Interesting trends around the Penguins
Chasin’ down a few topics on this summer Monday..
Q: Anything surprising about where the Penguins ranked in last week’s front office confidence list on The Athletic?
Seeing how Penguin fans feel against the broader scope of hockey fans is an interesting topic as far as human nature and outlooks go, and this one was particularly revealing.
How is your team’s NHL front office faring? We asked, and nearly 10,000 of you responded.
They were graded in six categories: roster building, cap management, drafting and development, trading, free agency and vision.
So who rose to the top?https://t.co/vqBtPIWGUn
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) August 6, 2024
Overall, for the public 74% of respondents hold less confidence in the Penguins’ front office compared to 12 months ago (compared to only 6% that now have more).
Yet, for Penguin fans, those results did not hold with it being almost even — 29% having more confidence now and 31% losing some over the last year.
The general public was harsh ranking Pittsburgh 30th in cap management, which seems a bit much given that the Pens don’t have too many bad contracts on their books. For roster building, trades and free agency two sets were more aligned. In totality the public ranked the Pens 31st, while the fanbase was 22nd.
It was written:
A lot of the other stuff Dubas did was enough to bring confidence way down. The bottom six was still a disaster last year, an issue that goes back to his Toronto days. The deals for both Ryan Graves and Tristan Jarry have already aged terribly. And last year, when the team’s biggest problem — an awful power play — was obvious to everyone in the world, there was a lot of inaction on Dubas’ end to fix it.
It’s not a shock that the Pens have fallen across the league since almost nothing good has happened to them in the last 12 months from a broad perspective — the shine of the Erik Karlsson trade wore off, sold Jake Guentzel, didn’t make the playoffs and didn’t have a flashy off-season with an exciting additions or make obvious improvements. Not too inspiring there.
But the more interesting development is that supporters paying attention didn’t react the same way. Perhaps it’s the growing interest in a reset/rebuild to attempt to get younger, or just eternal optimism that most any and all moves will end up as best case scenarios. We see it on Pensburgh too where the overall and general mood is still strong and hopeful. It wll be interesting to see how that level changes in the year to come.
Q: What new player has the best odds of exceeding expectations as set by last week’s over/under?
First of all, a nod to those poll numbers since the outcome is very close to 50/50 on them all. In reality, any player is probably going to miss a few games and the under is always a safe bet for any outcome. In the vacuum of a ‘full season scenario’ type of outlook that might not pan out, these numbers are good.
Based on past performance and potential role, I’d say Matt Grzelcyk is the guy to hit on his over of 20.5 points. Last season was bad but he was right there the previous four years from 2019-23 (21, 20, 24 and 26 points), the only under coming in just 37 games of the shortened 2021 season.
The role could be there for Grzelcyk , because who knows what is going to happen with Ryan Graves next year. The only time Graves looked serviceable was buried away in the low minute and responsibility role on the bottom pair. He could very well end up there again.
Meanwhile, Grzelcyk has played for new assistant David Quinn for three seasons at BU. Quinn will be coaching the defense in Pittsburgh next season. Grzelcyk is only a few seasons removed from regularly playing alongside top players like Brandon Carlo and Charlie MacAvoy. With Grzelcyk’s resume and the Pens’ lack of quality on the left side after Marcus Pettersson, the opportunity to play a decently sized role is right there.