Brief and to the Point ...
Welcome, Jake Guentzel!
And goodbye to ... uh, take your pick!
Because when the Penguins fly over to New York for a rematch with the Rangers on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden, if we're being completely candid, their charter will be carrying a few too many passengers.
Unless, of course, you've caught any meaningful contributions from the following in that 5-2 loss Monday night at PPG Paints Arena or, really, all season long:
Nick Bonino?
Is he the Bonino who was barely visible through three-quarters of last season or the one who came up so big so often in the Stanley Cup run while anchoring HBK?
All that's known now is that he's got one goal in 19 games and looks sadly lost without his old mates. If that doesn't change, in some form or other, a hard decision might have to be made considering he's unrestricted next summer.
Eric Fehr?
Another vital cog toward the Cup, he's got two goals and an assist to show for the current season. And not that any one game should be extrapolated, but I wouldn't be willing to swear on a stack of Starbucks chais that he even suited up Monday night. Didn't notice him in the slightest, for better or worse.
How about Scott Wilson?
What would you say ... he does here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I
He's 24 and deserves a chance, but man, he's got to show something, anything. His feet are far too slow for the Mike Sullivan system, and his hands hardly make up for that. I expressed this even when he scored his only two goals, but he looks like a classic AHL emergency call-up type and little more.
Tom Kuhnhackl?
Sure, he's been a regular scratch, but he's also logged his usual ice in 13 games, and he's got zero goals and eight measly shots. What's more, his greatest strength, the ability to maintain possession along the boards that won him an NHL job last season, has gone missing.
He registered four hits against the Rangers in the first period alone, but that and zero offensive production makes you Tanner Glass lite.
Conor Sheary and Bryan Rust?
They've had their moments, as they did in the playoffs. But Sheary spent the better part of Monday night trying to dipsy-doodle through some of the NHL's least mobile defensemen rather than skating around them, and he's got three goals to show for extensive top-six ice time. Rust has reapplied the blinders he originally brought with Wilkes-Barre and is trying to do everything himself. Which will get you two goals and two assists in 16 games.
"It's a long season," Sullivan was telling us late Monday night, "and things won't always go your way."
He's right. There's a terrific chance that most, if not all, of the above will improve. There's an even better chance that the collective will improve.
But those don't have to be one and the same. Sullivan is not blessed with endless patience, to put it mildly. And he won't wait around with crossed fingers, hoping that 2015-16 will magically recreate itself for some of these guys. He might not even wait for Patric Hornqvist and Chris Kunitz to get healthy.
He'll seek out other answers. Like the one that just showed up on his doorstep:
https://vimeo.com/192574727
• There aren't strong enough words to portray how diligently Sidney Crosby is defending at all points on the rink, not just in the Penguins' zone. The captain wants the puck.
And by the way, he deserves far, far better scoring support for his 12 goals in 13 games.
No, he needs it. Let's not forget that the defining characteristic of this Cup championship wasn't the superstar core. It was running four lines deep. It was tormenting opponents with impossible matchups.
• Every season in every league, there's one team that leaps out to an insanely, illogically hot start. Last fall in the NHL, it was the Canadiens. This fall, it's the Rangers, now 14-5-1 with a plus-34 goal differential that's 18 goals better than anyone else.
They added a couple of faster players in the summer, notably Jimmy Vesey and Michael Grabner. But they didn't add that much. And while all concerned, especially Alain Vigneault, deserve ample credit, that water will find its level before long.
• Oh, those Flopping Folignos!
First, the Sabres' Marcus Foligno launches his own face into the boards to try — in vain — to draw a major penalty on the Penguins' Brian Dumoulin. And then, the very next day, brother Nick Foligno of the Blue Jackets fakes being clipped by the stick of the Capitals' Nicklas Backstrom, which so infuriated Washington coach Barry Trotz that he publicly demanded a league inquiry.
Get a load of this ...
Boy, did Foligno sell this high-sticking call on Backstrom resulting in the GWG with less than a minute to go for Columbus. pic.twitter.com/TVgTHmHNin
— Cristiano Simonetta (@CMS_74_) November 20, 2016
A visibly frustrated Terrelle Pryor: "It's bullcrap. We can't keep doing this and we can't keep letting our guys get hit." #Browns pic.twitter.com/nzCvBAakKl
— clevelanddotcom (@clevelanddotcom) November 20, 2016