Kipper : The Pens Have Talent, But Lack A Team And Youth

Here we are 4 games into the opening round of the Playoffs and if you're a Pens fan you have to be worried at this point about seeing the Pens get upset early in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It's not supposed to be this way. It didn't start of this way. he Pens started the series off with a masterful beat down to the tune of 5-0 over the Islanders. After that game, the Pens have largely been dominated on the ice outside of Special Teams, Faceoffs and individual skill. The "team" concept style of play has been tilted heavily in the Islanders favor.
One of my greatest concerns for this team coming into the Playoffs outside of whether Marc-Andre Fleury could improve on his last 3 years of Playoff incompetence was whether too much roster change was made at the Trade Deadline.
I love seeing talent brought in. I love all of the pieces that Ray Shero brought in as individuals, but 5 players to an 18 man starting roster is a lot. That is nearly 30% of your roster that is new. 30% of your roster that knows Dan Bylsma's system right now but surely don't know it comfortably or more important - confidently. On top of adding nearly 30% new faces to the roster, during that entire month while those new guys are getting acclimated to the system, and linemates, the Pens were shuffling guys in and out due to injury. Sidney Crosby missed the month of April. Evgeni Malkin, Brooks Orpik, Kris Letang and James Neal all missed good chunks of time in April when the Pens as a team needed to form chemistry and become a "team" on the ice. They never had that chance. The Pens finished out the Regular Season largely winning, but doing so without the need to adjust on a game to game basis and allowing the immense talent on the team to win with skill. Now it's time to make adjustments on a per game basis and the lack of team chemistry is showing.
i.jpgThe Pens won Game 1 of this series playing their game, the same game that they had played in the Regular Season. They won in a landslide. The Islanders made a lot of adjustments in Game 2 and beat the Pens. Despite what the unintelligent hockey fan will suggest, Dan Bylsma has been making changes these past 3 games and even during the games. Coming out of the 2nd Period against the New York slanders last night, Bylsma adjusted the Pens breakout and forecheck, as the Islanders spent the entire 1st Period basically forcing turnover after turnover in the Neutral Zone. The problem with the adjustments by the Pens is that as a team they never looked smooth and confident performing the changes. That's been largely a problem for the Pens all series is that there's been so much lineup change, a lack of chemistry and a lack of confidence by the newer guys in the lineup that when you issue changes, it not only throws off the chemistry that was forming but it makes the confidence lower and it makes the team slower.
Slower?
When you have to think rather than react, you're going to be slower on the ice and the Pens outside of Ray Shero constructing a very old lineup, look slow not from a skating standpoint but from a quickness and reactionary standpoint. The Islanders are forcing the Pens to constantly adjust, give Jack Capuano credit. He sees a team that lacks chemistry and is destroying any chance the Pens might have at forming chemistry by confusing them. This isn't really one coach ou-tcoaching another coach, this is one coach taking advantage of the way another teams GM constructed the team. all Dan Bylsma can do is show his players what they need to do to adjust. I don't doubt that the adjustments would work, but perhaps they would work better with a team that is more of a team than a piece meal assembly job peppered with folks coming back from injury at the end of the season and in the Playoffs.
Let's also not forget too that guys like Jarome Iginla who are natural Right Wings are not only having to learn a new system, new teammates and make adjustments on a per game and in game basis but has to do so playing Left Wing with James Neal's return. Brooks Orpik's return last night changed the Top 4 defensive pairings and it showed. That was one of the worst Defensive performances I've seen in a long time. they never looked comfortable.
How old is this lineup? The Average age of the Pens that played last night was 30.5 compared to the new york Islanders at 27.7. 11 of the 18 skaters (not including goalie) the Pens put on the ice last night were over the age of 30. 6 of the players are 34 years old or more. The Islanders skated just 6 players out of 18 that were over the age of 30. Taking a look at the Chicago Blackhawks record, since they were the only team better than the Pens during the Regular Season and having a commanding 30-1 in their series from the byproduct of fairly dominating play against a #8 seed, the Blackhawks average age that was on the ice for their 4-0 shutout of the Wild is 27.4. That's even younger than the New york Islanders. The construction of the Chicago Blackhawks has been about peppering a few vets in there like Hossa, Oduya, Handzus and Roszival and keeping the rest of the roster relatveily young in their low to mid 20's.
When folks on TV, in the media, on the radio and in Blogs talk about the Islanders "speed" in reference to their foot speed, it's because they're skating far younger legs. The Pens Defense is made up of only 2 players under the age of 30 (Kris Letang and Matt Niskanen). Everyone else is at least a couple of years their 30's. the Pens "energy" line consists of 2 players well into their 30's (Matt Cooke at 34 and Brenden Morrow at 34). You're not going to get much "energy" out of guys that don't have a whole lot of it especially against a younger team.
The positive is that the Pittsburgh Penguins are largely all healthy and skating together. Game 4 was the first time that the full roster was intact. They played like it too especially against a team that's been skating with relative continuity the entire playoffs. It won't take long for these guys to form that much needed chemistry because they are largely all vets. The question is whether they can form enough in order to finish out this series and move on? Can they overcome their lack of speed, speed that is needed to execute Dan Bylsma's aggressive speed based forechecking system and Defensive schemes to beat the Islanders? Will they get the strong goaltending they need from backup Tomas Vokoun?
There's a lot of questions right now surrounding the Pittsburgh Penguins and they can certainly achieve enough of them to get into the 2nd Round. Speed or no speed, the more these guys form chemistry with each other, the more dangerous it is going to be. The Pens could be that team that gets stronger and better as the Playoffs get deeper, they just need to figure out a way to get past the early Playoff obstacles to get to that point.
First obstacle is beating the New York Islanders on Thursday

Attached Images

• i.jpg (45.8 KB)