Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Did the Penguins just quit on their head coach?

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

On Wednesday night, things went from bad to worse for the Pittsburgh Penguins with a lifeless loss against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Hunter and Pat are here to recap that game and start by saying how it looks like the Penguins quit on their head coach. They discuss how the performances worsen and what could be coming if this continues. They look at how there was no spirit or heart in this team and what that means going forward. After that, they get into some practice updates and how Bryan Rust is banged up again, which isn't good. What other adjustments would we make going forward? The two hosts dive into that before ending the show with what Kyle Dubas should do to try and save this season.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!eBay MotorsWith all the parts you need at the prices you want, it’s easy to turn your car into the MVP and bring home that win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit is only available to US customers.Jase MedicalGet $20 off these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.SleeperDownload the Sleeper App and use promo code LOCKEDONNHL to get up to a $100 match on your first deposit. Terms and conditions apply. See Sleeper’s Terms of Use for details.GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelScore early this NFL season with FanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook! Right now, NEW customers get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning FIVE DOLLAR MONEYLINE BET! That’s A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS – if your team wins! Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Penguins were humiliated by the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night. And for today's episode, the Locked-on Penguins podcast, Pat and I are going to discuss where the team goes from here. You're Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.

I'm one of your hosts, Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-s, Pass. for damn. You can follow me on Twitter, Hunter Hodes. You can follow Pat on Twitter at Sinom for Wet. And you can follow these shows, Twitter, at L.O. Arneswar Penguins. Of course, thank you all so much for making this, your first lesson slash watch today. We are free and available on all platforms and today's episode is brought to you by Fandul. Make every moment more right now. New customers get $150 of bonus bets with any winning $5 money line bet. That's $150 if your team wins. Visit fandle.com slash locked on to get started. So waking up today after the penguins got embarrassed by the Tampa

Lightning on Wednesday night, I just honestly had one thought in my head. For the first time in the Mike Sullivan era since he took over for Mike Johnston, it felt like the penguins quit on him on Wednesday night. I didn't see any effort. I didn't see any spirit. I didn't see any heart from that team. When a camera cut to the bench, guys were just sitting there, not really doing anything. It went onto the ice where players were just kind of gliding around.

Like it was a morning skate, that entire game. And it honestly got to the point where this game was not enjoyable. And it felt like the Penguins really haven't been that enjoyable to watch throughout this season, which is something that I can't believe I'm saying, because I was really excited heading into this season. and I can't believe it's gotten to this point where, again,

I don't know what the future holds for Todd Reardon, Mike Sullivan, and all these guys. I don't know what Kyle Dupus is going to do to get this ship turned around, but it honestly felt like for the first time on Wednesday night that they had quit on a head coach that has been here for almost a decade. And it sucks to see because Mike Sullivan has done so many great things for this organization. but man, this feeling of could this be it for this guy really settled into my head after this game and after I woke up this morning. It was really upsetting to watch.

And the vibes are down right now. That's for sure. Yeah. So first things first, I'm going to apologize to our listeners because I've been thinking about doing this episode all day, even at work. and I was trying to think of answers. I was trying to think of solutions. And I got nothing. So this episode is going to be very much a vibes-based episode.

This is going to be vibes in stream of consciousness and a little bit of therapy for the therapy or chicken soup for the Penguins fans sold. Because I made myself a cup of tea before we started so I don't get too crazy. but listen, I don't know if I'm at the fire Mike Sullivan level yet. I don't know because listen, this team is confusing. It is a genuinely confusing team. I think if they were to fire him, I wouldn't be surprised, I think, at this point, just of what we saw on Wednesday night, but keep going.

No, it wouldn't shock me either. But here's the thing. Like, you look at the analytics and the underlying, you look under the hood and it's a solid team. Play really well at five on five. They're, you know, they get,

they've been getting really good goal tending. Part of you thinks, okay, maybe was everybody right that this is just an old team that just doesn't have it anymore, but then you look at all the big guns, Crosby, Malkin,

Latang, Carlson, all of them are the, they're the key contributors. They're doing very well. But then, you know, at the same time,

people are going to hear me say that. and say, oh, Pat, who cares about analytics? All it matters is wins and losses. I agree with you. Like at this point, we can talk about the analytics and the process and we can put them up on a mantle and admire them, but they don't mean Jack right now because this team's 500 and middling. And then at the other end of it, you look at it and go, well, they're owed for their last

