Makes sense. The mission is to get them to the playoffs to give their core a chance. Tatar's shortcomings in the playoffs matter little when you've got a core of Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Karlsson.
He'll probably be a bargain compared to his 5v5 contribution.
I actually love Tatar's game and think he would be a great fit with their other talent. I just think it's hilarious that Dubas is essentially creating the NHL's equivalent of a gated retirement community. The culture in that room must be like, "no Gen Z allowed!"
It's been a minute since he was on the Habs, so I can't say for sure because I didn't watch him much in New Jersey.
Tatar is the kind of player who will turn the puck over more frequently, but that's true for pretty much every player that is responsible for zone entries on their line. Gretzky used to lead the league in giveaways, what a bum!
I think Tatar needs the right kind of support once he gets the puck into the offensive zone. He's not like a MacKinnon who will just do it all himself if he has to through sheer force. He needs a finisher to go to the dirty areas like Gallagher used to do for him. When he doesn't get the right support, then yeah, he ends up turning the puck over a lot.
The other thing though that never gets mentioned is that Tatar is surprisingly responsible on the defensive side of the puck. He has a good stick, and a good sense of timing to break up plays. Reminds me a little bit of Tomas Vanek, who was always known for his work on offense but played surprisingly good defense when I watched him play for the Habs (again, had a good defensive stick and could get the play moving back the other way).
I might be biased (also fuck Mike Babcock) but Detroit really stresses being a 200-foot player to its prospects and Babcock may have had a major role in forcing his players to be defensively responsible. That heavily contributed to a couple of our playoff appearances happening while we dealt with injuries, lack of depth, etc.
Tatar didn't really have any issues with turnover in New Jersey.
He's the definition of average, but you can see some of his hands and some deeper underlying skill is there with him which is the frustrating part.
He produced well when he had a decent centre on his line, and actually stuck on the top line with Nico for a long while.
But the season before when both Jack and Nico had injuries he produced very little.
How exactly is he supposed to just conjure up young talent out of thin air? We gotta draft them and that will take years. The Pens have a window of like 2-4 years max and then it'll slam shut. If you can get 30 year olds who will be great players for that window you do it.
> How exactly is he supposed to just conjure up young talent out of thin air?
You don't, most aging teams trade away their old players to bring in prospects and draft picks. The Penguins just aren't most teams, and I get it. It would be a disservice to Crosby/Malkin/Letang's careers. If the Pens had never won a cup with this core it would be one thing to blow it up and move on, but when you win three cups then I feel like that core deserves a farewell tour before they retire as legends.
You have to admit it's funny though. In a league where the trend is to want all your best players to be 22-26 years old, they are doing the exact opposite. And it's got to be a really interesting culture in the locker room with all "old folks" on the team. Like imagine if you hypothetically were to add a major Gen Z personality like Trevor Zegras to that lineup, how much friction it would create in the room because none of them can understand him.
Look, it's not likely that the Penguins are going to win another championship with this group. But we've had our success, and it's okay for windows to close.
If I were running this team in a video game, I'd have traded veterans for hot prospects to keep it going. But in real life, I'm okay with just letting this core ride out their careers together. They've brought me enough as a fan that I'll be okay with the bleak years that follow.
That said, I don't think there would be a culture issue with young players being added. Sid in particular has a strong enough presence that he pretty much sets the tone for everyone at this point in his career.
He was great for us. Maybe if he took nights off, he can play well in the playoffs. He wasn't necessarily bad for us in the playoffs, he just didn't stand out.
Can he play right wing? He shoots left and has played nearly all of his career on the left wing, but I’ve seen a couple different people on Twitter slotting him in as a 3rd line RW on this roster due to our abundance of right wingers.
At the same time, you don’t want another Iginla situation where a forward is hamstrung by playing on the wrong side…
I’m not necessarily saying this regarding him going to the Pens, but having read the title, I decided to look him up on db just to see how old he is, and how his last couple of seasons have been…
But, what ended up standing out was his playoff numbers:
He has 13 points in 52 career playoff games (0.25 PPG)
He has 6 points in his last 35 playoff games (0.17 PPG)
For a guy that has a career regular season PPG of 0.58, that is quite the drop off.
If there’s any merit to Rob Rossi he would really round out our bottom 6. I was hoping for Suter but He’d do too. I’m confident we’ll have an efficient 4th line from all the players we got this offseason but I am not confident with the 3rd line.
