The Penguins Could Have Done More This Offseason
NHL Network: Last week on NHL Network, Tony Luftman and Bruce Boudreau discussed the two divisions in the Eastern Conference. They started first with the Metro, and Boudreau was asked which team he thought still had work to do. He said the Pittsburgh Penguins.
** NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Tony Luftman: “A team with work to do among the Metro who comes up to your thought process.”
Did the Pittsburgh Penguins Get Better This Off-Season?
Bruce Boudreau: “Well, I think there’s a few teams that need work to do, but I mean to me it’s the Pittsburgh Penguins. Okay, now it’s two years in a row, yeah, well, it’s not just the fact that they missed the playoffs. They’ve been an iconic playoff team for years and years and like when you have a team like that, you want to see them keep going.
But I think, you know, they added Kevin Hayes, they added Blake Lizotte and Matt Grzelcyk and Sebastiano Aho and Anthony Beauvillier. But I just don’t think they did enough to make them better. They just did replacement guys from people that they’ve lost.
And I look at it and, and, I mean, I wouldn’t, you know everybody, I think is a Sidney Crosby fan, and you want to see Sidney Crosby in the playoffs, and you want to see him do really well, so you’d like to have seen them okay, let’s really, let’s, get this team back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs and make them a most watched team again, and I just, I think they didn’t do enough.
I think they got older, but I mean, they didn’t do enough. They lost Jake Guentzel. But, I mean I just didn’t think the real addition of Kevin Hayes is not getting them better, it’s just replacing another guy with another guy.
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Luftman: “We were talking before the show, Crosby. Such an identity piece for that franchise. They have the statue out front of Mario Lemieux “La Magnafique.” There’s got to be a statue at the end of 87 career.”