Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Welcome back, Todd Reirden

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

There was some big news that came down today for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Hunter is back to break it all down. Todd Reirden and Mike Vellucci have been hired as the two new assistant coaches to Mike Sullivan's staff and Hunter goes into what their duties will be behind the bench. Will Reirden's power play be as lethal as it was when he was here the first time? Plus, what will the alignment look like? Hunter dives into that, plus how Vellucci could one day be replacing Mike Sullivan or getting a head coaching gig somewhere else as he's done great work. Finally, Hunter touches on the couple playoff games from last night and how Vancouver was somehow able to force a Game 6 against Vegas. 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.

Hello, welcome to this Wednesday afternoon, well, early evening episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow this show's Twitter at L-O-U-U-U-Square. Today's show is brought to you by Bilt Bar. It's a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. You can go to BiltBarr.com and use Promocode Lockdown. You'll get $10 off your first order.

So, yeah, going into today, guys, didn't really think there was going to be a lot of penguins news, a lot of penguins topics to talk about since, you know, it's kind of pretty quiet right now. But, you know, about all changed today, Jim Rutherford officially announced the two assistant coaches that are going to be joining the Pittsburgh Penguins coaching staff, and they are Todd Reardon and Mike Belucci. Rutherford, I talked about yesterday on my episode. He was kind of teasing it a little bit, like, yeah, we could have something to announce here in a week or two. We've been interviewing some people. Didn't know it would come less than 24 hours later, but they did. And we'll start with Todd Reardon.

Again, guys, it's not surprising that he's back here. The Penguins management, I think the players really, really respect him. I was reading some stuff today in the Athletic and a bunch of other websites. I mean, they were very, very high on Todd Reardon. I know Todd Reardon didn't work out in Washington. He had some questionable personnel changes, some questionable decisions with the lineup and a bunch of other things. But I do think he is a good assistant coach. He's just not made out to be a head coach.

And, you know, that is the situation for a lot of coaches in this league. Hell, you can honestly say the same about Mike Johnston. He's not cut out to be a head coach in the NHO. he'd probably be an okay assistant, even though he really didn't do a good job here. Then you have Tar Reardon who has been here before. He's coached the power play. He's coached the star players. He's going to come back here and do that exact same thing.

It was pretty interesting today when I was reading some of Jim Rutherford's comments. In the athletic story from Josh Joey and Rob Rossi, apparently after Tar Reardon was fired, it took only 30 minutes for Jim Rutherford to call Tar Reardon and have him interview for an assistant coaching job here for the Pittsburgh Penguins. And so, like I said, he will be coaching the powerplay. If you guys don't remember, he coached some pretty good power plays here. I think they were top 10, basically top five, almost every year that he was here. I think he coached the power play from 2010 and 2014. Of course, 2014 was when the Penguins just blew everything up after the New York Rangers laws,

when they blew the 3-1 series lead. But, you know, he knows how to run the power play, which Mark Recky obviously didn't know how to do, especially this season, the power play was just absolutely awful. I mean, a power play that has Sydney, Crosby, of Gunny Malkin, Chris Laetang, Jake Ansel, Patrick Hornquist, you know, Jason Zucker. That unit should not be finishing like 16th or 17th overall in the league. That's just unacceptable. Reiterate Indian, I think, is going to have that power play unit back to where it usually belongs.

You know, a top 5 to 10 unit scoring it well. I'm really, really excited to see what changes he makes to the power play. You know, if he goes back to the same system that he used in 2010, 2014, you know, keeps Cindy Crosby down low. Crystal Tang at the point of Gennie Malkin kind of at the right-wing circle with his geno bombs, as we like to call him. and then, you know, Patrick Hounclis and Jake Gensel can just do their own thing. But that's also assuming if Patrick Hornquist is back next season,

we still don't know if he's going to be back because, you know, he's been the topic of trade rumors, especially with his contract. He's making $5.3 million per season for the foreseeable future, so I really still can see Jim Rutherford potentially moving on from that contract. But, okay, I'm getting a little carried away here. Reardon had some good things to say during the media session. He was basically just like, you know, that's what made the situation so unique. I have a lot of relationships with players and staff members here.

Coming back to work with Chris LaTang is something that I look forward to. He's obviously a special player, and together we were able to have some success. If you guys don't remember, you know, Chris LaTang had three of the best seasons of his career. While Tar Reardon is here, I think he finished top five in the Norris one of those years. I think another year he finished ninth. I think almost every year he finished top 10, but one of the years was top five, basically almost top three, I think. And the last year, I think that Reardon was here. He had 11 goals, 37 points, something like that.