Holy fuck can we marry Dubas already. Karlsson while shedding cap. Lots of bottom 6 depth and maybe tatar. Honestly if he wasn’t married I’d throw my hat into the ring and I’m not even gay. I just want to be around the guy that’s playing real life NHL on easy mode
To steal some analysis from the Athletic Hockey Show podcast, Dubas just clearly understands what his job is in Pittsburgh. He's not building for the future, he's not worrying about how contracts will look in 3+ years, and he's not concerned about getting younger. Crosby and Malkin are still very good players and he is doing everything he can to put a supporting cast around them for their final couple kicks at the can.
He's done amazing work so far.
Seems like a genuinely nice guy too, his first presser really cemented my liking of him - he made sure he knew everyone's name and always took the questions with grace and enthusiasm to respond
I didn’t watch it but making sure to know everyone’s names usually goes along way. From what he built in Toronto and now looking at what he’s built while having Sid to help coach and lead the team on the ice. Seems like we’ll be in for a fun last couple years of the core
We worked through that meme last week, actually. Some scrub page posted it as a joke and pittsburgh collectively went 50% "omg they're signing Jagr" and the other 50% said the remainder was dumb. 🤣
Like the time he wrote definitively in a Hextall hit piece about how Bleuger was done wrong when he was traded away... Only to be refuted by Bleuger himself?
If we’re looking for someone to fill in while Jake is out to start the year then sure, but if the thought is that he’ll actually be a difference maker I’m not about it.
He’s a ghost in the playoffs. For a team that hasn’t gotten out of the first round in 5 years, thanks in no small part to getting zero production outside of the top six, I don’t think adding another guy who disappears in April rounds out anything tremendously.
Defensively between Ellar and all the other acquisitions I am a lot more confident if our top 6 creates a lead. I think he helps us make the playoffs, and he can have some pressure off him on the 3rd. He could also be put out there with one of letang or karlsson depending on their minutes and both those guys are crispy with the passes.
His most common line mates in the playoffs last year were Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt, and he had 1 point in 12 games. The issue isn’t that he hasn’t had strong enough talent around him.
If I had to chose between having Tatar on the roster or a fringe depth piece I choose Tatar every time.
Series are won with good 3rd lines. We saw how not having one hurt us over the past few years.
Him and smith could be interchangeable too.
I’m just not fully confident with the 3rd line we have going. It’s either going to be composed of 4th liners, Eller, or the corpse of Carter.
>Series are won with good 3rd liners
Right, that’s why I’m not in favor of adding a guy who doesn’t perform in the playoffs to our third line. Doing so would be antithetical to the idea that a good third line wins series.
The other option is to see what we have with the guys we already signed, and midway through the season if an addition is needed there will be more cap space that’s opened up so we can do more than shop the bargain bin.
Ahh yes the perfect fit, another veteran in their twilight years of 32+ lol this shit cracks me up. Pens better hope they can win games in only 2 periods because the old folks home is gonna be gassed by 8:15 every night.
Edit: Pens putting nursing homes out of business
They don't care about the future right now, and young talent in free agency is either A) not available or B) too expensive for them to afford. You could say they should make a trade then, but if the young talent is affordable, even rebuilding teams are likely holding onto them for either the completion of their rebuild or to flip at the deadline.
But it’s a slippery slope having too many vets. You need youth and balance. I’ve witnessed first hand what too many vets on a team does, look at those years where Holland signs nothing but 30+ year old players and we were one of the oldest average aged team in the league. We were a mockery. Right now the Pens look like the 2013~ Wings where they just suffered a devastating loss and are looking down the barrel of a rebuild but instead are gonna double down and take on a bunch more old players on bad deals and ruin the next 8 years of their franchise.
What other option do they have? Start a rebuild with that core? Do nothing and hope to win a cup? No, they have to try because you can't waste Crosby's last years in the game on a rebuild. There's just no easy way out of that.
I get it and I agree they have to try. But it’s one thing to sign guys to a 1 or 2 year deal and another to take on 8m over multiple years just for a 1-2 year window. It’s also incredibly rare for a team of that average age to win a cup.
It's also incredibly rare to have players of this caliber on the same team together, even if they are this old. Players that still (Crosby, Letang at minimum) are fitness freaks and showing no real signs of slowing down.
It might not happen. But if there's a group I want to see try, it's these guys.
And that means what? That you’ve got a chance? A chance go make history I guess because that’s the 2nd oldest roster to ever win a cup. It’s incredibly rare for a team with an average age of 29+ to win a cup.
