Another year, another bold move from Penguins GM Ray Shero. This column was originally going to assess the team’s status at the trade deadline and eye some potential trade targets, but Shero beat me to the punch by making a big trade Monday, and a lesser move Thursday. We’ll review those moves, re-assess the Penguins’ chances going forward, and contrast the Penguins’ situation with that of the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates – whose team president also made headlines this week.
By now you probably know about the big Monday deal that sent defenseman Alex Goligoski to the Dallas Stars for winger James Neal and defenseman Matt Niskanen. I had a feeling that Goligoski would be traded – the Penguins had enviable depth on defense but needed help up front. Goligoski was the most tradeable option because he’s young, cheap, and offensively gifted – but not as good as Kris Letang. Neal is a 20-30 goal scorer (he’s scored 20+ goals every year in the league, including 21 so far this season) with a wicked shot and a physical edge to his game – not a playmaker, but a bruising ‘power forward’ who should eventually excel on Crosby’s wing. Best of all, he’s young (23, a month younger than Crosby) and signed through next season. He’s not a savior and there are holes in his game – any top forward with only 58 assists in 210 games obviously isn’t a gifted passer – but he is definitely an asset in a supporting role.
Niskanen is intriguing because he’s got obvious skills, but appears to have confidence issues. Wednesday night both were on display – he made some nifty passes and played a surprisingly solid game – until overtime, when he made a brutal turnover and forced Fleury to make a dazzling save on a breakaway chance. It’s possible that Niskanen needed the classic ‘change of scenery’, and it’s also possible that he will remain an enigma and simply be depth for the team – if he blossoms it’s a clear win for Shero, but even if he doesn’t it’s hard to find fault with this move. Goligoski will be missed; I think he can be a star in this league, and scoring blueliners like him are fairly rare – but you have to give up talent to get talent, and I think Neal was worth the risk. Time will tell, of course.
The other, lesser move was made Thursday, as Alexei Kovalev returns to Pittsburgh basically for free (Shero surrendered a 7th-round pick to Ottawa for him). Kovy has excelled in Pittsburgh before – in fact his time in Pittsburgh was clearly the most productive of his career. Now, he’s a lot older, the talent around him is much less skilled now than it was 10 years ago with the likes of Jagr, Straka, and Mario. On the other hand, even in a terrible year he’s scored 14 goals, which is 2nd on the active roster right now behind Neal – and I expect Dan Bylsma to be able to keep Kovy motivated.* Kovalev wanted to come to Pittsburgh – he reportedly waived his no-trade clause to make this happen, which indicates to me that he will be motivated to perform. This is a low-risk move for Shero – if Kovy fails to perform, the team has lost nothing but a relatively meaningless 7th round pick, and his contract is up at the end of this season. I don’t expect a whole lot from Kovalev, but I don’t mind the move.
*We’ll write more about Bylsma another time, but suffice it to say he’s probably already the best coach in Pens’ history, certainly the best to coach more than 1 or 2 seasons, and it would be a shock if he doesn’t become the longest-tenured coach in team history in a couple of years.
So, let’s look at where the Pens stand – the list of injuries is ridiculous, and growing by the day (Brooks Orpik left Wednesday’s game with a broken hand and is out an estimated four weeks), but most of the injuries are not long-term. Kunitz, Letestu, and Jeffrey should be back within a few days and provide some much-needed scoring for this team. Mike Comrie has missed almost the entire season with a hip injury and is nearing a return, although it’s hard to expect much from him. I’m not sure what Arron Asham’s injury is, but he’s not a major contributor anyway. Paul Martin was hurt Sunday and has missed the last two games, but considering he finished the game Sunday one expects that his injury is not long-term. Malkin is gone for the year with knee damage (and that is what allowed these trades – his salary came off the books for cap purposes when he went on IR, freeing up the space to add players), which leaves us with Eric Tangradi and Sidney Crosby, both dealing with concussions. Tangradi will likely go back to Wilkes-Barre once healed, but obviously Crosby is the key here. Without Crosby the Pens have assembled a dangerous, physical, defensively sound team with a great goaltender that will be difficult to play against in the postseason, but is not a favorite to win the Cup – in other words, we now know what it’s like to root for the Devils for the last 15 years.
