At least one team in the organization is winning..

Wilkes-Barre downs Hershey 6-2 yesterday afternoon:

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton rallied for the final five goals of the game – including three on the power play – to take a 6-2 win over visiting Hershey on Sunday before 6,475 fans at the Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza.

Rookie Nick Johnson tallied a pair of goals for the Penguins, and Janne Pesonen racked up a game-high four points (1-3-4) in the winning effort.

As Jonathan Bombulie points out, the Baby Pens (24-13-3) have defeated the mighty Bears (28-11-1) three times in a row following opening night's beat down. Also, anything that puts Mark Letustu and Mario Lemieux in the same sentence has got to be worth a read.

Pesonen was the #1 star of the game and rookie winger Luca Caputi notched three assists. It would be great if one of them could make an impact in the NHL this season, but don't hold your breath.

The Penguins are 7-2-1 in their last ten which is solid, but even more impressive considering that a number of their best players (Chris Minard, Tim Wallace, Dustin Jeffrey and Paul Bissonnette) have been in Pittsburgh for some or all of this stretch.

Best coach in town: Mike Tomlin

As you may or may not know: we've been on the Defensive Player of the Year's bandwagon before the oxes got there.

As long as Ben stays out of the way (we still maintain that Homestead Charlie is our man)...The Steelers will win. And win big.

Who says you can't go home

You know, if the price of oil keeps dropping the Russian Kontinental Hockey League is going to be in a world of hurt...

“I was thinking about it and if Mario would call me and say, ‘I’d like you to play for our team,’ I would think about it a lot,” Jagr said in a telephone interview from Moscow where the Kontinental League will hold its inaugural All-Star Game outdoors at Red Square Saturday. “I would play for the minimum salary. I would play for $350,000 just for him because I owe him my hockey life. I want to pay him back because he has made me what I am…besides my parents.”

Talk about bringing things full circle, eh? Of course, everything's conjecture until the rubber hits the road, but even if Jagr finishes another season and a half in Russia he would be 38 years old. That's so young Mark Recchi and Chris Chelios would be yelling at keeping him off their lawn.

Stay tuned, and as always never say never..

Huge hat-tip to Empty Netters

Slugger Ruslan Fedotenko out, Minard up

(image from the Pensblog)

The look on the Penguins faces on the bench is priceless. Miroslav Satan doesn’t seem too impressed though. But then again Satan hasn’t really been that much of anything inside a rink in quite a while.

Ruslan Fedotenko out 4-6 weeks on a broken hand from Colby Armstrong’s beak? Ouch. Rusty should leave the fighting to the big dogs. The shame too is Fedotenko was playing good hockey on the “European line” with Evgeni Malkin and Petr Sykora.

To replace Fedotenko, Chris Minard has been re-called. Minard’s scoring at an Ovechkin-esque rate: 26 goals in 30 games. Unfortunately when he’s been in the bigs Head Coach Michel Therrien—in all his wisdom, has given Minard 8 minutes a night, primarily playing with guys like Eric Godard. This time it should be different, Minard has been a pure goal scorer at every level. During the NHL lockout he scored 49 goals (in 69 games) playing with a playmaking center in Scott Gomez. Sure it was the ECHL, but still, if you can play with talented players it shows, despite the level of competition. With such few Penguins winger actually acting like they know how to play hockey, why not give Minard (now seasoned with 22 career NHL games) a legit shot at a chance on a scoring line.

If Therrien is smart, he'll make it happen. If he's lucky, Minard will somehow pinball around and end up on a top line with all the combination of switches. It's bound to happen, right?

Letang a Young-star, Goose snubbed

Kris Letang is going to the All-Star game. Well not quite, but he was voted back to the joke of the "Youngstars" game; an exhibition so lax it makes the actual All-Star game look as intense as a Game 7 playoff between two blood rivals.

Alex Goligoski [6 goals, 13 assists, +6] got left off the rookie team in favor of Toronto's Luke Schenn [29 games, 0 goals, 3 assists, -6] and LA's Drew Doughty [3g, 9a, -4]. Meh, the game is basically a commerical and having two young 18/19 year old defensemen is more of a "story".

Stuck in a rut

The Penguins finally got some puck luck involved in a couple goals in order to jump up to a 3-0 lead, but it wasn’t to be as Nashville battled back.