I think that was when his season was cut short due to the stroke that he had. But Crystal Tang has really developed even further into the player that he is now. He's just still absolutely awesome. I'm really, really excited to see what Todd Reardon can do with Chris LaTang as he's getting older. He's also really looking forward to work with Brian Dumlin. He had a lot of high praise today for Dumlin during the media session. He basically said that Dumlin is a guy that continues to get better and better every year. He's blossomed into a good defender.

He's added some offensive tools into his game in his leadership. You can see it from the opposite bench. You know, I'm glad he said that. I am looking forward to see if Doomlin can develop his offense even further. I know it's starting to come a little bit more and more each season, but if he can develop that offense even further, which I think there's another level to his game with that, he's going to just get better and better and better.

But, you know, it wasn't all roses today. He had the, Tar Bearden, was asked about Jack Johnson, and guys, what do you expect Tar Bearden to say? Basically, Seth Rorbaugh, I think, asked about it, and he gave Jack Johnson endorsement as a third-parent defenseman, and said he had a decent season. trying to find the full quote here from, I think, Taylor Hose from DK. Pittsburgh Sports. I have no idea where the heck this quote is, but I'm trying to find it.

Okay, well, finally, I got it. So he was asked about the top four defensemen, and then he added this at the end about Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson, I think he had a decent year this year. He's a nice third-parring defenseman. So Todd, that's strike one for you. But in all seriousness, guys, there's a 100% chance that Jim Rutherford is telling the coaches to say this stuff. I mean, this is the hill that Jim Rutherford has decided to die on. That's basically all there is to it.

He decided to die on the hill that Jack Johnson is good. There's nothing we can do about it, except, you know, just basically get mad on Twitter.com and hope to God that he somehow just comes to his sentences and gets rid of the player. But, you know, I'm not really surprised that Todd Reardon says that. He's not going to come in and just be like, oh, yeah, guys, Jack Johnson sucks. Yeah, Jack Johnson sucked ass last year. He was absolutely terrible in the Montreal series. He got outscored 5 to 1 in even strength.

He's just not going to say that. You know, that's just, though I'm sure the coach's dad will talk about Jack Johnson and whatnot, you know, in meetings that are not made to the public. But, I mean, to think that he was just going to come in here and just, you know, shit on Jack Johnson's kind of wishful thinking. So, you know, I'm not really surprised that, A, someone asked about Jack Johnson and B, that he praised Jack Johnson because now, you know, he works for the team. So, you know, I just, I had to get that little mini rant out there. But still, always, guys, get Jack Johnson off this team. He absolutely sucks. And that's all I'll say about Jack Johnson for the rest of the podcast.

Also, so they did hire Mike Volucci. He was the Wilkesbury coach from the last season, but he's also worked a lot in the NHL and the H. I think he was very instrumental in the development of players such as Tyler Sagan, J.T. Miller, James Neal. This is pretty a slam dunk hire. And what I said yesterday, fresh new voices in the room, a voice like his, he's been around the week for a while. He's been developing a lot of the Penguins' younger players down in Wilkesbury. This will pay dividends. You know, he talked a lot about P.O. Joseph.

today and how he thinks he's really, really close to being NHL ready. He's been working with him a lot. He said the same thing about Sam Lafferty. I think he said the same thing about Poulin. Just a bunch of players from the HL team that are just getting closer to being able to play. Some quotes from Volucci. So he's going to be in charge of the PK and the Forbes. And he said this was a really good quote about the penalty kill. I want to make sure our penalty kill is attacking all over the ice. No free entries, no free passes. It's a mindset that we're going to have. That's where it evolves into hopefully the best penalty kill in the league. So I am going to be curious to see how his penalty kill is different from the one that