34 on the power play. They're getting to the point where they might reach or beat. a power play slump record that was set by the Cleveland Barons who don't exist anymore. And their claim to fame was that they sucked. So this is a genuinely confusing team because they're not bad, but they're not winning. And last night, I agree with you. That's the first time I've, if nothing else in the Mike Sullivan era from the back to back championships to getting swept by the islanders to getting bounced out of the bubble to the last

couple of years, whether it was missing the playoffs or losing in the playoffs. If there was one thing you could guarantee is that this team was going to play hard. They were going to play hard. Maybe they didn't have the roster to win. Maybe they didn't have personnel because of injury. Maybe the goaltending wasn't working. But you always knew they were going to play hard. And last night, they just looked.

disinterested. And I don't understand how you can put that kind of effort out there, considering how you played the previous two games against the Flyers. You almost stole one over the weekend at home. Then you go to Philadelphia. You honestly play worse, still get a point. At the end of the day, you get two points. So, again, I said this on the Wednesday.

So it's almost like you got to win and then you lost some regulation, even though obviously they lost both games. But then you follow up those two dud of performances, despite getting two points overall with that. That's what's concerning to me. You made all this effort to talk to the media and say, oh, yeah, we're going to play much better. We had a team dinner from Tristan Jari and all this down in Florida.

We got away from the rink and all this stuff. And you go out there and you play like that. Just a week later after it looked like you had just saved your season the previous week in Tampa Bay, how you roared back, played 40 amazing minutes after that. awful first period. You get Tristan Jari's goalie goal, and that's the effort you put out there on Wednesday night. It's not acceptable. And yeah, you know, you got some injuries. Forward's or hurt defensively. You're a little banged up. Tristan Jari wasn't the greatest, but he was still fine,

I thought. That's the, I mean, it was the same as last weekend. It was the same as last week in Tampa in the first period. It was. And I got to give a shout out to Mike Rupp. God bless that man. He understands the assignment when you're on a regional sports network that you're you can go negative and point out the negative about your team but you're never supposed to bury them and man he wanted to talk about how that first period wasn't that bad and i do mostly agree that like i think a lot of people overstated it because like you said at the top of the show vibes of the penguins are bad right now so like when things don't go well i think people get a little more antsy about it but it was a similar first period to last week in Tampa.

Oh, for sure. They didn't completely no show like they did last week, but it wasn't much better. But again, the same, the thing that was the same, Tristan Jari kept it close enough that the penguins were within striking distance at the end of the first period. And they didn't do anything this time to help them out. Right. And I mean, they didn't get outshot 15 to 2, but you know, diving into the other lines a little bit, the penguins only had four scoring chances at five on five that period.

one of them was a high danger chance only one high danger chance overall and their expected goals for in the first period was 0.18. That's not acceptable. I mean, last week it was also really bad, but still, it was a very similar start compared to what we saw in the first period. And I was saying to myself,

okay, you have that similar type of first period. Let's see if they can come out there and do what they did last week in the second and take it to the lightning and then the same thing in the third period. Nope. They were getting worse and worse as the game was going on, despite the fact that

the lightning made it two nothing early in the second, right? You get that off-size challenge that works. And Madison Nickel, shout out to you. You continue to be awesome with those replay challenges where you're singling down to Mike Sullivan on the bench. The penguins are so good with those off-side challenges. They've been this good ever since Andy Saucier was doing it in 2016.

You get a break there. It's still one-nothing. You're hanging in. Then the lightning get another. And then to open the third, they obviously make it three-nothing. You were in the game, but you still weren't able to claw your, your way back into it like you were last week in the second and third period, just because the effort wasn't there. It just looked like they weren't even trying to gain the offensive zone, cycle,

get chances, get in Andre Basilevsky's kitchen. They were making it so easy on him and the rest of the lightning skaters. It was baffling to watch that. And again, it just goes back to my overall point to start the show. It looked like they quit. And sure, you know, you had a Jake Denzel goal at the end of the game. That's the Chris Palmy when you shoot a three, when you're down by 42 points. That's what that goal is, Steve. That is the. Chris Paul, I mean, if I've ever seen it. But overall, that's not good enough. Yeah.

It just, it's not. It really isn't. The effort was just completely unacceptable because like I said, in the Mike Sullivan era of Penguin's hockey, you've always known the effort was going to be there. You knew this team had deficiencies. You knew this team sometimes, whether it was the end of the Jim Rutherford era or the Ron Hextall nightmare that we went through. you knew that for the deficiencies the team had the effort would be there.

