CBC-Sports

Penguins in free fall, Therrien in trouble

January 6, 2009 02:12 PM | Posted by   Craig Simpson  

The New Year couldn’t come quick enough for the Pittsburgh Penguins. A new sense of hope. An opportunity to turn the page on the past and start fresh.

A short year ago, it was Sidney Crosby winning in a storybook shootout in the Winter Classic at Buffalo to start what ended up being a magical run to the Stanley Cup Finals. This year, the Penguins’ New Year’s Day was spent in Boston losing their third in a row and ninth game in 13.

Fast-forward to Jan. 5, 2009, and suddenly the Stanley Cup finalist Penguins find themselves in big trouble and in a free fall down the standings.

On Dec. 4th, they were 15-6-4 and comfortably in a playoff spot. But after a 4-0 shutout loss to the New York Rangers Monday - which marked a five-game losing streak - they are now suddenly just two games over .500 at 19-7-4 and are out of the playoffs by a point.

Personnel changes

There is some serious concern and all kinds of tough questions coming out of Pittsburgh.

This Penguin team is a shell of the one we watched in June, and despite the legitimate excuse of some key injuries to Ryan Whitney and Sergei Gonchar and the departure of Marian Hossa, Ryan Malone and Gary Roberts, they have underachieved in a big way.

Pittsburgh still boasts two of the three top scorers in the NHL, but even Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby have not been themselves. Malkin, the NHL leading scorer has zero goals in his last right games and has only two points in six. Crosby has done more damage with his fists than his stick lately with just two goals in his last 17 games played, and has been held pointless in eight of those 17.

Therrien's style wearing thin?

If the players have tuned out their head coach Michel Therrien and are trying to get him fired, they are doing a good job. They are a frustrated group, an inconsistent team and their effort has been anything but exemplary.

Therrien is what you would call a taskmaster and has a reputation of being hard on his players. From an outsider looking in, it appears that his tactics have worn thin.

The options available for general manager Ray Shero to spark a change in his team are few. He mortgaged a big chunk of their depth and future, including recent world junior star Angelo Esposito, to bring in Marian Hossa at last year’s deadline. Losing Colby Armstrong and Erik Christensen took not only some of the depth away from the team, but also changed the chemistry and energy of the room.

With Hossa’s offensive talent, leadership and skill, the Pens were fine last year, but after losing him to free agency for nothing, the Pens are reeling.

Shero doesn’t have a lot to deal, and not much cap space to manoeuvre with. The Hossa trade definitely helped the Penguins get to the Cup finals and made the team a lot of money last spring, but it is really hurting them now.

Shero weighing options

If things continue on this downward spiral, the only option left may be a new voice behind the bench. It’s hard to believe that just seven months after going to the finals that suddenly Therrien could be the problem. But like we have seen so many times, things change quickly in the NHL and the coach is usually the one to take the fall.

Crosby and Malkin are not going anywhere, and for over a month now, they don’t seem to be playing like they want to play for him.

You do the math!

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