Jacques Martin ran. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of video that comes about it, you know, during the season whenever that starts. But still, I'm really, really excited to see how the new look penalty kill will look. I'm excited for him to work with the forwards. And my mistake, guys, he's never coached in the NHL before, but he's coached a lot of players that were in the HL that have made the jump to the NHL, you know, such as a JT. Miller, such as a James Neal, and he's also coached Tyler Sagan down there. So I just wanted to clarify that, I'm going forward here. But still, you know, I know people are going to roll their eyes. Oh my God, like they had to bring back Todd Reardon. He was a bad head coach in Washington. Oh, my God,

they promoted Mike Volucci, the HL head coach. And it's like, I get it, you know, but these guys, I think are going to be really, really good hires. Like I said, there are fresh new voices in the room. Tar Bearden knows how to run a powerplay. He ran a very, very good powerplay here from 2010 to 2014 when Crosby and Malkin were in their peak years of their career. He had a really, really good quote today if I can find it. I'm just trying to find. He goes, the importance of evaluating the power play properly is something we instilled here years ago when I worked with these guys

and we'll be back at it again to try to get back to the top of the league here. So it sounds like it's going to be the same system that he ran back then going into this season. I'm just really, really excited to see it. And someone, this was funny too. I saw a couple of tweets about this. Now that Volucci is an assistant

coach with Mike Sullivan, you got to think that if the team struggles next season that Sullivan would be fired, then Volucci would probably tank over. I would not want Harbier-in as the head coach of this team. I think he would honestly do a piss-poor job. He did not do a good job with the Washington Capitals. What makes me think he could do a good job here? Volucci would probably be that guy if Mike Sullivan is canned. Like I said, I don't expect Mike Sullivan to get canned next season unless the team just flat out stinks or is just really, really, really painfully below average. But with Volucci getting promoted, this was Jeff from Pensbog.

so G underscore Capital OFF 817 Please follow him, guys. He basically runs the Penns blog. He's absolutely amazing with it. Great follow-up on Penguins shorter. I got to get him on the podcast here at some point. This is a great comparison.

Volucci getting promoted feels like when your company makes you train your replacement for a few months without telling you that you're actually getting fired soon. Can't save well enough there. Because, like I said, in all likelihood, if Mike Sullivan gets hired, he would be the guy that replaces him because Jim Rutherford has just known him for a while.

He was with Jim Rutherford. while Rutherford was with the Hurricanes. I think he won the Calder Cup with the Hurricanes Farm Team, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, they were together for a very, very long time, and it would not be surprising if he is the coach here someday or somewhere else in the NFL. I really do think that NHL head coaching gig will be coming for Volucci, and I think could be coming possibly soon in the next couple of seasons.

But I think that'll do it for this time. We're going to go through the athletic article that Rob and Josh wrote today about a couple other things that went in to the coaching interview process. But first off, guys, it's time to talk about the new and improved Bilt Bar. 18 amazing flavors with the six new flavors. A couple of them are cookies and cream and caramel brownie and carrot cake, apple almond crisp. The bars are covered in 100% chocolate.

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Use promo code locked on. You'll get $10 off your next order. You can also get a free cooler with purchase while to price last. That's promo code locked on for $10 off at Biltbar.com. All right, so we're back here on this episode of the Locked On Penguins podcast. And I just wanted to go through that athletic article that Rob Rossi and Joshi wrote today after Jim Rutherford spoke, Mike Sullivan spoke, and a couple of the assistant coaches spoke. So the one, the first thing I want to get to first is this.

So apparently they interviewed eight candidates for these two spots and they put this big little bombshell at the end of the article. One of them was apparently Mike Rupp. And I don't know how Mike Rupp is qualified to interview this. He was never really that good of a player. He never really put up that many good offensive numbers. He was honestly just kind of running around like a goon at times. Like I said, like what kind of qualifications does he have to be an NHL assistant coach?

I really don't know why they interviewed him. And apparently they also said that they made intrigued by Rupp to potentially be added at some point to the coaching staff. Again, that's just silly to me. He just was not a good player, and I don't really think he would be that good in an assistant coach. So, you know, I really, really hope the Penguins don't bring him on at some point. But it also seems like they're content with the two hires right now, Jim Rutherford told Josh and Robb in that article that they could be hiring a third one at some point, maybe before the season starts. But he said it would just have to be the right fit and the right person for that role. So, yeah, don't get your hopes up or anyone else coming on the staff.

Like, you know, Gerard Goulin or Peter Lovillet, they're going to get NHL head coaching givis. Lovulet very well might go to Washington. Gerard Goulon also might go to Washington. So, yeah, they're probably not going to be added to the staff. And it's unlikely anyone will be before the season unless it's the perfect fit or the perfect person, as Jim Rutherford said in the article. Looking for other things here in the article.

