It's Justified : Hindsight is Always 20/20

My first piece here I hope you guys all enjoy and we can inspire some spurred conversation. This is something I worked on a few weeks back for steelcitypucks.
What could have been, oh my, what could have been? Much has been made of the Shero regime’s inability to look past defenseman at the top of the draft and the lack of the obtaining impact offensive talent up front in the draft during the tenure of Ray Shero as General Manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins. This has been talked about ad nauseam in the media, on sports talk radio, and in barroom discussion since 2008, always passing on the offensive talent to instead draft and develop defensemen and then use these defensemen as trade chips to bolster the big league club, as well as the top six talent pool coming forward.

The thing that happened was this never came to fruition, the Penguins always used draft capital in order to make trades, they didn’t move the defensemen that were being stock piled. While this has given us the current glut of NHL ready defensemen on the roster and in AHL limbo, look at what the Penguins have lost for basically nothing over the last four years, Ben Lovejoy, Brian Strait, Joe Morrow, Phillip Samuelsson, and Carl Sneep. While these players may not be a murderers’ row of NHL defensemen, at least a few of these guys are more than serviceable and all have at least logged NHL minutes.

The real problem comes from when you look at what could have been. The NHL draft usually has anywhere from a 50-75 percent success rate of where most first round draft picks play in the NHL at some point and most generational talents are identified earlier and drafted accordingly. If we look at what the Penguins have done and throw out any first round picks and look at what could have been its quite disheartening. Please take a minute and imagine a healthy roster that looked like this

David Perron – Sidney Crosby – Jamie Benn
Brandon Saad – Evgeni Malkin – Patric Hornqvist
Chris Kunitz – Brandon Sutter – Wayne Simmonds
Jason Zucker – Jared Nolan – Steve Downie

Kris Letang – Jake Muzzin
Olli Maatta – Christian Ehroff
Robert Bortuzzo – Derrick Pouliot

Marc-Andre Fluery
Thomas Greiss

Before anyone jumps to conclusions and starts complaining about the salary cap take a minute and look at these numbers. We are using the above noted players and their current salary cap, not actual salaries rounded to nearest tenth.

David Perron 4.25m – Sidney Crosby 8.7m – Jamie Benn 5.25m
Brandon Saad 900k – Evgeni Malkin 9.5m – Patric Hornqvist 4.25m
Chris Kunitz 3.8m – Brandon Sutter 3.3m – Wayne Simmonds 3.9m
Jason Zucker 900k – Jared Nolan 700k – Steve Downie 1mil


This gives us 46.45 Million or so wrapped up in forwards.

Kris Letang 7.25m – Jake Muzzin 1m
Olli Maatta 900k – Christian Ehroff 4m
Robert Bortuzzo 600k – Derrick Pouliot 800k


Plus 14.55 wrapped up in defensemen.

Finishing things out we have 5m and 1m for Fluery and Greiss giving us 6 million in goaltending.

You can add all of these together and have a 67 million dollar cap payroll. Add in a 13th forward and a 7th defenseman at or near rookie minimum and you still have 1.5 million dollars to play with in cap room. In our exercise we will use Beau Bennett at 900k and Scott Harrington at 900k to still stay under the 69 million dollar salary cap by 200k.

Now you may ask how could the Penguins have such a team without moving any of their top end prospects or pieces, well sit back and let us follow up the lack of offensive insight displayed by the prior Penguins front office. We can start with Jake Muzzin, he was drafted 141st overall by the Penguins in 2007, yet he was never offered a contract by Shero, to be fair Muzzin did have a invasive spinal surgery before his contract control was relinquished; however, at least taking a flyer on Muzzin cannot be forgiven. So we can start out with 1 of our imaginary Penguins for free.

We can continue in the 2007 NHL draft, at this draft the Penguins selected center Kevin Veilleux with the 51st overall selection, taken 10 spots later was a Steel City Pucks favorite Wayne Simmonds. Simmonds was also picked up the Los Angeles Kings, can you sense a pattern here? Later on in that same draft the Penguins selected defenseman Alex Grant with the 118th overall pick, 11 spots later the Dallas Stars selected their captain and Canadian Olympian Jamie Benn. As a Penguin fan can you imagine a top line of Perron – Crosby – Benn, could Sid realistically expect to hit 135 points in a healthy year?

In this imaginary team building exercise we then move to the 2009 NHL draft, at selection 181 the Penguins selected another defenseman who has never sniffed the NHL with the Penguins, Viktor Ekbom. At selection 186 the Los Angeles Kings, ahhh the Kings again, selected Jordan Nolan. Nolan whose physical size and presence on the fourth line would do wonders for our imaginary Penguins in making that line a matchup nightmare.

We then move to the 2010 NHL draft, in this draft the Penguins selected Bryan Rust in the third round, now Rust hasn’t been terrible for the Penguins this year; however, most can agree that he is far from a future impact player. The same cannot be said about Jason Zucker, who was selected 30 spots earlier than Rust by the Minnesota Wild but 9 spots after the Penguins second round pick in this draft, that pick was given up to rent two months of Jordan Leopold, who most remember being nearly decapitated in his short uneventful stay with the Penguins.

The last change in the past to finally have all the pieces to arrive at our imaginary Penguins that would be needed is the one that most local fans still rue to this day, The Penguins passed on the prodigal son and fan favorite Brandon Saad to select Joe Morrow. While Morrow was the 23rd overall selection in round one, Saad was not selected until round 2 so this still stays within the parameters of our exercise. Saad also burst onto the scene and has entrenched himself in Chicago becoming an outstanding two way player and someone who would be the ideal winger for Geno.

This also leaves the Penguins with Beau Bennett and Scott Harrington to fill in the 21st and 22nd spots on the roster and still stay underneath be it by a dollar or two the salary cap for 2014.

Looking at the Penguins with this roster, having not had to make any moves of draft picks or roster players off of the current team or any pieces that were used to build the current team makes you notice that there were deficiencies in drafting and developing by the prior regime, this also shows how a few shrewd moves can create a juggernaut. Can you imagine having to matchup with a fourth line of Zucker, Nolan, and Downie? The defense would be extremely young and far from playoff tested; however, is there any team in the NHL that could matchup with the size, speed, and playmaking ability that the imaginary Penguins would possess?

Now it’s a lot of fun to play the could have, should have, and will happen game; however, these are not moves that would have even registered on the collective psyche of the region or the NHL at the time. If a butterfly flaps its wings in Johannesburg would a hurricane be avoided in Miami, is not so different than asking what would have happen if Shero actually drafted projectable NHL up front talent. Injuries can decimate, look at the current Penguins roster and what has happened over the last few years, and we see that with the imaginary Pens having to be without Hornqvist and Maata, but our 21 and 22 would fill in and actually save the current cap space so we would still be prepared and have most of the Wilkes-Barre roster that has been in Consol most of this season.
Don’t take this as gospel, who knows what would have happened the last few years with Saad and Benn, would have Muzzin broke through the Shero logjam, would Simmonds have developed without top power play minutes, would there be a reason for the cerebral and level headed play of Steve Downie at this point, would Dan Blysma still be here?

These are all fun what ifs, its too bad Doc Brown was killed by the Libyans and we can’t use the DeLorean to find out.