You knew that they would work hard. You knew that they would try to be hard to play against. You knew that they would be aggressive. And last night, like you said, of all the times they panned over to the bench, the biggest thing that worries me right now isn't even so much that maybe they quit on Sullivan. I think they've just quit on themselves. It looks like it looks like a team that is just out of answers and doesn't know what to do from here. So we'll talk about it later in the show, but what do you do from here?

Yeah, no, I didn't mean to interrupt you there. I apologize. I was just going off your point where you said, I'm outside of doing a podcast remotely. I know. You said they would look like they're out of answers. It definitely appeared that way on the power play was what I was going to say, because you're putting out Alex Neelander on that first unit.

That means you're out of answers because Alex Nealander, let's face it. He hasn't done anything since he's come up. Neither has Jansen Harkins. But the fact that you're putting Nealander out there on your top powerplay, unit, and I know the game is kind of outreach at that point anyway, that shows to me, especially for your top power play unit, you don't know what to do, whether it's personnel, tactics, whatever you want to do for that unit. It shows that you don't have a concrete plan.

And it doesn't look like the coaching staff has one right now, to be honest. And they're going to have to go back into the lab, see what they can do, Kyle Dubus, to not make any moves at least on Thursday after this. we can dive into that little later on in the show. But it appears right now, we're stuck with this coaching staff until the end of this road trip. Patrick Cornquist game, excuse me,

is on Friday. So we'll have to see what happens when they come home after that. But overall, again, not good enough overall. But I think that would do it, though, for this first segment. Coming up in the second segment, Pat and I are going to get and do some updates from practice on Thursday and why the Penguins might be without one of their best players going forward,

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And we're back here on this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-host Patrick Dam. So, Pat the Penguins did practice down in Florida on Thursday, but they didn't have one of their best players. Brian Russ was absent from practice. Mike Sullivan said he's continuing to be evaluated for this injury. He will not play on Friday. Did not play the entire third period on Wednesday night.

I don't know if this is related to his old injury or his new injury. And I don't know if he came back. too early and got hurt again or if this is something new, who knows. But overall, not good for the Penguins considering he's been one of their best players this year. And with Mikel still out, even though he's skating with a couple of other players still out, this just means that more players other than the core are going to have to step up. Yeah, it's a huge loss.

There's no two ways about it. He's been maybe their third best player all season. And losing him again is just going to make things a lot harder. because if you look at the rest of this roster, man, like nobody outside of the top six has more than, it has double digits and points. And that's at this, we're not,

we're not at the early point of the season right now where you can deal with that. We're getting past the quarter part of this, the quarter mark of the season. And eventually your depth guy's got to start chipping in. They got to start chipping in a little more than they already have. And when a Brian Rust goes down and you're still without a Ricard Raquel, who was struggling as it was, it's going to make things a lot more difficult. It will.

And again, it's going to test the Penguins' depth even more from the lines from practice today. Gensel, Crosby and O'Connor. So the Riley Smith trial, I guess, on Crosby's right wing lasted all but not even honestly a game because he was demoted after only a few shifts on Wednesday night. Riley Smith just really continues to struggle as of late. It hasn't really been doing much of anything these last couple of weeks. So again, Crosby with Gensone O'Connor.

with Malkin and Nylander, Hanna Stroza with Eller and Carter. I honestly kind of found it weird that Hanna Shrozo was not in the lineup over someone Mike Harkins or Nielander because I thought Hineshroza was playing pretty well when this team was a bit healthier before some of these guys went down. The fact that he's just getting back in now, and it looks like he's going to be playing in this game on Friday. It's just a bit weird to me because, again, I thought he was one of the better options for the fourth line, and then Mike Sullivan kind of put him in his doghouse over the likes

of Harkins, who, let's face it, he hasn't done anything since he got called up. And a kneelander, he hasn't really done much of anything either. I'm glad Hinnisdosa is coming back in, but he still should have been in the lineup before this, in my opinion. Baffling decision to take him out. I don't get it. He was playing very well. Not to mention that if you look at the practice updates today,

they put Hinnisroza on the top power play unit. And I got to give a shout out here. I'm going to transition us away a little bit from Rust and Lines to PowerPlay. I got to give a shout out to my good friend from the Staff and Graph podcast, Rachel Dory. she texted me last night during the game and asked like if I and said the penguin should do what she recommended on their most recent episode, which I didn't get a chance to listen to until this morning. And I got to her and I ended up going back into the lab and talking about the penguin's power play this morning. Her suggestion was basically if we want to keep Latang and Carlson on the same power play, put Carl or put Chris Latang up top, put Eric Carlson down low. and I agree with her.