You know, Rutherford, apparently he was asking around a lot in the organization about Todd Reardon. He's like, I did my homework. I knew he was the guy we wanted. but along the way I also wanted to talk with people who were here when Todd was here. You just don't hear a bad word about him. Everyone has total respect for him from our core players all the way down through the organization. Everyone was excited about the idea of bringing him back. So that is pretty, pretty good.

I know I touched on this earlier in the podcast, but what I would expect with the Penguins Power Play under Todd Reardon was hopefully they can ditch the drop pass that they do before they get into the zone around the blue line. It just doesn't work. It just lets the penalty killers just relax and sit in their. their own zone and just get set to do whatever they want. Hopefully Todd basically just gets rid of that.

I'm also thinking he's going to preach some cleaner zone entries. Zone entries were a big problem for the Penguins powerplay this past season. I mean, just watched the series against Montreal, and a lot of times they just couldn't even gain the zone. Montreal was just clearing it out at will, and the Canadians had one of the worst penalty killing units in the league, and they just flat out embarrassed the Penguins powerplay. Their mark Recky was just so far out of this league looked like, but, you know, with a competent powerplay coach in Tar rooting coming in here,

I'll really expect him to clean up his own entries and also get the drop passes out of here. And, you know, with the personnel, they're going to have the same personnel most likely on there. You know, just have Cindy Crosby down low, have Jake Gensel or Patrick Hornquist in front of the net, or he can move Jake Gensel kind of to the slot in Hornquist in front of the net, whatever you want. Put Krista Tang at the point. Put Evgeny Malkin on the right side for his bombs and, you know, you'll be in pretty, pretty good shape there. I'm sure if they want to, they can move Jason Zucker on there. He can move to the slot a little bit or the left wing circle.

So, you know, I'm really, really excited to see just how good the power play can be under Tarrier. You know, if it can get back to the years that they had when it was basically top five in the league virtually every year with Crosby and Malkin in their peak year. So I'm just really, really excited for that. But also buried in this article, I totally forgot out about this until now Mike Buckley did receive a two-year extension as the goaltending coach. I think that's a fine move. I know some people are kind of like little meh about it, but Tristan Jari made some great strides this season. was definitely, I think, the best goaltender during the regular season, even though he was struggling a bit towards the end.

But, you know, he's ready to be the number one goaltender. He was really, really good in a playoff game that he played. I think Jari is comfortable working with Mike Buckley. And, you know, it's just, it's not surprised that they rewarded him with a two-year extension. There's only really one thing that I want Mike Buckley to get better with. I found out that he does this. I think during this past season is that he's the one that calls down to Mike Sullivan for the goaltender's interference challenge.

And I don't think he's won a six. single one if my memory serves me right. I think he's 0 for 6, like close to 0 for 10, something like that. I just, I really don't think he's won a single goaltenders interference challenge. I know it's very random with what the NHL refs do, but you know, he's had some pretty bad challenges for that. So hopefully he can get better at that going into this season and then the season beyond that as well. But I think that's mostly it from that article. If you guys want to read the whole article, just go to the athletic.com, subscribe to the website. They just do outstanding work for not just the penguins, but for all the teams.

Robin Josh do excellent work for the Penguins. Sean also does as well. I'm going to try to have Sean Gentilly on the podcast here at some point. He's just absolutely hilarious on Twitter, and he's also a damn good writer. I mean, let's not forget that. But that'll be it for this segment. Next segment, we're just going to talk about the games that happened last night,

as we're finally going to get two more game sixers. There's one game six coming tonight, of course, with Dallas and Colorado, but the two teams that had to win last night to keep their season alive, did win, and we're going to touch on that in just a few more. moments here. All right, so we're back here on this episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I guess which game should we start with? I guess we'll start with the Vancouver, Vegas. I want to know it's the late one, but we're just going to do it just for shits and giggles.

I was watching that game, and I know, of course, everyone on Hockey Tour was too. I've never seen a team outplay one team so badly and didn't win. They outshot them 42 to 17, 43, 17, something like that. Demcoe for Vancouver, their rookie goaltender got his first ever playoff start and he basically won the game by himself. He carried their corpses to that win. Vancouver played absolutely terrible at that game. They had no business winning. But, you know, when you have a hot goalie, that's all you need at times.

And he will them that win. He's going to get the starting game six, which is going to be Thursday night. If I'm not mistake, I think that's a 945 game. I still have no idea how Vegas didn't win that game. That's absolutely crazy to me they didn't win. They were coming at them in waves. Vancouver was hemmed in their own zone virtually all night long. I mean, 17 shots in 60 minutes.