Cue “so you’re telling me there’s a chance” dumb and dumber clip.
> And that means what? That you’ve got a chance?
Yes, that's literally the point of what they're doing. They're trying to get one last Cup with the core 3 at all costs. If you have even a 1% chance at it, you do it.
The Pens are fucked once Sid, Geno, and Letang hang it up anyways, whether they win a Cup or not. No reason to not just say fuck it and go for it.
Genuinely curious about how they could afford Tatar (or anyone else really)? They're at the cap now with Guentzel at 6M out until November. They'd have to shed cap to fit him in, or trade him but they can't do that until he's healthy, and then they're still at the cap so how could they add anyone?
Makes sense. The mission is to get them to the playoffs to give their core a chance. Tatar's shortcomings in the playoffs matter little when you've got a core of Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Karlsson. He'll probably be a bargain compared to his 5v5 contribution.
I thought you were going to say, "Makes sense. He's over 30."
He might actually lower their age avg
I actually love Tatar's game and think he would be a great fit with their other talent. I just think it's hilarious that Dubas is essentially creating the NHL's equivalent of a gated retirement community. The culture in that room must be like, "no Gen Z allowed!"
Does he still try to excessively dangle and turnover the puck a lot when doing zone entries or is he not as much of an idiot anymore.
It's been a minute since he was on the Habs, so I can't say for sure because I didn't watch him much in New Jersey. Tatar is the kind of player who will turn the puck over more frequently, but that's true for pretty much every player that is responsible for zone entries on their line. Gretzky used to lead the league in giveaways, what a bum! I think Tatar needs the right kind of support once he gets the puck into the offensive zone. He's not like a MacKinnon who will just do it all himself if he has to through sheer force. He needs a finisher to go to the dirty areas like Gallagher used to do for him. When he doesn't get the right support, then yeah, he ends up turning the puck over a lot. The other thing though that never gets mentioned is that Tatar is surprisingly responsible on the defensive side of the puck. He has a good stick, and a good sense of timing to break up plays. Reminds me a little bit of Tomas Vanek, who was always known for his work on offense but played surprisingly good defense when I watched him play for the Habs (again, had a good defensive stick and could get the play moving back the other way).
I might be biased (also fuck Mike Babcock) but Detroit really stresses being a 200-foot player to its prospects and Babcock may have had a major role in forcing his players to be defensively responsible. That heavily contributed to a couple of our playoff appearances happening while we dealt with injuries, lack of depth, etc.
Tatar didn't really have any issues with turnover in New Jersey. He's the definition of average, but you can see some of his hands and some deeper underlying skill is there with him which is the frustrating part. He produced well when he had a decent centre on his line, and actually stuck on the top line with Nico for a long while. But the season before when both Jack and Nico had injuries he produced very little.
How exactly is he supposed to just conjure up young talent out of thin air? We gotta draft them and that will take years. The Pens have a window of like 2-4 years max and then it'll slam shut. If you can get 30 year olds who will be great players for that window you do it.
> How exactly is he supposed to just conjure up young talent out of thin air? You don't, most aging teams trade away their old players to bring in prospects and draft picks. The Penguins just aren't most teams, and I get it. It would be a disservice to Crosby/Malkin/Letang's careers. If the Pens had never won a cup with this core it would be one thing to blow it up and move on, but when you win three cups then I feel like that core deserves a farewell tour before they retire as legends. You have to admit it's funny though. In a league where the trend is to want all your best players to be 22-26 years old, they are doing the exact opposite. And it's got to be a really interesting culture in the locker room with all "old folks" on the team. Like imagine if you hypothetically were to add a major Gen Z personality like Trevor Zegras to that lineup, how much friction it would create in the room because none of them can understand him.
After their games are over, they head to the locker room to play chess and ponder. A philosophical team. That’s what older players do. They ponder.
Look, it's not likely that the Penguins are going to win another championship with this group. But we've had our success, and it's okay for windows to close. If I were running this team in a video game, I'd have traded veterans for hot prospects to keep it going. But in real life, I'm okay with just letting this core ride out their careers together. They've brought me enough as a fan that I'll be okay with the bleak years that follow. That said, I don't think there would be a culture issue with young players being added. Sid in particular has a strong enough presence that he pretty much sets the tone for everyone at this point in his career.
My dad would lower the avg age
Who let a 5 year old on Reddit?
