Posts About "Mike Sullivan"
Penguins Nearly at Full Strength as Islanders Loom
April 9th, 2019 Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan spent a significant portion of his team's choppy season in search of healthy bodies. Ten players — including stars Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang and goaltender Matt Murray — missed at least 10 games, a spate of i...
Penguins Pulpit: Last Place in the Eastern Conference
November 19th, 2018 Last week, general manager Jim Rutherford threatened changes if his team's play didn't improve. It looked like the threats worked, with the Pittsburgh Penguins finishing their week with a hard-fought 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals and a 4-0 win against the Arizona Coyotes. But the momentum was short-lived. The team fell flat on...
Penguins Unlikely to Win Kessel Trade
June 1st, 2018 Let’s say hypothetically that a team has a player—let’s call him Bill Tessel—who finished the season as one of the NHL's top-10 point producers. He recently helped his team to two consecutive championships and was noted by not one but two different Presidents as being a Stanley Cup champion. Tessel is a fan favorite and...
Hagelin Heating Up Matched with Malkin
January 27th, 2018 With his shaggy Swedish locks and jaw-dropping speed, Pittsburgh Penguins winger Carl Hagelin is hard to miss. He’s ferocious in short-handed situations, a nuisance on the forecheck and never seems to stop moving around the ice. Wherever the puck happens to be, Hagelin is going to be there. But, for all his tenacity and energy, the one...
How the Penguins Exploit the Boards
November 19th, 2017 When a player positions himself along the boards, it can mask the immediate threat this player poses. The Penguins thrive on this misapprehension. For them, the boards provide a refuge, an accelerant, and a laboratory. Danger is modulated until the puck is whipped cross-ice, or floated from behind the net to the low slot and stashed in...
NHL's 'Failed Offside Challenge' Penalty Is a Positive Step
September 14th, 2017 Back in May, I proposed four simple rule changes to help "fix" the NHL. Among them, naturally, was a series of tweaks to adjust the league's coach-controlled offside challenge. I hate the offside challenge, and no, I don't think "hate" is too strong a word. I detest the fact that the league enables coaches to wield that degree of...