Could a coaching change be on the horizon? For whatever reason the Pens are stuck in a rut. No matter who Michel Therrien plays (or sits), no matter what combination he uses (and he’s about tried them all) nothing is clicking, nothing is working. Among the worst of his ideas:

--Sitting Hal Gill out again and playing Alex Goligoski as a 3rd line forward. The now official whipping boy of TST, Phillipe Boucher, is playing terrible. When Ryan Whitney coughed up the puck to give up a 2 on 1 (gah) Boucher fell back. As a defensemen there is one important thing to accomplish on a 2 on 1, and even the most basic players know it. DO NOT ALLOW THE PASS, let the goalie play the guy with the puck, you take out the other player. So what does Boucher do? He lets a pass go through. Sure, it was a nice saucer pass by Martin Erat and David Legwand made a great hustle just to get in the play, but that’s what happens at the NHL level when you don’t do your job.

--Alex Goligoski is not a forward. He’s never played forward. He’s not going to look good jumping straight into NHL action as a forward. The third and tying Nashville goal was a real back-breaker, with :55 seconds left in the period. Mark Eaton and who else, Boucher, couldn’t get the puck out and Goligoski—not a forward, didn’t play his new position well either. Shocker.

--Constant line switching. We don’t mind a change now and then, but seemingly every period all the combinations were switched. Jordan Staal played with Sidney Crosby and Tyler Kennedy. Then he’s playing with Matt Cooke and Max Talbot; Miroslav Satan is with Evgeni Malkin and Petr Sykora, then he’s down with Dustin Jeffrey and Tim Wallace. Malkin is bouncing around from center to wing. With all this changing, it’s no wonder the Penguins effort and results are mixed and uneven. There’s no chance to settle in with chemistry—or for those moving from wing to center or defense to wing back to defense when the team needs a goal, even to get comfortable in a position.

Nashville had some interesting ideas too, they pulled goalie Dan Ellis after the second goal (a fluky bad clearing attempt that ended up in the net). Both coaches and Nashville broadcasters said it wasn’t Ellis’ fault, but to kick start the team. Well the team was already outshooting and outhustling the Penguins—not that that says too much these days—and new goalie Pekka Rinne saw a pinball Matt Cooke pass end up on Max Talbot’s stick and in the back of the net. From their on though Rinne was solid, especially during the Penguins last flurry.

In that last, desperate exchange; new contract boy Jordan Staal got the puck on his stick with an empty net but Radek Bonk made a fabulous defensive play to poke it away. If Staal can put that in we go to OT at 4-4 and anything could happen. But, these days, that’s just not how things are going for the Penguins. The only question is how big of a whole is Ray Shero going to let the team dig themselves before he takes action. Whether that is relieving Therrien, making a trade, signing Brendan Shanahan, any number of possibilities could be the answer. The option of sitting back and letting the boys get over this themselves just doesn’t look realistic now.

Staal signs extension

The Penguins re-signed Jordan Staal today, four years and $16 million. On the surface it seems like a shock, a $4 million a year cap hit for a 3rd line center seems like a novelty.

But when you talk Jordan Staal, you must always remember he's 20 years old. In fact he recently broke Patrick Marleau's record of being the youngest player to play 200 NHL games. The sky is the limit, the potential is there. This year Staal's been going through an up and down season, but we've noticed he's been more physical in throwing checks than past seasons. His game is progressing and he is getting better, even if it doesn't always jump out at you. Take even strength faceoffs as one indicator; Staal's first season he won just 38%, last season it was up to 44% and this year it's up to exactly 50% so far. Even if the statistictial metrics don't always jump off the page, 6'4 220 pound defensively responsible centers do not grow on trees.

A second reaction might be; $4 million, that's a big increase. But it really isn't, Staal's on his entry level contract and his cap hit is $2.2 million. Cap hits for rookies includes the maximum bonuses, though it's pretty likely that Staal achieves most these bonuses (usual marks include appearing in 40, 50, 60 games, score 10, 15, 20 goals, etc). Considering that Evgeni Malkin could have been a $10 or almost $11 million man next season, what he left on the table covers a lot of Staal's salary bump.

So much for those budding Staal for Martin St. Louis trade rumors, huh? We never thought Staal would be traded this season, it always seemed like Ray Shero was very connected and comfortable with his first ever draft pick as a general manager.

20 years old and all that money though. When we were 20 the things on our minds were finishing papers, chasing girls and wondering where the next party would be. It's almost unimaginable to ponder four years and $16 million dollars.