The Hardest Part of Penguins Fall is Still to Come

The waiting is the hardest part.

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ slow march to the bottom is going to take a while, and it appears the effort to avoid hitting rock bottom before turning around the franchise, which has been richly rewarded by the Sidney Crosby era, is failing.

The natural progression is undeniable, and things aren’t getting better.

This season, the Pittsburgh Penguins have shown every ability to claim leads over teams good and bad and absolutely no ability to hold those same leads, even against bottom-feeders like the San Jose Sharks, to whom the Penguins blew a three-goal lead on Saturday in a 4-3 shootout win.

By all accounts and gossip around the hockey water coolers and tap rooms, more Penguins trades are coming, and those moves by general manager Kyle Dubas could strip the team of vital pieces as even players in their 20s are likely headed out of town in exchange for future assets. The coming fall from chasing a playoff spot to rock bottom will hurt.

And make no mistake, the transmogrification will be protracted and take a season … or two seasons. Dubas has cited the LA Kings and New York Rangers as teams that quickly turned around after reaching their peak. The problem that Dubas has but doesn’t cite is the albatross of veterans on terrible contracts. Neither LA nor New York had a power play full of unmovable contracts with years remaining.

Long ago, the Penguins missed their shot to retool on the fly with bad moves by former GM Ron Hextall and Dubas, which further deepened the team’s problems and gave away the future capital that Dubas is trying desperately to restock.

The Washington Capitals weren’t quite in the same position, either. Washington kept their future assets, but their veteran players, such as T.J. Oshie and Nick Backstrom, stepped away from the game due to injuries, freeing up large chunks of salary cap space. If the veterans were still hanging around, perhaps Washington would be experiencing the same dreadful sensation as falling as are the Penguins.

The Detroit Red Wings have missed the playoffs since 2016, and the Ottawa Senators haven’t made the playoffs since 2017. Those teams hit rock bottom and have climbed upward, but they have more steps to take, so Penguins fans might want to get comfortable.

The worst part is the Penguins’ fall is going to take a while.

The Chicago Blackhawks missed the playoffs for a handful of years before giving Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews a hearty thanks and pat on the back on their way out the door. They’re a couple of years into their new era but are light years from playoff contention.

For everyone clamoring for a Penguins tear-it-down rebuild, it’s neither happening nor possible, and therein lies the greatest delay. The assets Dubas could acquire by stripping away the players around Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin wouldn’t amount to a booming haul that launched a rebuild. Further, most of the players surrounding the core have some sort of no-trade protections or otherwise unfriendly contracts that reduce their value.

Things are bad.

The Penguins have given up a mind-bending nine leads of two or more goals in the first 20 games. They’ve won four of them, but no healthy team would cough up a three-goal lead to San Jose one night after a vomitous collapse while up 2-0 against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

A few blown leads are a problem to be solved. Nine? That’s an ugly, season-undoing reality, and after a couple of seasons of the same, the underlying causes should have been seen a mile away. So, too, was the lack of finish in the lineup glossed over, the salary cap spaced instead used to buy draft picks through acquiring salary dumps.

At best, insufficient bandaids were slapped on festering wounds.

But rock bottom is a long way off. In the meantime, we wait and enjoy NHL debuts, such as Owen Pickering’s on Saturday and perhaps Tristan Broz’s and Villie Koivunen’s later this season.

But the waiting is the hardest part.