I think that would be a good way to move this power play because then you would have two puck distributors up high, one up high, one down low. And the thing that she recommended on the show that I disagreed with was she wanted to put Sidney Crosby in the bumper spot and have Gensel and Malkin for the one timers. Here's what I said. I'll pass on the sit in the bumper spot, by the way, no thanks.

Here's what I said. I said what I've been saying for a couple of weeks now. get rid of the umbrella or the 131, however, whatever you want to call it, go to an overload. And instead of having Sidney Crosby in the bumper spot, have Sidney Crosby down low as well. Because then you have Crosby for below the goal line, for puck distribution like Carlson. You can have either a Gensel or a Malkin in the bumper spot in front of the net. And you also have Cid down low for tips, deflections, the side of the net stuff he's really. really good at. And this becomes a simple power play because it's not about getting to a position.

It's not about getting mismatches. It's about literally just overwhelming the PK and getting shots on the net and getting the puck to the right side of the ice where you have the numbers advantage. And at this point, putting Carlson, Malkin, Crosby, Gensel, Hinnisdroza together is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We have done this for the last. month. We have tried new personnel. We have tried putting them out at different times. We have tried shuffling in and out. And it's not working. It's the system. It's not the players. It's the system. It's not working. And I know that I've said it's, I've swapped back and forth between system player coach, system player coach, but they're working in concert. For some reason,

Will or skill, players don't want to run this system. The system isn't working. The power play's terrible, the coaching refused to switch, refuses to make a switch. So this is a switch they could make pretty easily, and I think would probably work pretty well. And I think going off that point, it's all three combined. It's the players who don't want to run the system. It's the system, which is, let's face it, outdated. This hasn't worked in several years now. And it's Todd Reardon for not obviously changing that up and changing his tactics for the power play. It's all three, in my opinion. And as to your suggestion for Carlson and Crosby down low, I would agree with you, though, man, I would miss Carlson's bomb from the left half wall or the point. And I know what people

may say to me, well, Hunter, he's not using it enough. He's always looking for that pass. Yes, I agree. But if he can be more of that shoot first player, which we have seen him be at times this year, I think putting him in one of those spots work work, because he has an absolute canon of a slap shot that he can unload it anywhere. Though, again, like you said, I also wouldn't mind him down there being a distributor, making plays with a puck on his stick, rather than being that one-time threat.

Because you also do have a beginning as a one-time threat. And they're not using that enough, and I feel like they should be too. Well, the two things on that are one. If you run this correctly, there's a chance that Carlson's going to end up off at some point because you're going to be utilizing a cycle to get people moving.

And also, shout out to Rob Rossi, who has noticed this the last week or so. The reason the Malkin one-timer isn't working is because Carlson can't put it in the right spot. Eric Carlson's been great and as advertised and like everybody else has been saying, everybody also has to take some heat because of how bad power play has been. But for as good as Eric Carlson has been, he has yet to put a one-time pass in Malkin's wheelhouse.

And it's December. In October, I'd have been like, hey, listen, man, they're still figuring it out. they're still getting their chemistry developed. It's December. At some point, you got to figure that out. So whether that's on Carlson to make an adjustment with the pass or on Malkin to make an adjustment on where to be, either way, that isn't working. And a Malkin bomb is great.

But if you can't get the fuck to him, what's the point? So Latang's pretty good at that. So why not put him back up top? That does make sense because at least Latang and Malkin have been doing this for so many years. Now he knows exactly where to put the puck so that Malkin, can fire it. And I guess Carlson, even though it's been a couple of months of playing, I guess he just hasn't gotten used to it just yet. And I feel like he should have found out because if they're too well-up, it's weird that they haven't gotten used to that yet.

