although the front office members have been scapegoated and fired, there is no simple solution for the Penguins. For a model of how long it can take, Penguins fans can look at the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings were a playoff rival of the Penguins when they played in back-to-back Cup Finals in 2008 and 2009, with Detroit winning the first and the Penguins, the second.
Those Red Wings teams were late in a run of 25 consecutive playoff appearances during which time they won the Cup four times.
Their playoff run ended with an appearance following the 2015-16 season and the Red Wings now have missed the playoff six consecutive seasons.
The Detroit franchise flirted with wild-card contention for a time this season, but lost some key games and management was a seller at trade deadline time, realizing the team wasn’t really that close.
Penguins fans would do well to contemplate the possibility that this playoff miss might be more than a one-season stay in purgatory.
Sam Ross Jr's site 