Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins head coaching search has its first candidate!

Starting point is 00:00:00 A potential contender has emerged in the Penguins coaching search, and Pat and I are going to discuss that, plus discuss Cindy Crosby going off once again of the World Championships this week right after this. Your Locked-on Penguins, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I am one of your host, Hunter Hodes.

Starting point is 00:00:31 You can follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Joined by my co-st, Patrick Damp, you can follow him on all social media platforms at Sindenverw. And you can follow the shows, Twitter, at L.O. underscore Penguins. Of course, thank you also much for making this your first list and slash watch of the day. We are free and available on all platforms. And Pat, we finally got a small breadcrumb for the Penguins coaching search on Tuesday,

Starting point is 00:00:54 thanks to Elliot Friedman. And right now, there are four teams that are without head coaches, the Penguins, the Bruins, the Blackhawks and the Seattle Cracken. A few teams have filled these positions over the last week. Joel Quenble to the Ducks, Mike Sullivan, obviously to the Rangers. Rick Tocke's going to the Flyers and then Adam Foot to the Vancouver Canucks. But I did want to say about Rick Tocket, Pat, you called it. About a week and a half ago to two weeks ago on the show, I was kind of thinking it's the most likely landing spot,

Starting point is 00:01:21 but you were the one that said, no, he is definitely going to go there. That dude is a Philadelphia flyer at heart, even though, even though, my friend, he has three Stanley Cup rings for the Penguins, one as a player and two as a coach. I never really bought into him as a serious candidate for the Penguins job. I think it was more of his PR team kind of pushing that a little bit. I just never really thought that he was a serious contender. But hey, I didn't want to give you your flowers because you called that. Rick Tocket very much is a flyer.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Before we get into one of the candidates that has emerged for the Penguins, I do want to say this about Rick Tocket. I was talking to a friend of mine who was a Flyers fan. And I just figured that the writing was totally on the wall, that he was going to be the Flyers coach with how quickly they moved on this season from Tortorella. And the thing I was saying was, well, two quick things. One, I know that we went over the stats and I still have my concerns about Rick Tocket as a head coach. But I also look at the situations he was in as a head coach. and it was a lot of dysfunction.

Starting point is 00:02:28 So we're going to find out how much he had to do with this and how much of it was the organization. The other thing I'm curious to see with the Flyers is how long is Rick Talkett's shelf life as a head coach? Because we know with John Tortorella, he lasts two to three years. In those two to three years, players would die for him. And then by years three or four, he gets drowned out.

Starting point is 00:02:52 The message goes stale and people move on. so I'm not going to say good luck because I will never, ever, ever, ever root for the flyers. But I think we all saw, at least me especially, saw this one come. I still think Tocke is a bit overrated as a coach again. He's only made the playoffs twice as a head coach during his coaching career. Curious to see what he has learned from those previous two stops, especially in Vancouver, where it was just dysfunction junction over there this past season. But he's getting, it looks like a whopper of a contract.

Starting point is 00:03:24 some of the reports out there say he's getting five years, $25 million. They are committed to seeing if this will work. So I guess best of luck to him, obviously did a lot of great things here in Pittsburgh, both as a player and as a coach. But again, that guy, he was born to be a flyer. And one more thing, Pat, it is funny. Flyers president, former Flyer. Flyers GM, former Flyer, Flyers new head coach, former Flyer.

Starting point is 00:03:47 That's what they're going to do now, I guess. But enough talk about the Philadelphia Flyers on the Locktown Penguins podcast, The small breadcrumb that was dropped by Elliot Freeman on Tuesday was that the Pittsburgh Penguins have interviewed Mitch Love for their head coaching job. And he was someone that I kind of named dropped earlier this week that I felt like could be a candidate. So I guess I'll give myself a small pat on the back for that.

