[Goffie]

Sitting in the middle of the playoff race; dropping down the standings with lackluster results the Pens experienced a little déjà vu from last season’s horrible collapse. Sitting on a boat load of assets and the most depth this team has ever seen it was decided that these assets and this depth had to be sacrificed to save the season. A lineup that boasted one of the more stacked forward corps on paper sat in 17th in goals per game. That is not good enough. It was time to make some moves and pay the needed price to change the dynamic of this team.

Deal 1:
To Jackets
Anze Kopitar
Loui Eriksson
Erik Gundbranson

To Penguins
Steven Stamkos

This was a huge price to pay. Kopitar is one of my favorite NHL players. However in my opinion Stamkos is the best goal scorer in the NHL today. So in order to get a player like that the price is a hefty one. We are happy to have Stamkos moving forward.

Deal 2:
To Canadiens
Tomas Plekanec
Wayne Simmonds
Nino Niederreiter
2013 4th

To Penguins
Pavel Datsyuk
Jerred Smithson
Rocco Grimaldi


Once again we paid the needed price to bring in a great talent. Plekanec is a great 2 way player, but in my opinion Datsyuk is the best in the game. He can shut guys down and hit 90pts. Nino is a great prospect but we actually have a soft spot for Rocco who is a long shot to make it, but an underdog that I like to cheer on.

All in all our roster depth and prospect pool took a hit, but we feel that our top end talent improved and hopefully we can start lighting the red light on a more consistent basis.

Thanks to MJK and Fraggle for the talks because as big as these 2 deals were they fell into place pretty quickly.