State of the Penguins address
The Pittsburgh Penguins called a news conference today to address the state of the team. The Pens currently sit in last place in the conference 8 games into the schedule and have everyone baffled as to why they are performing so poorly. The Pens big off-season acquisition was big-ticket goalie Roberto Luongo, who quickly turned into the biggest flop in GM Goffie’s tenure. Luongo stats were mind blowing as expected; the only problem for Pens fans is that they were mind blowing in a negative way. Luongo’s sat with a GAA of 3.99 a record of 3 wins and 4 losses and a pathetic save percentage of .855. In a less of a hockey crazy market some GM’s would have been patient and prayed that the all-star goalie would have put it back together. But not in Pittsburgh! One year after reaching the Cup finals the fans in the Steel City are hungry for success.
Queue the blockbuster that shook the Pens from the bottom up. With the Pens sitting in last place GM Goffie got on the phone lines and within a short period of time the “best” goalie in franchise history was shipped off to Disney Land in a deal that sees the product in front of the net improve drastically and the Pens bring in one of the top young goalies in the game. The point of this deal is to try and get all 4 lines clicking and to be able to score more then we get scored on which when giving up 4 goals a game gets quite hard.
So the Pens are poised with a new top weapon and a new goalie and new game plan. Coach Lindy Ruff is hoping to run and gun his way to some wins. It is still early in the season and there is no doubt that the Pens can still find themselves in the playoffs, they just have to turn it around soon before it is too late.
The Pens have one more thing on their mind and that may be troubling them more then the losses and that is the dreaded sim curse. This is the same curse that has destroyed the Rangers and Bruins, teams with GM’s who have much more an understanding of the tricky old sim then the Pens do. It has yet to be seen if it is possible to beat this curse, but this shake up trade changes the whole make up of the team and we are praying that it can somehow just fool the sim gods enough to get us into the playoffs, where we showed last year that anything can happen.
The Pens will face off against the Sharks, play a back to back with the Habs, and then battle the Bolts all before the weekend is over. These 4 games should give fans a pretty good idea of where this season is heading for the Pens.
New look Pens:
Bertuzzi-Jokinen-Spezza
Hemsky-Thornton-Sillinger
Higgins-Gratton-Goc
Gelinas-Kapanen-Ward
Markov-Bergeron
Hannan-Jovonovski
Chelios-Bouillon
Lehtonen
Garon
Spares: Nichol, Begin, Heward, Guiliano, Zanon
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