The big changes will come later. For now, it seems, Ron Hextall and Brian Burke will focus on a “tweak here and a tweak there” in reshaping their new team.
“Are there a couple of things we’d like to improve? Of course,” Hextall said Tuesday, after he was introduced as the 11th general manager in Penguins history. He will report to the bombastic Burke, the team’s new president of hockey operations.
Unless I miss my bet, the first area these two will attack is team toughness, or the lack thereof. They have to see it. We all see it, even if Jim Rutherford couldn’t anymore: The Penguins, to quote the great Michel Therrien, are “soff” in front of both nets, where so many games are won and lost.
Hextall and Burke are very much in tune with the modern NHL, but, for better or worse, they also belong to the old school. Maybe the ancient school: an eye for an eye.
I would imagine, as they studied this team, they winced at the sight of all those players wandering freely in front of Penguins goalies, even as so few Penguins were crashing the net at the other end. I’m guessing they did more than wince upon seeing the likes of Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba maul Sidney Crosby, rabbit-punching him in the head, knowing that neither he nor any of his teammates would have to pay even a two-cent toll.
The Penguins don’t exact such tolls. Besides Brandon Tanev, they are the less physical team every single night in their division. The least of the East.
It’s not like they were the Broad Street Bullies when they won Cups under Mike Sullivan, but the “turn-the-other-cheek” narrative was a bit overdone. Ever see Chris Kunitz turn a cheek? How about Patric Hornqvist?
Man, how this team could use those two and the likes of Nick Bonino, Matt Cullen and Ian Cole. Bonino literally blocked shots with a broken leg. This team mostly blocks shots by accident.
Hextall doesn’t do “soff,” by the way. He might have mellowed since his playing days. He might even have taken some of the edge off the traditionally felonious Flyers. But you have to believe the beast within — the beast that almost killed Robbie Brown in a playoff game and nearly chopped Kent Nilsson’s leg in-half in the Stanley Cup Finals — watches these Penguins and recoils in horror.
As for Burke, it feels instructive to refer to his November appearance on the Barstool hockey podcast “Spittin’ Chiclets,” starring former Penguins Ryan Whitney and Paul Bissonnette.
The quote making the rounds is the one where Burke, in typically blunt fashion, declares the Penguins’ championship window “closed.” But that isn’t the quote that stands out to me, not if I’m looking for clues as to what Burke values in shaping a championship team, like the one he built in Anaheim.
Burke spoke of how much he admired the job Lightning GM Julien BriseBois did in putting the finishing touches on a Cup team that Steve Yzerman had largely built.
After repeated failures, the Lightning finally broke through last season. BriseBois found what had been missing: an edge.
He found shot blockers, hitters and penalty killers.
“I thought he approached the upgrades with surgical precision,” Burke said. “They gave up first-round picks to get (Blake) Coleman and (Barclay) Goodrow. They got bigger and faster. They brought in (Zach) Bogosian, Shatty (Kevin Shattenkirk), Patty Maroon, Luke Schenn. These are all character people with a fair amount of hostility. They wake up kind of grumpy, except for Shatty. Those other guys all wake up grumpy, and they’re ugly (figuratively speaking, of course).
“So to me, they changed their whole look. They kept their skill set, but they changed, just like our team in Anaheim, in terms of clearly defined roles.
“I use this quote with players all the time: ‘You go to the symphony, and the first violin is elegant. She wears a white dress. She comes out last, and she’s beautiful and stylish. But there’s a guy built like me blowing a tuba in the back row — and they don’t start until we both sit down.’ ”
You’re not going to see a major makeover here. Not anytime soon. But I have to believe that Hextall and Burke, in addition to maybe adding a veteran goalie, will be searching for a couple of guys who blow the tuba.
And who'll respond to the likes of Jacob Trouba.