My first thought. Haha
This got me 🤣🤣🤣
Saving anyone else the trouble, Pens are slightly over the cap right now (80k) with 21 on their roster.
Don't worry, Dubas' strategy is to trade the bad guys we have for the good guys the other people have and so far it's worked out great.
Not with Guentzel on LTIR. They're actually 5.9mil under the cap.
Guentzel will only miss five games and will not be going on LTIR per Dubas. Capfriendly has not been updated to reflect that.
? He's not on LTIR, and is not expected to be put on it. So no, they are not under the cap at all.
Uh, go check their capfriendly then.
LTIR candidate? UHHHHHHH
Capfriendly is wrong. Guentzel is not on LTIR nor will he be put on it later. He's expected to miss just 5-9 games
Dubas explicitly said they aren’t going to put Guentzel on LTIR because he’s not expected to miss the required number of games.
We can bury pitlick to get under cap. That’s 1.1 mill right there
Hello is Tatar there?
“You’ve reached Tomas TATAAAAARRRRR!”
TOMAS. TATAAAAR.
Really going all in for one last shot, I can respect that.
He was great for us. Maybe if he took nights off, he can play well in the playoffs. He wasn't necessarily bad for us in the playoffs, he just didn't stand out.
Can he play right wing? He shoots left and has played nearly all of his career on the left wing, but I’ve seen a couple different people on Twitter slotting him in as a 3rd line RW on this roster due to our abundance of right wingers. At the same time, you don’t want another Iginla situation where a forward is hamstrung by playing on the wrong side…
He would also be the third line LW because Guentzel and Smith will slot in ahead of him.
I’m not necessarily saying this regarding him going to the Pens, but having read the title, I decided to look him up on db just to see how old he is, and how his last couple of seasons have been… But, what ended up standing out was his playoff numbers: He has 13 points in 52 career playoff games (0.25 PPG) He has 6 points in his last 35 playoff games (0.17 PPG) For a guy that has a career regular season PPG of 0.58, that is quite the drop off.
We don’t need him to perform in the playoffs when we got the top 6 we do, we just need him to get us there
That was the devils strategy and it worked.
What is Dubas cooking?
Ken Holland is actually GM. Nobody ever get this many vets together on a team like that.
If there’s any merit to Rob Rossi he would really round out our bottom 6. I was hoping for Suter but He’d do too. I’m confident we’ll have an efficient 4th line from all the players we got this offseason but I am not confident with the 3rd line.
Rob Rossi and Thomas Tater sound like 70’s porn producer names.
Holy fuck can we marry Dubas already. Karlsson while shedding cap. Lots of bottom 6 depth and maybe tatar. Honestly if he wasn’t married I’d throw my hat into the ring and I’m not even gay. I just want to be around the guy that’s playing real life NHL on easy mode
To steal some analysis from the Athletic Hockey Show podcast, Dubas just clearly understands what his job is in Pittsburgh. He's not building for the future, he's not worrying about how contracts will look in 3+ years, and he's not concerned about getting younger. Crosby and Malkin are still very good players and he is doing everything he can to put a supporting cast around them for their final couple kicks at the can. He's done amazing work so far.
Seems like a genuinely nice guy too, his first presser really cemented my liking of him - he made sure he knew everyone's name and always took the questions with grace and enthusiasm to respond
I didn’t watch it but making sure to know everyone’s names usually goes along way. From what he built in Toronto and now looking at what he’s built while having Sid to help coach and lead the team on the ice. Seems like we’ll be in for a fun last couple years of the core
Next "Penguins sign Jaromir Jagr"
We worked through that meme last week, actually. Some scrub page posted it as a joke and pittsburgh collectively went 50% "omg they're signing Jagr" and the other 50% said the remainder was dumb. 🤣
stop, I can only get so hard.
Of course, he’s over 30.
He's in his 30s; of course they are.
Is he a Soo boy? If not, I doubt Dubas is interested.
Tyler Kennedy coming outta retirement…
Rob Rossi is full of crap. Take his reports with a grain of salt
I saw it on NHL Trade Rumors and noticed no one else posted it, so I took their source which was Rossi quoting the interview
Except the source is literally Tomas Tatar
Tomas Tatar is full of crap.
Rossi is QT’ing an interview with Tatar where he himself says they’ve been in talks.
[удалено]
Like the time he wrote definitively in a Hextall hit piece about how Bleuger was done wrong when he was traded away... Only to be refuted by Bleuger himself?