So at least that's a change that does make sense for the powerplay. Again, I would still wish maybe Carlson would get more one-timer opportunities. But as you said, Pat, he might be rotating up to the top and then that's when that would happen. But overall, I think that I'll do it for the second segment of today's show. I mean, defensively, if you want to do that real quickly, the pairings didn't really change that much. I mean, if you want to keep throwing Ryan Graves out there with Kirstletang, be my guess. He struggled again on Wednesday night. It's just not making enough plays right now. I honestly think if P.O. Joseph comes back next week, you could see some changes made to the defensive pairings, but that's a topic of discussion

for next week. But, yeah, that would do it for the second segment. Coming up to him the show, Pat and I are going to discuss, I guess, how far we would be willing to go to make changes to this team considering the product that the Penguins continue to put out there on a nightly basis. But before we get to that, we got to tell you all about Fandall. As the weather gets colder, the NFL offers stay hot on Fandall. Right now, New customers get $150 in bonus bets with any winning $5 money line bet. That's $150 if your team wins. If you've been thinking about joining Fandle, there's no better time to get in on the action than right now.

The app is so easy to use that is a wide range of betting options, including spreads, player props over unders and so much more. So visit fandul.com slash locked on and kick off the NFL season. That's fandle, the official partner of the NFL and locked on. All right. We're back here on this edition of the Locked on Penguins podcast. I'm Hunter Hodes, joined by my co's Patrick Dam. So I think we've been saying, honestly, throughout this week,

that it's past time for the new GM slash president hockey operations to make a move this season to help out the core. Crosby deserves better than this. Chris Lattang deserves better than this. Eric Carlson deserves better than this. Anne of Guinea Malkin deserves better than this. Even though Gino's been struggling the last couple of weeks, he still deserves way better than this,

considering he signed to come back last year and has been overall very good since signing those contracts. I still will never understand the people that say they should have moved on from one of those two. I just don't take those people seriously. And the same with these wild takes out there, Pat, that, oh, they never should have made the Eric Carlson trade, and Letang aren't working.

If you say something like that, I'm sorry. You are not watching the games. Watch the games, people, because Chris LaTang has played fabulous hockey this year. Eric Carlson has been very good. I saw that tweet this morning from a Flyers reporter. I don't need to clown him that much. But if you think that you are obviously not watching the games at all,

and you're making yourself look silly. Outside of that, though, in terms of Kyle, do this, it's past time for him to do something. And we've talked this week, I know, it's hard to make a trade this time of year, salary cap, it's, let's face it, there's not much space on this team, there's not a lot of space on a lot of teams around the league.

That said, with how your team is reeling, you need to pull off like a Jim Rutherford type move when the Penguins also didn't have much salary flexibility in 2016. and I'm not trying to compare those two teams. I'm just trying to compare the situations here. You need to pull off that type of move to get this team going because he made his trades a lot earlier than most GMs would at that time in 2016.

And I think Dubus is going to have to do the same thing here if he wants to get this team back on the track and honestly save the season. If he doesn't want to fire one, if not multiple coaches behind the bench. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know what you do right now. It's going to be really difficult, like you said, to make a trade. Here's something I do want people to keep in mind, though.

Okay. Before I get into maybe moving or putting somebody on LTIR or maybe making a big move that moves some guys you might not want to move. But let's look at next year. Your main UFA is going to be Jake Gensel. And with the announcement of the salary cap next year, you're going to have this summer about $17.2 million in cap space. So your main free agent that you're going to want to resign is Jake Gensel. Let's go through the other UFAs.

Jeff Carter, going to retire. Jansen Harkins, see ya. Alex Nealander, RFA, don't need you back. Vinnie Hinoistroza, thanks for everything. Maybe something minimum, but eh. Big Z, eh, maybe something. Ryan Shea, eh. Alex Nadelcovich, maybe if you want something smaller,

we can bring you something similar, like the one five you're getting now, maybe something. So, and then Chad Ruitle, eh, whatever. So going to be a lot of caps base to work with next year. So there may be a little bit of a thought in Kyle Dubus's head right now that I inherited a little bit of a disaster that was going to be a multi-year project. And yeah, I know I'm only going to have the Crosby Malkin-Latang, now Eric Carlson, Corps for a limited amount of time. before the wheels fall off or these guys decide to call it a career. But he might have looked at this year as like, man, this is a bonus.

If they do well, great. If not, I get to start really making this team in my image next year. Now, the thing I'm looking at right now that might make life a little bit easier. What if Brian Rust is hurt for a long time? What if this injury is bad? God forbid. You can put him on LTIR and that's $5 million right there. and if that's the case, you might have some space to play with,

and you've got some draft picks that you can move. You've got some young guy, maybe young-ish guys in, say, Jansen Harkins or Redeems the Hornah or POJ, that you could maybe float out there to get some extra help. So the thing is, I said it at the first second. I'm not quite at the fire Sullivan place yet. Now, if we go another week and this team looks like they just do not care and they need a smack in the mouth to wake up, you call them into your office and say, Mike, this is not a reflection on you. This is not a reflection on your career.