Starting point is 00:04:10 We'll have to see if they interview some of the other names that I dropped earlier this week and last week. For those that don't know who Mitch Love is, he is an assistant coach for the Washington Capitals. He has been with the Capitals for the past couple of seasons, joining Spencer Carberry, who very well may win the Jack Adams this year. He is one of the top coaches in the NHL right now. Mitch Love has really focused on the Capitals defensemen these last couple of seasons.

Starting point is 00:04:34 And boy, Pat, did a really good job with them this year. Jacob Trickren has a career year. John Carlson, at least during the regular season, I felt like, was mostly okay. Martin Fevor Harvey was really good for them during the regular season, really stinks that he's not available for the caps in the playoffs. But by all accounts, he has done a fairly good job with most the Capitals defenseman this year. And you look at his coaching history, man.

Starting point is 00:04:57 He's coached a lot in the WHL. He's been a head coach there and the assistant coach. And he was also a head coach in the AHL for two seasons, specifically with Calgary. He was the head coach for the HL Stockton Heat before they moved to Calgary. And in both of those years, he won the coach of the year award.

Starting point is 00:05:16 He was that good. He led Calgary's AHL team, Stockton Heat in one year, and then the Calgary Ranglers in the second year, a combined record pat, 96 and 33 and 11 in those two seasons. So he has a, the coaching experience, not the NHL head coaching experience, but he does have coaching experience. B, he's good with development.

Starting point is 00:05:37 And C, he's fairly still young. So that, this guy checks a lot of boxes for me, in my opinion. This is right in line with what we kind of expected to be the, I guess you can say prototypical candidate that they're going to be looking into. And it does blow a little bit of a hole in my, they're not looking for their Spencer Carberry theory. But I still stand by the fact that Carberry was a guy who you were looking at when your team's ready to take the next step. He was a guy who did a lot of winning.

Starting point is 00:06:10 Obviously, so has love. But I look at it this way. He has found success at levels where your goal is development. your goal is to develop players juniors the a hl those are two levels where i always feel bad for fans of junior teams and fans of minor league hockey teams because at the end of the day it's not the mountain top for most of the players who get there most of the players there have their site set on moving up but you broke down the numbers and these are teams who whether it's in the WHL, which is a very, very heavily scouted, very heavily drafted junior league that a lot of

Starting point is 00:06:54 teams dip into, had a lot of success there, had a lot of success in Calgary. Well, in Calgary's AHL system. And regardless of what's going on with the flames right now, they've had a lot of up-and-coming prospects over the past few years. So he's helped graduate a lot of players to the next level. And that's what the penguins are going to need. and you mix that with he's clearly a guy who has a message that breaks through and has teams win, that can help you with your older players as well because we know that you can tell that

Starting point is 00:07:30 the big three kind of understands the assignment. They know that this is a transition period for the organization, but it's not going to burn out their competitive fire. They're still going to want to play some kind of meaningful hockey over the next few years. So if this is the guy who they target, the guy who makes it into the next round of interviews and eventually is given the job, I think it's for being the first name that we have heard in this search, that we know has interviewed in this search. It's a really strong start because the credentials are there. The numbers are there. And you brought up the defenseman.

Starting point is 00:08:11 What has been the Penguins Achilles heel outside of goaltending the last couple of. years. Defense has not been very good. And the other fun fact I wanted to add about Mitch Love is his time as a player. He played professionally for six years, including five in the AHL, and in the HAL, 27 points, six goals, 21 assists in 278 career games, but 808 penalty minutes. Wow. Well, he definitely had that physical presence, that's for sure. And I think if he were to get that job, he will want a lot of his players, I think, to bring out that part of their game on the ice, just with the way that he played as a player, Pat. And what else has Kyle Dubus also said a lot during the off season already? Yeah, we want to remake our defensive group because it has not

Starting point is 00:09:07 been good enough these last couple of years. Again, they do not have they bona fide top-paring left-shot defensemen on this roster right now. And seeing what he has done with the Capitol's defensemen over the last couple of years, it's been his main area of focus. I think that makes me at least deacely confident that he can hopefully do good work with the Penguins defensemen, no matter who they are next season. Obviously, Chris LaTang, he's going to be another year older. That's going to be the toughest assignment. I would think just because father time has really come for him, he can't handle, I think, a load of top pairing minutes at this level anymore. I still think he can play, of course, probably second or third

