Ray Shero, Trade Master, Gets Jussi Jokinen at Trade Deadline

When a player is in a zone, we sometimes say he's en fuego. Or unconscious. Ray Shero is in the GM zone. The guy is unconscious. He is en fuego. After nabbing Brenden Morrow, Douglas 'Crankshaft' Murray and Jarome Iglina, everybody thought the Pens GM was done. Nope. Not so quick. Today, he pulled the trigger on a trade to get Jussi Jokinen from the Carolina Hurricanes. All he had to give up was a conditional draft sixth- or seventh-round pick in 2013 NHL Entry Draft. The injury bug has hit the Penguins -- Sidney Crosby is out with a broken face; Kris Letang out with a broken toe and other unspecified 'lower body injury'; Paul Martin is out with a broken wrist -- proving the old adage that you cannot have too much depth at playoff time.

photo:  Chris Seward, News Observer

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Jussi. Let's got get us a Cup. I think I will buy a case of beer for Mr. Shero. Perhaps he'd like this brew, from Full Pint:

Matt Cooke's Baggage

For a decade, Matt Cooke was among the dirtiest players in the NHL. He had a game beyond the cheap stuff, but still, if there was a questionable hit to be thrown, he threw it. If he could take a guy out, he did. When he arrived in Pittsburgh in 2008, I was torn. I absolutely loved the rest of Cooke's game, but the head-hunting bothered me. Watching him over the years, I loved his energy and the way he crashed the net. I loved how hard he played. But the flagrant elbows to the head and the reckless disregard for player safety troubled me. I wrote about how much it bothered me a number of times, in a number of places, but the two I remember writing were after Cooke's hit left Marc Savard positively lifeless on the ice and after he threw a flagrant elbow to the head of Ryan McDonough. Those were some of the worst hits I've seen, the kind of hits which need to be completely eliminated from the game.

After Cooke missed the remainder of the 2010-2011 season (serving the suspension of the McDonough hit), he was basically on notice by the team. Pittsburgh Penguins GM Ray Shero told him -- one more strike and you're out. In the summer of 2011, Cooke did some soul searching. He sought advice from a number of sources. He decided to play the game differently and worked hard to learn how to do just that.

Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain -- Or How on Earth Do the Penguins Keep Winning?

By this point in the NHL season, every team has missed players for several hundred games. But the Penguins, the Penguins are:

-- without Brooks Orpik, their best defender

-- without sharp-shooting Evgeni Malkin (although not without his parents at the Consol from time to time)

-- without, of course, the best all-around player in the game, Sidney Crosby.

Just how on earth are they only 5 points behind the Atlantic Division Leading Flyers and the fourth-seed in the playoffs, heading into tonight's game in Philadelphia?

1. The Ham and Eggers.
I wanted to say 'ham and eggers' because it's one of my favorite hockey cliches, but also because the Pens would be hanging onto a playoff spot by their skin of their bills (or possibly on the outside looking in) without contributions from guys like Craig Adams. Oh, to sing the praises of Craig Adams, the guy who was literally signed off the scrap heap by Ray Shero in 2008 has turned into a penalty killing god. It's a good thing, too, because your Pittsburgh Penguins are the most penalized team in the entire league. (You know, if they'd stop taking so many stupid penalties, Adams wouldn't have to take 75 mile an hour pucks to the mid-section so often.) Think Adams is just an ordinary fourth liner? Think again. He's a huge part of the Penguins playoff push this year, one of the smartest players on the ice at all times. And I'm not just saying that because he's a Harvard guy.

2. The Wilkes-Barre effect.
Testy, Conner, Jeffrey, Eggo, Lovejoy.
It's not just Geno and Brooks and Sid missing from the Pens line up. Don't forget, they started the season without Jordan Staal for an extended stretch, and early on, they lost Mike Comrie (who was brought in to be Sid's wingman) and Arron Asham, who was supposed to score some dirty goals for them. Those two have missed a combined 93 games. The Pens have survived, thrived really, because they were able to call up guys from the Baby Pens like Mark Letestu, Chris Connor, and Dustin Jeffrey. Shero was able to pull the trigger on the Goligoski trade to bring in James Neal because Ben Lovejoy and Deryk Engelland have been so effective. I'd like to take a moment to point out that Lovejoy is +9, pretty darned impressive for such a young defenseman.

3. Flower Power.
Yeah, yeah, he started out slow. Okay, he started out worse than slow. He started the season seemingly thinking about pie. Or maybe he was thinking about Bastille Day. Or maybe he was thinking about his grandmother's traditional Bastille Day pie. Because he sure as hell wasn't focused on goaltending in the NHL. Merde. But he worked through it and turned himself back into the kind of net-minder who wins Stanley Cups. He has kept the team in games when the offense just can't get it going. I'll grant you that when he lays a stinker, it is a bad stinky stinker. But, on the flip side of that, when he is good, he is great.

