Because when it rains, it monsoons/hurricanes/tidal waves/nuclear fallout, I glanced over this little gem of a rumor as I'm sure all of you others who venture to Pensblog did. Just wanted to hear everyone's thoughts on it. Jump with me below (off this bridge).

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So after much deliberation on the debacle that has been this first round series, I figured I would post up a letter to my fellow Penguins fans. This decision was made MUCH easier after seeing the litany of posts regarding game three. Perhaps some of what I have seen and done can offer a unique perspective to those wit the /wrist posts as well as the /hair_here_make_me_sick_blah_puke posts.

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Past 3 Professional teams to come back from down 3-0

New York came back against Pittsburgh (1975)

Boston came back on New York (MLB - 2004)

Philadelphia came back against Boston(2010)

Pittsburgh coming back against Philly would make it full circle.

(Yes, I know I'm reaching but I just thought it was interesting how it would cause each city to each deal with winning and losing a series in this way.)

They just need to win 2 and then the pressure is on the Flyers to close things out on their own house in game 6 and not let us come back home for a game 7. (I'm an optimist)

First of all, if any Flyers fans are reading this, let me apologize as a Pens fan of 3 decades for their acts yesterday. It's hard to think of something that hasn't already been said in the past 24 hours about the Pens' dismal performance in this series and their disgraceful behavior in game 3, but here goes:

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I can't be serious, right? Thinking that a team with the following track record through three games could win four straight:

• A team that has given up as many shorthanded goals (3) as they've scored on the power play in those three games?
• A team that has allowed the opponent to score on 5-out-of-9 power plays?
• A team whose starting goaltender has a .798 sv% through the first three games?
• A team whose 50-goal scorer hasn't hit the back of the net once?
• A team that has blown early leads of 3-0, 2-0 and 1-0 consecutively?

Yes. I'm serious. And the reason is a mathematical law known as "regression to the mean."

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The really sad part about all this? If there's a lock-out next season, the players will have over a year to sit on what happened without being able to do anything about it on the ice. This series debacle might be the last memory of the Penguins until 2013. Wow. That's depressing.

It's tough that as fans we are so powerless. Nothing much to say or do. I can't defend their behavior but considering how long I've loved this team, this has been very difficult to watch.

After Game 1, I said our backs are up against the wall. After Game 2, It was damn near done. After Game 3, the fat lady has sung her song.

Getting into the playoffs is not the objective. Winning the cup is the #1 Objective. With all of the talent, what happened and where does the FO go?

At some point we will not be able to keep Crosby, Malkin and Staal. Is this the year we make the move?

The defense sucked in the serries. Who goes? Is Depres ready to play big boy hockey every day? Is Martin the odd man out? What can we get for him?

Do we need a better backup Goalie so that Fleury is not so tired come the playoffs?

Was the speed of the playoffs too fast for Vitale? Is he the answer as a 4th line C or is he a possible 3rd line replacement for Staal? What is Park's role?

How do we fix the PP. We have given up too many SHG this year. Is the problem personnel or scheme?

It is going to be a long off season.

Per NHL.com

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=628071

"

Pittsburgh forward James Neal will have hearings on Tiuesday with the Department of Player Safety for two separate incidents in Sunday's Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals series against the Philadelphia Flyers.

Also, Pittsburgh forward Arron Asham has been offered an in-person hearing Tuesday morning for his match penalty for cross-checking Brayden Schenn at 14:15 of the first period. Asham received a match penalty on the hit."

Ashamed? Disgusted? No, Disappointed.

Mario has no reason to apologize to the NHL for the conduct of his team. After he complained about the Isles game last year, we’ve seen little to no change in cheap shots, head shots or fighting. And the punishment doled out by Shanahan has, at best been inconsistent. Until the leagus seriously address that, no apology is needed.

Fleury is to bame? 42 wins this year. Very good record overall but inconsistent play. He can make spectacular saves that other goalies dream of but he has extreme trouble handling rebounds and soft shots especially from any distance. And once he’s burned, many times he can’t put it behind him and recover. He stops players in shootouts maybe better than anyone in the game but during regulation on a breakaway, has severe problems. Great goalies stop those shots. Stop enough and you might not need to be good in shootouts!

Do the Pens read too much of their own publicity? They know they have maybe more individual talent than almost all other teams. Maybe the problem is it really is individual talent and not team talent. Couple this with the fact that they seem to think (for whatever reason) they don’t have to play 60 minutes and you have the makings of first round exits, and not just this year.