Starting point is 00:09:43 appearing minutes, but that's going to be his toughest challenge if he were to get the job. But I would still feel least easily confident about what he can do, considering the job that he has done with the capitals these last couple of years. But also, too, like this is the type of candidate that they are going after it. This should really show everyone that, hey, this isn't going to be some quote unquote retread hire or anything like that. They're going after younger coaches, at least this first one, who have an eye for development and young talent that really want to push those players in the system.

Starting point is 00:10:16 So for Solnike, a Rucker McGority, a Ville, Coivinen, a Tristan Bros, a Harrison Brunich, like this would be a slam dunk, especially for those types of players who are really trying to make it to the next level, and especially for Magrorty and Coivant, make it as bona fide contributors at the NHL level. I look at the defense with a lot of hope if this is the guy. And obviously, we don't get ahead of ourselves. It's only one interview. They're going to conduct so many others.

Starting point is 00:10:41 There's going to be so many other candidates that come along. But if we're going to look at Mitch Love specifically today and work under the assumption that he's going to be the guy, which obviously we don't know yet, but he did well with John Carlson this year. So you give that comparable to Chris LaTang. Got a lot of John Carlson, who's been in the league for quite some time, who has quite a workload in his past.

Starting point is 00:11:04 That could really help with Chris LaTang. The other thing is, outside of some real draft lottery luck over the next couple of years, you know that they're probably unlikely to find a bona fide number one defenseman in the draft. So having a coach who can focus on your defensive core and coach those guys up could really help for that lack of a true number one defense defensive prospect in your system. That could really help them operate more as a unit rather than this. is our top guy. Everybody else fills in the blanks. So again, when it comes to candidates right off

Starting point is 00:11:45 the bat, this is a very strong start for the Penguins. 100%. I'm sure though there will be a lot more names that get leaked out at some point over the next couple of weeks of the Penguins again. They're doing a fairly good job covering things up, at least with not letting any of these interviews get out except for Mitch Love. But with his name out there, that's a really strong start. and at least shows to me that right now they're focused on the right type of candidates for this gig. And also, our good pal, Danny Shire, posted this on Twitter slash X yesterday. Have you seen Mitch Love's mustache? Legendary, by the way.

Starting point is 00:12:19 You know what it reminded me of? Paul McLean's when he was the coach of the Ottawa Senators, it looked exactly like it. That was the first picture that came to mind when Danny posted that mustache of Mitch Love's. I've like, hmm, looks like Paul McClain's when he was coaching the senators all those of ago. So I just wanted to end this segment on a funny note. But that'll do it for this first segment. Coming up in the second segment, we're going to discuss Cindy Crosby's insane goal for Team Canada this week at the World Championships, plus discuss what he had to say to friend of the show, Josh Yew, about the Penguins Coaching Search as well.

Starting point is 00:12:50 But before we get to that, we have to tell you all about our first sponsor, and that is wonderful pistachios. Looking for a snack that's both delicious and nutritious, cracked into a good source of protein with wonderful pistachios. Wonderful pistachios is one of the highest protein nudge. Each one out serving has six grams of protein giving you over 10% of your daily value. Plus, these nuts are packed with fiber and better for your unsaturated fats to help keep you feeling fuller, longer. Personally, I love the no-shells variety. It's the perfect grabbing those snack for busy days, whether I'm stacking at my desk, on a road trip or just need a quick protein boost. They are always my go-to.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Plus, if you love cracking open every shelf with that satisfying crunch, the in-shell options are a classic. favorite. Get snacking and get cracking with a snack that packs of protein buns. Visit wonderful pistachios.com to learn more. All right. We're back here on this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes. Join by my co-host, Patrick Dampin. Pat, what a goal for Sydney Crosby at the World Championships this week. He gets the puck along the boards, cuts the net, looks like he's going to dish it off. Nope, fires it. Top cheese.