You are going to go down as probably the best coach in the history of the Pittsburgh Penguins to this point. Thank you for everything you did, but this team needs a wake up call, all the best in your future endeavors. And it's funny you say that because we are basically almost eight years to the day when Mike Johnson was fired and Mike Sullivan came in to replace him. You could see something like that if this happens. And it wouldn't be too late considering what happened in 2016. And no, I'm not guaranteed the Penguins are going to have history repeat itself and they're going to go on to win the Stanley Cup this year. I'm just saying it wouldn't be too late to make that kind of change considering the playoff race right now considering, again, second and through seventh in the Metropolitan Division is separated by only four points.

Oh, again, I think still for Dubus, you need to try and go out and get another forward for this team. As you said for Brian Russ, it would obviously stink if he's out long term. He's been awesome this season. It will be really unfortunate. Again, though, $5 million in cap. That's good if you go out and get the right forward that this team needs. That's the biggest thing. I don't need you to go out there and get another defensive-minded forward like you did all offseason.

You need a forward that can come in here and score goals when the core players don't have it. And we've been talking about the bottom six all here. It hasn't been consistent enough. Redeems the Hornet provided a spark when he came up. Last few weeks, though, he's been quiet. Jensen Harkins is not really going to do you much of anything. Alex Nealander did the same thing. Matt Nietto, even though he's banged up, he really wasn't doing much when he was healthy.

No, Charlie was at least playing a little bit better, but the only bottom six player that I feel like has actually been good this year is Lars Eller. But you need to help him out. That's the thing. And that's where I think do this. If he wants to make a trade to really, I guess, send a message or give this team a spark, that's the area that you need to attack. Yeah.

And Lars Eller has been perfectly good. He has shut both of us up. Both of us have said, like, he shouldn't be your third line center, at least not if you want to go into contention down the stretch. And he shut us up and he's been a really good third line center. But outside of him, the bottom six has been wholly underwhelming. There has been nothing there that you could point to and say this is a contender. This is a team that, you know, they have good depth and they can go on a run because it's either the big boys come out and play or this team is a paper tiger.

So for Kyle Dubus, he's got to find some help. If nothing else, even if you go out and you find somebody that can play on your first or second line and pushes a couple other guys down, that works too. Yes. But in an ideal world, you're not going to be able to afford somebody in that role. So you're going to go out, you're going to have to call up these middling teams like yourself at this point and or these struggling teams and say, listen, I got this young defenseman, Pierre Olivier Joseph, a lot of potential, NHL experience, not a lot of tread on the tires, or hasn't put a lot of tread on the tires. What can you help me out with?

And all that said, in these moments, I'm reminded of what Elliot Friedman once said. When other teams see that you are drowning, when other general managers see that you are drowning, they do not send you, they do not throw you a life fest. They throw you a boat anchor. Yes. And you go off that point, with POJ being their most tradable asset, if that's what you want to call it, that just goes to show how, I guess what,

how rough things are in this town, just because you look up and down the rest of this lineup, there really aren't too many tradable assets. I mean, Ricard Raquel, but his value is nothing right now because he's been bad to start the year and he's heard he also makes a boatloader. of money. Ryan Russ is hurt. You're not going to trade him. Jake Gensel. I mean, you would only even think about training him if you are a bottom five team at the trade deadline, but that's probably

not going to be the case at that point. You're not going to trade Marcus Pedersen considering how good he's been. And I know you would probably get a nice haul for him, but I don't think that's going to happen. There's just not a lot of tradable assets on the team right now, which I think would hurt Dubis, but he still, I think I've figured out a way to, again, give this team a much-needed spark right now. But I think that I would do it. it for this episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Thank you all so much for listening to slash watching this one. And thank you all for continuing to listen, even though the team is, let's face it, they're not good right now to say at least. I know this has been a tough season on

everyone, but we just want to thank you all so much for taking part of your day to listen to us ramble and rant about this wonderful hockey team in this wonderful city. But Pat and I will be back with another episode for you all on Friday to preview the game against the Florida Panthers, Patrick Hornquist tonight. Hopefully the Penguins will put on at least a good performance for that guy considering what he meant to the penguins just just a few years ago honestly but that will do it for this one thank you all so much for tuning in we'll talk with you all on friday