4. Shero-Vision.
And by this, I mean, adding Paul Martin and Zybenek Michalek about 30 seconds after Sergei Gonchar left town. Shero seems to make all the right moves, but perhaps none have been bigger than shoring up the defense with Martin and Michalek. The Pens never did properly replace Rob Scuderi after the 2008-2009 season, then last summer, they lost Gonchar and a very steady defenseman in Mark Eaton. Martin and Michalek are both defensive upgrades over Gonchar, the steady defensive presence that the Penguins were really in need of last year. Michalek has blocked over 1,200 shots this year and Martin is responsible for at least 2,019 clears. Okay, I exaggerate, but you get the point. Both of them are always in the right position and, now that they've played a whole season together, they move like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers out there. It's a beautiful thing.

5. Bylsmagic.
I have to admit to having a hockey crush on coach Bylsma. I love his businesslike approach. I love how articulate he is. I love that he never panics. I love the fact that he is the anti-Bruce Boudreau. It's pretty easy to forget that when Shero fired Michel Therrien in February of 2008, the Pens were on out of the playoff standings and that nobody really expected much from Bylsma. But his smart, calm approach is the perfect fit for this team and the rest is such a crazy story that I still shake my head in wonderment. Also, big ups to Bylsma's coaching staff, particularly assistant coach Tony Granato, who is responsible for the penalty killing unit, first in the league in percentage of penalty kills (85.9%) and second with short-handed goals (12).

Top 5 Reasons for the Penguins Hot Streak

The hottest team in hockey has not only the hottest forward in hockey in the other-worldly Sidney Crosby, but also tremendous chemistry, and coach Dan Bylsma has the Midas touch of late in stringing lines together. Doesn't matter who is out of the line up, he just moves people around and plugs them in and it seems to work. They are going to have to lose a game sooner or later, but so far, they've been outworking teams and when you combine that kind of consistent work with the kind of talent they have, you end up with an 11 game winning streak.

The top five reasons the Pens are clicking right now:

1. Flower is a pistol. I have no idea what was wrong with him the first month of the season. He looked distracted. Like he was thinking about pie, rather than the game in front of him. Maybe it wasn't pie. Maybe it was mousse. Whatever it was, he let in soft goal after soft goal. And usually very early in the game. I have no idea what that was about or, more importantly, how he fixed it. But fixed it seems to be. He started to turn a corner in mid-November and seems to me that he's been getting better and better ever since. For the season, his goals against average is 2.33, which matches his career best of 2.33 in 2007-2008 (when he helped carry the team to their first Stanley Cup Final appearance), but if you look at his stats for just the last month or so when he started to really bring it, he's allowed just 22 goals in 13 games (starting in mid-November.) That's a goals against average of 1.69.

I've missed only a handful of games in the Marc-Andre Fleury era and I can say that it's not just numbers. When he's going good, the team seems to really feed off of it. If he makes just one spectacular save in a game, they seem to rise up collectively around him. Memory is a funny thing, but of the Pens 2008-2009 Stanley Cup run, I remember a few moments, a few snapshots from that post-season, that feel as though they happened 15 minutes ago and the clearest memory I have of that post-season run is Flower stoning Alex Ovechkin on a break away in the Capitals series. I believe the series, and maybe the whole magical post-season run, turned on that one save. Everything works better when Flower is hot.
2. Kris Letang and Crazy Eyes Killer. The defensive pairings are all working really well. Deryk Engelland is the muscle that Alex Gologoski needs to balance him; Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek are just steady-eddies together. But the stars of the show, are the two best defensemen the Pens have, and they're paired together.

Crazy Eyes Killer, a/k/a Brooks Orpik, is about as good a defenseman as you might find in the league. He's a heavy, an enforcer, and I don't mean that in the way that those terms are generally used in hockey parlance. He's not a fighter, not an instigator and not one to take foolish penalties. Through 24 games, he has just 18 penalty minutes. (The league's biggest wanker, Sean Avery, leads the NHL in penalty minutes with 103. Think about that.) No, Orpik is so solid, so steady that he's able to be tremendously physical without ever playing dirty or taking cheap shots. And he is the last man on earth I would want hitting me along the boards. Ouch.

All of which frees up Letang to work his magic. Letang is the most elegant skater on the ice most of the time. He's fast. He's got a quick release and a knack for scoring -- it's no mistake that Sid feeds the puck out to him. In the past, Letang has been paired with other offensive-minded defensemen, which I think tied his hands, forced him to cover a bit. With Orpik out there being the Yin to Letang's Yang, he's blossoming into one of the best scoring defensemen in the league. They go together like Butch and Sundance. That's some high praise indeed.

3. Paul Martin. Actually, I should have just called this one Ray Shero because Shero seems to make all the right moves in the off-season. He's always looking to tweak the team without disrupting the core of it.