Starting point is 00:13:57 No chance for the goaltender on that play. Just a beautiful vintage Sydney Crosby goal, whatever other word you want to call it. It was awesome seeing that and continues to play lights out for Team Canada at the World Championships. He also did have a lot to say to Josh Yoey about the Penguins Coaching Search. And he kind of said what we both expected. Like, yeah, he's not really going to insert himself into the Penguins Coaching Search here. And what I mean by that is he's not going to keep calling Kyle Dubus or spam calling him and

Starting point is 00:14:27 saying like, hey, hire this guy or hey, interview this guy. Like, no, he's going to let Kyle Dubus do his job. And he's also not really surprised by what happened. Like he was not surprised that Mike Sullivan was let go by the Penguins considering that they have missed the playoffs now three years in row. He reiterated that he wants to win. So again, no surprise there. But I didn't find any of his comments surprising. Not at all.

Starting point is 00:14:52 And you could tell the, obviously this was an article and not a video interview or anything like that from Josh. But you could tell the way Josh framed it that Sid was very declarative about this. There was no hesitation. This wasn't Sidney Crosby being polite and giving a stock answer. This was Sid emphatically saying, I'm not playing a role in this. He did leave the door open to say, you know, if Kyle calls me and asks my opinion, I will offer my opinion to Kyle about what we're looking for, anything like that. So you got to figure in one way or another, he will be consulted.

Starting point is 00:15:34 But this has never been Sidney Crosby's style. It's been reported and spoken about from many a general manager, many a reporter, many a coach that he keeps himself out of those discussions. He will give his input when it's asked. He will be a complete hockey nerd and ask his coaches if they watched a certain game that he might have notes on, but when it comes to team decisions, whether it's the front office, whether it's the coaching staff, you name it, he doesn't really get involved. And on one hand, I like that because you don't want to have the meddlesome superstar who

Starting point is 00:16:17 kind of is the shadow coach or the shadow general manager because there's a reason that you're a superstar player and it's not because you're a coach. On the other, there are people in this world who are much worse to make decisions about hockey than Sidney Crosby. The guy's a complete hockey nerd. He follows it inside and out. He obsesses over it, whether it's watching other teams, watching other organizations. So I do think when his hockey playing career is over, he is probably going to end up in a front office somewhere because he's got a great mind for this. I wouldn't want him to be totally forceful and kind of tell Kyle Dubus who or what to hire because let's be honest at this point.

Starting point is 00:17:05 It feels like Kyle Duvus is going to be here after Sidney Crosby. So I think Sid gets that. But yeah, I mean, I'm not totally surprised by the comments. But I do hope Dubus consults him because this is maybe the best player in the history of your franchise. And you don't want to upset him on the way out. I'm sure he'll consult him once they really cut this list down to what, Pat, two, three, four finalists. And then they're trying to make a decision.

Starting point is 00:17:31 Maybe he calls him and asks for his opinion on two to three to four of these coaches, say like, hey, like, which one would you prefer? Like, do you have a preference? Do you not? Like, I can see Kyle Dubas kind of doing something like that once they get really further along in this process again. You know, we're at May 14th right now. Once Kyle Dubas kind of said during the presser that they want to be able to be, you

Starting point is 00:17:50 want to have this finalized by early June. So we're still, what, two and a half weeks out from probably a higher being announced by the Penguins. So they got plenty of time right now. Kyle Dubus is also very much focused on the world championships. That's going on right now. Once that is done, I think you'll really start seeing some more in-person interviews. And also, they're probably waiting for some of these coaches to stop coaching again.