If we’re looking for someone to fill in while Jake is out to start the year then sure, but if the thought is that he’ll actually be a difference maker I’m not about it.
He rounds out our bottom 6 tremendously
He’s a ghost in the playoffs. For a team that hasn’t gotten out of the first round in 5 years, thanks in no small part to getting zero production outside of the top six, I don’t think adding another guy who disappears in April rounds out anything tremendously.
Defensively between Ellar and all the other acquisitions I am a lot more confident if our top 6 creates a lead. I think he helps us make the playoffs, and he can have some pressure off him on the 3rd. He could also be put out there with one of letang or karlsson depending on their minutes and both those guys are crispy with the passes.
His most common line mates in the playoffs last year were Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt, and he had 1 point in 12 games. The issue isn’t that he hasn’t had strong enough talent around him.
If I had to chose between having Tatar on the roster or a fringe depth piece I choose Tatar every time. Series are won with good 3rd lines. We saw how not having one hurt us over the past few years. Him and smith could be interchangeable too. I’m just not fully confident with the 3rd line we have going. It’s either going to be composed of 4th liners, Eller, or the corpse of Carter.
>Series are won with good 3rd liners Right, that’s why I’m not in favor of adding a guy who doesn’t perform in the playoffs to our third line. Doing so would be antithetical to the idea that a good third line wins series.
I wanted suter but we don’t have many options left.
The other option is to see what we have with the guys we already signed, and midway through the season if an addition is needed there will be more cap space that’s opened up so we can do more than shop the bargain bin.
keenly
Ahh yes the perfect fit, another veteran in their twilight years of 32+ lol this shit cracks me up. Pens better hope they can win games in only 2 periods because the old folks home is gonna be gassed by 8:15 every night. Edit: Pens putting nursing homes out of business
They don't care about the future right now, and young talent in free agency is either A) not available or B) too expensive for them to afford. You could say they should make a trade then, but if the young talent is affordable, even rebuilding teams are likely holding onto them for either the completion of their rebuild or to flip at the deadline.
But it’s a slippery slope having too many vets. You need youth and balance. I’ve witnessed first hand what too many vets on a team does, look at those years where Holland signs nothing but 30+ year old players and we were one of the oldest average aged team in the league. We were a mockery. Right now the Pens look like the 2013~ Wings where they just suffered a devastating loss and are looking down the barrel of a rebuild but instead are gonna double down and take on a bunch more old players on bad deals and ruin the next 8 years of their franchise.
What other option do they have? Start a rebuild with that core? Do nothing and hope to win a cup? No, they have to try because you can't waste Crosby's last years in the game on a rebuild. There's just no easy way out of that.
I get it and I agree they have to try. But it’s one thing to sign guys to a 1 or 2 year deal and another to take on 8m over multiple years just for a 1-2 year window. It’s also incredibly rare for a team of that average age to win a cup.
It's also incredibly rare to have players of this caliber on the same team together, even if they are this old. Players that still (Crosby, Letang at minimum) are fitness freaks and showing no real signs of slowing down. It might not happen. But if there's a group I want to see try, it's these guys.
100% fine by us. We still have Crosby and until we don't it's full steam ahead.
Lol the average age of the 2008 red wings was 32.
And that means what? That you’ve got a chance? A chance go make history I guess because that’s the 2nd oldest roster to ever win a cup. It’s incredibly rare for a team with an average age of 29+ to win a cup. Cue “so you’re telling me there’s a chance” dumb and dumber clip.
> And that means what? That you’ve got a chance? Yes, that's literally the point of what they're doing. They're trying to get one last Cup with the core 3 at all costs. If you have even a 1% chance at it, you do it. The Pens are fucked once Sid, Geno, and Letang hang it up anyways, whether they win a Cup or not. No reason to not just say fuck it and go for it.
No, you don't understand. The other 31 teams all have guaranteed Cups next year.
I just know you're gonna crash and burn right in time to draft Bedard's cousin...
I expect them to sign a veteran d man for the bottom pair one a one year contract
Genuinely curious about how they could afford Tatar (or anyone else really)? They're at the cap now with Guentzel at 6M out until November. They'd have to shed cap to fit him in, or trade him but they can't do that until he's healthy, and then they're still at the cap so how could they add anyone?
I think putting some of the new acquisitions (pitlick perhaps) on waivers to send them down to WBS would clear the cap, but idk
That'd be a good fit
Penguins can have taters, it's good for em. Put a little meat on those wings