Penguins' Struggles

The past couple weeks the Pittsburgh Penguins have struggled.

Many teams go through this sort of thing, and they need to find a way out of it sooner than later. I realize that last night the Penguins beat the Thrashers, but the Thrashers are a bottom three team, which isn't impressive at all.

Many people look at the players we don't have, and want to put the blame on Crosby wishing Hossa was still here, or all the grit and toughness that the Pens lost. However the Penguins need to let go of this—mainly Crosby.

We all understand—and lets be honest, Satan was not the answer—but Sidney needs to remember when he had guys like Colby Armstrong and Andy Hilbert as linemates at a point as well.

Not only does this affect the team, but I believe Therrien—with his lack of changing a system when its not working—will bury this team. Multiple reports have been about Therrien getting fired. I am all for this.

When you have two of the top three players in the world, there is no excuse to be preforming at the rate the Penguins are right now. Our powerplay is horrid and the refusal to change it is beyond me.

I will cut Therrien some slack there, mainly because Mike Yeo runs the power play and lately he ran it into the ground.

The offseason was better than people remember. Sure, we lost Hossa, Malone, Conklin, Ruutu etc...But the most important players got resigned for good deals i.e. Malkin, Fleury, and Brooks Orpik. 

There were some nice additions in the offseason in Fedotenko and Cooke. The one who couldn't fill the hole of not just Hossa, but also of an impact winger for Sid, was Satan. Satan is a shell of what he used to be. He is past his prime and he was a bad signing.

Another bad signing was resigning Eaton for two years at $2 million a year. You can not pay a fifth or sixth defensemen that kind of money in a salary cap world.

I am hoping for a change, be it through trade or coaching shake-up.

Something needs to be done before it is too late.