I mean, that's just, that's terrible. That's just absolutely terrible. I just, I can't believe Demko carried them to that win. That's just absolutely nuts. Brock Bessor had a goal for the Canucks, and it was a hell of a goal too. And Elias Peterson also scored from the Canucks. That was his seventh goal of the playoffs Bessler. That was his fourth.

J.T. Miller and Quinn Hughes assisted on that goal. And then for Peterson, Bessor and Miller assisted on that one. So yeah, it's just the Canucks high end. talent carrying them and their goal tending. My Vegas and sixth prediction still looks pretty good. That was what I said before this series started. I'm going to stick with that. I think Vegas is going to win the next game.

Start Leonard, you know, that was not his fault that they lost. You know, just sometimes a goal gets hot and wins you a game. But, you know, it's not going to happen two more games in a row. It's very, very, very unlikely that they win three in a row against the juggernaut that is the Vegas going nights. But, you know, moving on to the Flyers Islanders series, hey guys, Claude Drew finally woke up. But you woke up from his long, long slumber, finally gets the goal, his first goal of this year's playoffs. I think that was only his just his second goal in, like, 25, 26 playoff games. James Van Reevesdyke also woke up.

They made it 3 to 1. And it looked like, you know, it was going to be over. The fires are just going to kind of cruise to a win here, up 3 to 1 with less than 5 minutes to play. Nope, the Islanders get 1, make it 3 to 2 with almost 4 minutes remaining. And then, with less than 2 minutes remaining, big game brass. Derek Brassard scores to tie it for the Islanders. And it's like, wow, you know, Derek Brassard decides to. do something there, but he couldn't do something like that when he was playing with the penguins.

So, you know, I just, I had to throw that out there. I had to throw that tweet out there. I had to put that on here on this podcast because he was just absolutely dreadful here in Pittsburgh. And then now while I was with the Islanders, he's just actually playing like how he used to while he's with the Rangers or not that level yet, but he's getting closer to that level, I would say. But, you know, that's just a peak, L.A. and Vigno coach team. They totaled in those last five minutes.

He was also playing Nate Thompson 14 minutes last night. That's a fourth liner. For reference, guys, Claude Jaroo was, like, getting, like, a minute more ice time than him. And it was just like, what are we doing here? I was just laughing when I was seeing it. It's like, you know, you're really going to play your fourth line

or that kind of fourth liner over probably the best player that's still on your team and in an elimination game for that matter. That's just absolutely hilarious to me. The game went to overtime. This overtime looked like a three-on-three to start. This was just chances going back and forth. Carter Hart saved their asses. It looked like the honors were going to win.

the series right there. I think Philadelphia hit the post on another chance. But then Scott Lott and finally won it for Philadelphia. They pushed that series to a game six. At the beginning of this, I did pick the Islanders in seven. It would not surprise me if Philadelphia took game six and sent it to that decisive seventh game.

There's still no update on Sean Couturee. If he misses game six and they win and then he misses game seven, it's just hard to see the Flyers winning this series without Sean Couturee. He's just absolutely awesome. He's their best defense war, but you know, he's also really come into his own offensively these last

few years. So that would just be a really, really big loss. It looks like Barzell is going to be able to play. I think he was hit in the eye last night or something like that. But, you know, hopefully Barzell is good to go as well as Caturier for that all-important game six. And then tonight, guys, I already said Dallas-Carolado game six. Let's see if Dallas actually shows up tonight. I'm not really sure which gotender is starting tonight. It would not be surprising if Ben Bishop does go. I mean, he's a top five to top ten gotender in this league. Just had a bad night. stars defensively were also just very putrid in front of him. So it would not be surprising if they did go back to the bishop in this game.

And we'll see if the stars have a much better effort than they did last game. I mean, you can't go worse than that by giving up four goals in two and a half minutes, basically. So we'll see how that game goes. We'll see if we can finally get some game sevens. Because for a while there, it looked like we weren't going to get some game sevens. But now with all the eliminating teams forcing game six, there is a chance that we do get at least one game seven out of this second round. You know, that'll do it for this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. Hope you guys enjoy listening to this.

We'll be back tomorrow with another episode for this podcast. So stay tuned for that. Hope you all have a great day and I'll talk to you all then.