With a HEALTHY Crosby, this team is a Cup favorite, especially now that they’ve added Neal. Unfortunately, what was described as a ‘mild’ concussion and initially projected as a week for recovery has now lingered for almost eight weeks, with no return in sight. Let me say now, however, that I’d MUCH rather see Crosby sit out the rest of the year and enjoy a lengthy career than try to rush back and jeopardize his future just for a run at the 2011 Cup. I believe Ray Shero feels the same way, which is why it was so refreshing to see him make these trades even knowing Crosby might not return. I believe Shero, and the ownership group, felt that the team still had a chance to make a deep playoff run without Sid, and took a gamble – the fans see that, and appreciate it. In two weeks the Pens will celebrate their 200th consecutive sellout, and I’ll be there. Yes, part of that is having great players and getting lucky in the Crosby lottery – but many teams have wasted great talent in every sport over the years. It takes committed ownership willing to spend some money wisely, and a sharp GM to put the pieces together in a cohesive, championship-caliber unit – Pens fans, even with Crosby out this is a golden age. Enjoy it.
Across the river at Pirate headquarters, we see the darker side of team ownership. Team president Frank Coonelly, who presides over a team that hasn’t had a winning season in EIGHTEEN years, stated that payroll will NOT go up unless the fans support the team more. Here’s the exact transcript, from Bob Smizik’s blog in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Pirates prospects: “Would the Pirates be able to afford a $70M to $80M payroll, in present-day worth, if this current group of players were competitive enough to merit additional outside free agents?’’
Coonelly: “Today, no, but we will be able to support that payroll very soon if our fans believe that we now have a group of players in Pittsburgh and on its way here in the near future that is competitive. We need to take a meaningful step forward in terms of attendance to reach that payroll number while continuing to invest heavily in our future, but I am convinced that the attendance will move quickly once we convince our fans that we are on the right track.’’
How could he POSSIBLY say this?? This is a textbook lesson in how to tick off a fan base – demand they pay for a terrible product BEFORE you invest in players. Attendance follows winning, not the other way around – that’s an historical FACT. I could delve into a lot of attendance figures, but trust me on this – when bad teams become good, the attendance rises AFTER the winning starts, not before. I have given Coonelly and the Nutting ownership team as much slack as possible, but this statement clearly shows two things to me: #1, they care about profit above all else – winning baseball is a corollary to that goal, not a goal in and of itself. #2, they are either hopelessly out of touch with fans or simply do not care about their fans. I’d like to believe it’s the former, but am slowly starting to fear it’s the latter.
Now, this is baseball, not politics or world affairs and as such there’s only so much outrage I can summon – in the scheme of things, it just isn’t that important to have a winning Pirate team. However, I think that when an owner buys a team, they have an obligation to try to win, and that you cannot run a ballclub exactly the way you’d run a newspaper chain or other private business – in the end, the fans really do matter. At this point, all we can really hope for is that the current owners will sell sooner rather than later, having made a tidy profit on the team, and that new ownership will invest in the team and understand that when you build a winning team and commit to doing what it takes to field a competitive team, the attendance and profits will follow.
By the way, there are owners like that on either side of PNC Park – the Rooneys have run the Steelers that way for 40 years, and the Lemieux/Burkle group has run the Pens that way for most of a decade (that group offered to buy the Pirates about a year ago and was rebuffed). It’s not about ‘small market’ anything, and it’s not about the city or its fans – it’s quite simply about bad ownership. The Pens and Pirates are night and day opposites and have been for quite some time – as Pirate fans, we can only hope that its darkest just before the dawn.
I’ll have a more in-depth look at the Pirates and the rest of MLB in the weeks to come.