Starting point is 00:18:12 Someone like a Todd Nelson, he's still coaching Hershey right now on the H.L playoff. So once some of these coaches potentially, once their season ends, then it gets obviously a lot easier to have some in-person interviews. So I think they're doing the first round right now, getting these little videos slash Zoom interviews out of the way. And then after that, obviously, they'll get to the in-person interviews once a lot of this season is over, whether it's NHL, AHL, college hockey,

Starting point is 00:18:39 if they're trying to poach a coach from there, etc, etc. But, yeah, I think they may consult him once they get down to a small list of finalists. But yeah, I was fine with everything he said in there. He doesn't want to be overbearer. and he wants to let Kyle do this do his job. And hey, you know, again, we're lucky that we've had him as an ambassador for this team. And honestly, the entire NHL for the last 20 years at this rate.

Starting point is 00:19:02 So just really glad that he said that in that interview. I also link that interview in the description box on YouTube. And for everyone that's listening out there that doesn't see our faces right now in the box for Apple, Spotify, you name it. But Pat, did you have anything else to add about his goal of the world championships? Anything? thing. Well, two things about the goal first. Let's incredible goal. Yes, but let's also caution ourselves a little bit here. No, no offense to them, but it was against France. Yeah, not exactly known for being a hockey powerhouse. But hey, man, team USA blew a five one lead to Norway today. Then they

Starting point is 00:19:37 barely won an overtime. So, hey, some upsets like this can happen. But it's why the world championship is still. It was too close. It's why the world championships are fun because of stuff like that. But as for something you said, I wanted to add real quick, I just want to make sure to preach patience to our audience with this. I know we're in a time where everybody wants everything right away right now, no waiting. But we got to wait to see how the HL playoff shake out, how the NHL playoff shake out, because there's going to be a couple teams at both levels that disappoint, that lose in a way they didn't expect to lose. And teams always make irrational decisions so you never know who is going to shake free.

Starting point is 00:20:22 The guy who is the Penguins president of hockey operations right now, he was my dream candidate to replace Ron Hextall, but I figured that there was no way he would ever shake free from Toronto just because of what he was doing there and the commitment they seemed to have to him. And next thing you know, they decide to fire him. So we've got a good first candidate in Mitch Love. we'll see who else shakes out, but it's going to take a little while. But obviously we'll keep our ears to the ground for anything that shakes out between now and then.

Starting point is 00:20:54 100%. And I think with that, I'll do it for this second segment of today's show. Coming up in the final segment, we're going to continue our season in review series with defensemen, Ryan Graves and discuss how he played during his second season that's coming up right after this. All right, we're back here on this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Hunter Hodes, joined by my co-host, Power Jam, And Pat, Kyle Dubus really called out Ryan Graves after his first year with the team. And kind of basically said, hey, this first year wasn't good enough. He also went about it really politely to say that, hey, we expect more.

Starting point is 00:21:30 We want to work with you. And we want to see what you can do going into your second year here. It was probably the nicest way that he could have called out a player saying, like, hey, you weren't that good this year, but we want to see how you bounce back in year two. And, well, he did not bounce back in year two. He was still not good. I wouldn't say he was as bad as year one, though the bar was literally on the floor people,

Starting point is 00:21:56 but he still was nowhere near good enough in year two. 61 games for Ryan Graves this year. He was a healthy scratch in quite a few. One goal, four points in those games. His one goal and four points are a career low for him since he broke into the league in 2018-19 with the Colorado Avalanche. He played a little over 800 minutes at 5-on-5 ice time with the penguins this year. During those minutes, Graves was on the ice for a little under 50% of the shot attempts.

Starting point is 00:22:24 51% of the expected goals, so that's not terrible, but 48% of the scoring chances, 49% of the high-danger chances, only 10 high-danger goals for, nine high-danger goals against. He was out to launch constantly in his own zone. The contract continues to be a problem. I will give him a grade very much in the Ds for this year. If you want to say F, I would not blame you, but I'm probably going to go D minus. I gave him an F for year one.

