DK’s Daily Shot of Penguins: Power-play fix?

DK’s Daily Shot of Penguins: Power-play fix?

[Music] Mike soloman’s going to speak today in Las Vegas and just so that it doesn’t look like hindsight I’m going to share in advance what I hope to hear from him good morning to you good Friday morning I’m Dan kovachich of DK Pittsburgh sports and this is daily shot of penguins Comes Your Way bright and early every weekday if you’re into football Andor base ball I also offer daily shots of Steelers and pirates in the same place that you found this tonight’s the NHL draft which of course has very little bearing on the local franchise no picks until the second round when there’s two of them at numbers 44 and 46 however this has been the day in the recent past that solvan spoken with reporters now he is a locked to do that today albe it in a different capacity as the head coach of the US entry in the 2026 Milan Olympics and depending on how that goes you never know sometimes there are parameters set for these types of things where they say Hey listen we respect that all you have a job to do meaning the reporters but this press conference is being called by the US Olympic Committee and we’d appreciate if you would just stick to Olympic questions whatever so we’ll see how that goes one way or another over the course of the weekend Sullivan is going to answer questions about the Penguins you can take that to the bank uh he’s anything but the type to run from accountability especially after what I think everybody would acknowledge was a pretty challenging year for all concerned including the head coach but here here’s what I want this is this is in advance and this is also acknowledging that I won’t be there I’ll be in Atlanta covering Pirates versus Braves and flying there later this morning but but what I want to hear is everybody listen to me I watched every millisecond of footage from my Pittsburgh Penguins over these past few weeks and I the head coach the second longest tenured head coach in the league behind only John Cooper my Canadian counterpart here have put all that experience and all that wisdom to good use and I have found what was wrong with our power play I have uncovered it and from there he would proceed to at least give something of an answer it doesn’t have to be you know something where he rolls a player under the bus like for example if Genny malan is just killing us out there we can’t have him on the first unit anymore too many giveaways doesn’t work out well at the left Point anymore missing the net too often not feeding guys in front I would not expect anything of the kind from Sullivan even if it were the case however however the power plays problems weren’t all Gino’s fault as we all know Gino didn’t help but there was a lot more or should I say a lot less to it nor would I expect by the way for him to get into personel he’s not going to roll out pp1 right there at a draft day press conference this episode is brought to you by bet online your number one source for all your summer Sports needs this season from Major League Baseball golf NHL NBA playoffs get the latest odds and lines including all team matchups player props odds on just about everything that’s out there head to the website today or use your mobile device to get in on the action bet online where the game starts but I’d like to hear once and for all since this was never sufficiently addressed even though it was asked over the final month of the Season what took five months to get the bumper play into the mix I asked that question myself and never really got what I considered to be a a a thorough answer to it and that’s not like him that tells me that there was something off maybe it was something related to The Players maybe it was something related to Todd Reen neither of whom he’d be sideswiping in any way and you know he might just go back to the early point in the season where they did try the bumper play only it was with Ricard Raquel who just couldn’t handle it and it didn’t last long I’m talking about a game and a half at the most for reasons I really didn’t understand Rax just couldn’t handle it he he would back up but he wouldn’t put himself into a trigger spot nobody took him seriously so he wasn’t able to draw any body out and thus both components of the bumper play were killed on the spot whereas when Michael bunting came along he was on the other side he presented a viable Target he occasionally took the shot heck a couple of times he scored on that shot but other times would just bump in and out hence bumper play and he’d pull apart the opponent’s penalty kill so that the Penguins could do what Eric Carlson behind the scenes had been urging them to do pleading with them to do for months that finally happened when bunting came along what happened there was that politics was that players versus coaches was that coach versus coach you wouldn’t think it’d be a lack of awareness of how effective that play is when almost every Power Play in the league was deploying some variety of it and from there was that it because the one thing that you can’t do anymore if you’re Sullivan is give the standard we just needed to get more pucks and more bodies to the net nonsense because they did that like crazy in the final two months they really did I stopped 100% criticizing them on that over the final two months of the season because I was watching the games I saw what they were doing they were trying it it just didn’t work they didn’t finish they didn’t come close to finishing on a lot of these power plays normally at these draft sessions with Sullivan I’ll be honest with you there’s a lot more to ask than there would be this year there’s Personnel stuff do you see such and such new acquisition fitting with Sid or Gino those kinds of questions nothing’s really changed nothing much about this roster since season’s end and it’s not like the Alex Nadel kovich extension is going to get Sullivan to say well that’s that’s great I’ve now officially had enough of Tristan jar and we’re going to Rocket him on out of here he’s not going to do that to me from the coaching perspective what he’s got to answer for is the power play he’s now had a lot of time to look back at what went wrong and it matters when we come back j1q [Music] today’s j1q comes from Paul who asks DK why not just have Alex NAD delovic and yel blumquist be the goal tending tandem for the coming season Paul I have no doubt that Kyle dubas considered this if you recall immediately after the Penguins were eliminated before getting to Long Island dubis made a trip to wilbury to watch that team participate in the cder playoffs and he did so with a specific aim of seeing how blon Christ would rise to the challenge so the series was over super fast nothing could have been determined about anything in One Direction or the other and you know blumquist is still really young and when you’re talking about someone in his early 20s who’s only got one year of North American professional hockey to his credit even though he was an AHL Allstar even though he did check a lot of boxes that does not make him ready for the NHL also and relevant maybe most relevant if and when you do bring blonquist to Pittsburgh it had better be with either a starting role in mind or a shared role in mind because the last thing that you’d want to do with a prospect in any sport is have them sit and watch that’s a great way to stunt development and and that honestly right now in the scenario that you describe without having seen anybody performing a training camp if you entered that camp with just NAD delovic and blumquist as your goal tenders you traded Tristan jari which I’m sure is what you’re getting at you’d do so in putting both of your goenda remember and I love Ned as much as anybody and especially love what he did over the final month but he faded okay I’m not telling you anything I wouldn’t say to him he faded whether it was physical whether it was mental whether it was some combination he faded is that an unfair criticism yeah probably in this day and age of hockey you don’t see goenda games the way he did not to mention high stakes games back-to-back nights road trips but the fact is he faded so you’re going to see a situation I believe where NAD delovic and blumquist would have to share the net and I again I I think that this one is way more about blumquist than anything else what you don’t want to do and this is one of the few things that Ron hexall ever got right as a general manager maybe it’s because he was also a worldclass only person in Philadelphia who didn’t want to rush Carter Hart the only one everybody else was like get him up get him up get him up cuz the Flyers couldn’t find any goalies and he ends up getting overruled and fired and whatever else the Flyers bring up heart and look I know he’s got all kinds of other off the ice issues right now but on the ice he got messed up I don’t think anybody can dispute that he got messed up and maybe the same thing would have happened to Matt Murray too if Murray hadn’t come up in the midst of a championship run with what obviously was a championship roster the Penguins don’t have very many prospects the last thing they can afford to do is mess up the ones they have I appreciate the question I appreciate the intent behind the question I really do I thought about that myself I appreciate everybody listening to daily shot of penguins and we’re going to do another one of these on Monday [Music]

Has Mike Sullivan figured out a power-play fix?

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