All of which brings me to Martin, the defensive presence they have missed since Rob Scuderi left. In fact, I think the team has sorely missed the defensive pairing of Scuderi and USS Hal Gill since the Cup year. The teams was weaker defensively last year -- anybody remember Sergei Gonchar standing there like a statue as the Montreal Canadiens just blew by him at the blue line? Then they lost Mark Eaton, one of the more reliable defensemen, to free agency, making the defense even weaker. They had recalled Knuckles Engelland from Wilkes-Barre and then Shero went to work, his biggest moves being to bring in Martin and Michalek.

It took some time for them to work together as Michalek was out with some injuries, but they have developed real chemistry and trust together. Plus, Byslma & Co. fixed the anemic power play unit by putting Martin at point. He's a very straight forward kind of player, not one to dither around in the defensive zone considering a hundred and one options as time drains away from the man-advantage. Nope, guy puts his head up and just brings the puck up. It's made a huge, huge difference.

4. Depth.Without Jordan Staal for the whole season, without Aran Asham for a chunk of games, without Michalek for a chunk of games, without Evgeni Malkin, without Mike Comrie (who it was thought would be a great wingman for Sid), they just keep on chugging. Mark Letestu and Chris Conner are playing themselves into starting spots even when Malkin and Staal are back. But what to do with Craig Adams? Mike Rupp? These are good problems for a coach to have -- to have too many players and not enough starting spots.

5. Sid. You can never write too much about what Crosby does on the ice. Sure, he scores a ton and he's on a real tear during this winning streak. And he feeds perfect tape-to-tape passes to his linemates. He handles face offs. He contributes on the penalty kill. He's made a home for himself beside the night, fighting to get dirty goals. Only somehow, when Sid makes them, they're spectacular. He's shooting the puck more from outside. Every time I turn on a game, I marvel at something else he does. Every time.

Wednesday night versus the Toronto Maple Leafs, he broke his stick with a Leaf bearing straight down on Fleury. So he just got right in the way, and was hitting the ice to block a shot with his body, which forced the Leaf to go around him and took him off line. I don't even think the guy got a shot on net. When the best offensive player in the game sells out like that, how can his teammates not?

Penguins Power Play Key

Every team has holes to fill, every team goes into each new season with questions. Penguins fans wondered, who was going to play on the wing with Sid? Frankly, that seems to be a question every year and Mike Comrie was supposed to be the answer there, but, meh, not so much. (More on that in another post.)

Then there was the question of how and where Arron Asham might fit in? Turns out, of late he's fit quite nicely next to Evgeni Malkin.

There were questions about how they would replace the solid defense of Mark Eaton (not to mention and Rob Scuderi, who I don't think has been adequately replaced since he left after winning the Cup.)

Just when, oh when, would we get the magnificent Jordan Staal back?

And of course, we all wondered if Flower would return to 2008-2009 magnificence? Or be the hot, erratic post-Olympic mess he was in the spring of 2010? That's still unanswered, really.

There were questions. Questions, questions everywhere.

But the big fat elephant at center ice for the Penguins was, in the absence of Sergei Gonchar, just who would quarterback the power play?

So far, the answer is nobody which might account for the fact that I actually groan when the Pens go on the power play. In the words of noted hockey fan Harvey Fierstein, is that so wrong?

A couple of years ago, we watched Geno quarterback the PP and that was P.U. Not wanting to revisit that ineptitude, they did the obvious and plugged in Gonchar's wingman on the PP, Alex Gologoski. Despite Gogo's obvious shooting ability, my buddy the UConn Fan astutely pointed out that dude just thinks way too much at the point and by the time he figures out what he wants to do, the defense has completely adjusted. You know, now that I think about it, rather than groaning, I should run a quick lap from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen, and then reverse my course and do it again, because when I'm done with that, the Pens power play should be set up in the offensive zone. It takes them at least 30 second, sometimes closer to a full minute - an eternity in hockey time - to set up.

Sometimes, I watch other teams and within 15 seconds of the power play starting, they've buried the puck in the back of the net. It looks so easy. They make it look fun, even. Power plays can be fun? Who knew. May god have mercy on my immortal soul, but the Flyers and the Capitals make it look like child's play.

But not our Pens, who convert on the PP only 13% of the time, good for 24th out of 30. I could understand how you might think the power play unit ranked 31st out of 30 if you have been watching them squander 80 out of their 92 opportunities. [That 92 power play chances? Is first in the league by a mile, which makes it even more painful somehow.]

But the problems with the power play go deeper, much deeper than the points they're leaving out there. Its like their special teams futility weighs on them, weighs them down, putting subsequent shifts in a funk, a malaise. Their inability to score -- heck, their inability to even generate scoring chances -- is killing them in all areas. The way they get a lift from a successful penalty kill, they get a comparable drag from failure on the power play.

Rumbles are that Dan Bylsma is going to deploy the pairing of Kris Letang and Paul Martin out there to run the PP starting tonight. Martin has been a really solid addition and I love Letang's speed and grace, so it's worth a shot. They'll need a boost tonight, because they've got Vancouver, a team with a solid penalty kill unit and Roberto Luongo in net.