Making the best roster of short-time Penguins
Sean Mcindoe had a fun exercise at The Athletic yesterday:
We’re building six-man rosters – three forwards, two defenseman and a goalie, with no other positional requirements – for individual NHL franchises. The salary cap is $200, and each player costs $1 per regular-season game that he played with that team. Each player must have played at least one game, meaning no sneaky zeroes allowed (i.e. the Coyotes Rule).
You get credit for the player’s entire career, so the key is to find guys who had very short stops with one team during a great career spent almost entirely elsewhere. Martin Brodeur in St. Louis, that sort of thing.
What’s the best lineup you can make for the Penguins? Here’s ours, not counting active players like Erik Karlsson who are currently on the roster.
Forwards: Marian Hossa ($12), Patrick Marleau ($8), Jarome Iginla ($13)
Defense: Hal Gill, ($80), Sergei Zubov ($64)
Goalie: Tomas Vokoun ($20)
Cap: $197 spent
Honorable mention: Gary Roberts ($57), Ziggy Palffy ($42), Ron Hainsey ($16)
Personally, I’m not including Palffy, who quick the team in the middle of the season, out of protest for his short-lived “retirement”. People don’t forget.
It’s hard to believe Gill only played 80 games with the Pens, he added 44 more in the 2008 and 2009 playoff runs to make up over one-third of his career games with Pittsburgh coming in the postseason.
And while Gill was a lumbering veteran by the time he got to Pittsburgh, he was also Jaromir Jagr’s proclaimed toughest opponent in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s in Boston. At his peak with his size and muscle he was an elite defensive stopper.
Otherwise, the pain of short-term trade rental adds gives the Pens a great lineup. Iginla and Hossa are Hall of Famers, Marleau is a borderline one with his ironman streak and compilation of almost 1,200 points.
Vokoun was a quality, if oft-forgotten goalie whose stats are about as good as any during the decade of the 2000’s.
DGB did a dozen teams, the Flames might be the toughest competition, though they’re lacking on the back-end:
Forwards: Jaromir Jagr ($22), Brett Hull ($57), Martin St. Louis ($69)
Defensemen: Bryan Marchment ($37), Nicklas Grossmann ($3)
Goalie: Curtis Joseph ($9)Total: $197
A commenter found that Toronto could run an all Hall of Fame lineup:
Ron Francis – 40
Eric Lindros – 32
Joe Thornton – 41
Phil Housley – 1
Brian Leetch – 35
Gerry Cheevers – 2Total: $151
Give it a try and let me know if you have a different or better Pittsburgh lineup under the circumstances!