|
Penguins going with two fourth lines for now |
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Rutherford and the Penguins went bargain shopping today. They spent a total of 1.4M on two players. The first player is Evan Rodrigues and the second being Mark Jankowski. Neither player is a train wreck. Although, neither player will get the Penguins closer to contending. They are just more of the same when compared with the other bottom six depth.
Evan Rodrigues can skate and disrupt things, but the issue that many of the Penguins bottom six forwards have is that they aren’t really going to give you any offense
Mark Jankowski has a 17 goal season to his name, but he also has last year where he had five goals and seven points in 56 games.
In a vacuum these contracts are fine. They are one-year deals at the lowest price point possible. Unfortunately, nothing works in a vacuum. It feels like the Penguins have a million fourth liners at the moment. Right now the only third line players I see on the roster are Jared McCann and Kasperi Kapanen and Kapanen is probably going to start in the top six. All the others are fourth line caliber and yes that includes Brandon Tanev.
Rutherford stated today he wanted to improve the third line. I agree it is something the Penguins need to do. I just hope he doesn’t think he has accomplished it already.
It appears he does believe Jankowski could be the third line center. This is very underwhelming. The disappointing part of everything that has transpired the past few seasons is the Penguins seem to have no interest in trying to construct a roster like the 2015-16 team. I’m not even talking about making another electric trade like the one that brought Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh. You would think the team would focus on acquiring offensively capable players who can create mismatches with the opposition’s lineup. Throw your fourth line to the wolves. Shelter the third line like HBK and Sid and Geno will do their thing. Instead, it seems the desire is to go with a bunch of defense first players and I don’t have a good feeling about it. This has a real late stage Ray Shero feel to things. Be prepared for people calling out Crosby and Malkin for not scoring enough at ages 33 and 34 while the bottom six puts up pedestrian offensive numbers. The thing is this can work in the regular season. Relying on two lines for scoring in the playoffs (assuming everybody is even healthy) is a road we’ve already gone down. We know how that plays out. It is how Rutherford got the job in the first place.
This team needs way more scoring depth and if they don’t find a way to get more of it I can’t see them being a true contender.
Rodrigues and Jankowski are fine for the fourth line. It’s just too bad the team will have two fourth lines.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»