Starting point is 00:22:52 I'll go D minus just because it was a tad bit better in year two. I'm not trying to come across as mean or evil here. I'm just trying to be objective as possible just because he wasn't good this year. But I think the penguins, they need to do whatever it takes to figure out a way to get him a fresh start. I think that's the best for both sides right now. This experiment has not worked out. The contract is too long. He's making too much money,

Starting point is 00:23:17 even though the cap is going up. I know that there's quite a few holes on the left side of the defense going in the next season. But at this rate, it really doesn't make sense for him to come back for a third year, especially with the way he's played these last couple of years. He's got three years left on the deal. And whether it's fair or unfair,

Starting point is 00:23:35 the deal is the thing that is always going to be an anchor on his performance because you went over those, the analytics that he had this season. And all things considered for being a pretty bad Penguins team this year, those numbers aren't horrible. But the problem is that he's making $4.5 million for three more years. When you're making that kind of money as a defenseman, your game has to be elevated. And as you said, I thought he was better this year. I thought they did a better job of utilizing him and putting him in more advantageous situations.

Starting point is 00:24:14 The thing that that continues to baffle me, and obviously hindsight is always 2020, when they signed him, it was expensive, but I looked at his body of work and thought, all right, he might disappoint. He might not live up to this contract, but I didn't think that it was going to be this bad. It wasn't like he was, this wasn't Jack Johnson. If you go all the way back to that. When they were on the cusp of and then ultimately signing Jack Johnson, it was like, what are we doing here?

Starting point is 00:24:48 This guy's track record's horrible. He's not a good defenseman. Why are we bidding against ourselves to get him? With Graves, you saw some solid play in his career up to that point. Was he outstanding? No, but he was a defenseman that up to that point, you were like, you can find a use for him. He'll fit in.

Starting point is 00:25:08 And it's just been a complete disaster. So I, again, the thing I keep coming back to is you look at the numbers. You look at the analytics. And he didn't have that poor of a season. But the problem is he's making that much money for that long. And when his improvement over a disastrous first season as a penguin was only marginal, you have to give him a grade like I would have to also give him a D just because you need to be better. Right, 100%.

Starting point is 00:25:44 And I do think it is four years left that he has on that deal. By the way, Pat, it was a six year deal that he signed a couple of years ago. So we're two years in to the six year term. And again, they got to figure out somehow some way to get out of it because I really don't think it's going to get any better at this. You've had a two-year sample size for him to really grow into this role as a top four defenseman. And they definitely kind of panicked. Looking back at now, but they panicked when they signed him.

Starting point is 00:26:15 They're like, yep, we see a hole here. We're just going to go out under free agency, sign them and hope for the best. And again, it just hasn't worked out. And whether that's sending an asset or two to get out of the contract or whether it's a buyout, even though Kyle Dubis has gone on record saying he doesn't like buyouts, they have to figure out a way to get out of it because I just really don't think it makes too much sense to bring him back for next season and just in general. I think a fresh star for both sides would really work wonders here. But did you have anything else to add for his season?

Starting point is 00:26:50 Not really. I mean, if you go to the buyout, it's not horrible. If they buy him out, it's not good. you'd have next year you'd get a little bit of cap relief but then for a few years it would hurt your cap being a little more than three million i don't know what you do here that's the thing that confounds me is it's really hard to move on from a contract this bad and i think at this point you just kind of have to hope that you can find a taker and if you can't you're just going to have to do what you did with them this year.

Starting point is 00:27:31 Play them 60 some odd games, maybe less. Barry him on the third pair and hope that at least for his time on the ice, he's not a complete liability. And the funny thing is they eased up on some of the minutes that he got this year. His first year, he was getting a little over 18 minutes a game. This year, Pat, he was a shade below 15 minutes. So they cut his ice time pretty good, but he still did not play well at all. So they'll have a decision to make on him throughout the offseason here.

Starting point is 00:28:03 But I think that'll do it for this episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Thank you all so much for take the time to listen to slash watch this one. Pat and I will be back with another show for you all on Thursday before closing out the week with another show on Friday. So for Patrick Damp, I'm Hunter Hodes. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We appreciate it. We'll be back on Thursday.

Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Penguins head coaching search has its first candidate!

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