The Flyers have no business complaining about hard hits they think are cheap or even if they are cheap. This is the franchise that, since its inception, has relied on and added addendum to the book on bullying, cheap hits and fighting maybe more than any other team since the original six. And in the late 90s when the Pens had the biggest team in hockey and beat up the Flyers, just remember how they and the Philly media complained about those Penguin Bullies. Short memory Flyer Fans?

The power play may just have been a major downfall of the Pens but it’s not unprecedented. Last year in the playoffs, the same non existent power play very easily cost the Pens a chance to advance. Why can’t an effective PP be devised?

The Pens may have the highest percentage of just missed shots in the league. For whatever reason, they hit the posts an alarming number of times. It seems as though they can’t quite put the puck where they want it. Either that or they shoot right into the goalie. 40 shots and 3 or 4 goals normally would be fine but when an opponent shoots half that time and still outscores you, maybe you need Sid’s Dryer to practice on!


Shero’s a bad GM? Must be nice to never make mistakes. Let’s see how the next couple of years go, then you can tar and feather him.

Pittsburgh doesn’t need an enforcer, they need big, good defensemen. Maybe it’s time to try for a seasoned, All-Star one? The trend in defense today seems toward six foot plus, 230 plus pound competent players. What this means though is hockey will become more and more dangerous until some change is accepted. Tennis is a prime example of poor foresight. When rackets were changed that allowed players, both male and female to serve over 100 mph, it took something away from the game. No more long rallies; just slams, aces and out of bound returns.
Now we have guys who can skate like lightning, stick handle and shoot the puck at the speed of light on ice. The rink is shrinking because players are getting bigger and faster and there just isn’t as much free ice as there used to be to play the game the way it was intended. Maybe the future of hockey will be 4 players and a goalie to play on the ice or going to an Olympic size rink.

Maybe lastly…it’s a game… to us. It’s only a game to us. These guys get paid to do what we might love to but it’s still a game for us. It’s amazing that every year 29 of 30 teams don’t win the cup. 31 of 32 NFL teams don’t win the SuperBowl. And yet, reasonably competent and semi skilled players continue to be paid to play for teams regardless of where that team finished. Are there 580 disappointed hockey players that didn’t win the big prize? Sure! But loyalty to a team is secondary to pay. That's life. It’s a job for most of them. If there were true loyalty just for the game, there's be more players staying with their teams longer.

Oh and where was the PR for the games? This year it was a given, I guess, that the Pens were going to win (at least according to Vegas). A jumbo tron outside? Whoopie! What happened to the Whiteouts, the tee-shirts? Are we getting back to the days when Pens fans sit in the stands and talk or text others on their I-phones while the game plays on? You can have 250 straight sell-outs but this year the Philly Fans made the Pens fans look like pikers. Did Max just “shhh!” all of us?

Maybe the biggest problem off the ice is the fans. Hey guys, while this is a very good and very talented team of players and maybe the most talented in 10 to 15 years, this isn’t the 90 – 93 Penguins. It’ll be a while before a team like that shows up again and not just in Pittsburgh.

If Wednesday’s game is the last Penguin hockey game this season, it’s probable their season actually ended with the last Islander games; games the Islanders shouldn’t even have been in the ice with the Pens. That alone may give an indication of poor attitude or an ego problem that needs addressing. Win one of those games and the Pens get the top spot. Does final position make a difference? This year? You betcha. Do the other 82 games really mean anything? Sometimes, maybe. When 8 of 15 teams from each conference make the playoffs it’s beginning to not matter if you’re good, but just lucky and timely. Too many times, a mediocre team enters the playoffs only to get hot and beat a better team. Philly doesn’t have more talent than Pittsburgh even though the two were pretty evenly matched. But the Flyers are a TEAM, at least for the last 3 games, a team that didn’t give up; a TEAM that continued to play, which may not be true of the Penguins. Check out how many teams have won the President's Trophy yet failed to win the cup. Can you say 1993 for an example? Maybe one of the best teasm ever to play hockey.Thanks Kasper!

Think the Pens feel Bad? At least they have (had) 4 chances to advance. Now think how the Steelers felt! One and done! Wait! Uh Oh!

It would be the understatement of the year to say that I never saw this coming. Excluding the meaningless season finale game where the playoff pairings had already been decided before the puck was even dropped, today marked the 5th consecutive "meaningful" game (2 regular season, 3 playoff games) where the Pens scored first against the Flyers only to lose in embarrassing fashion. In 4 of those 5 games, the Penguins started with multi-goal leads. In one of those 4, the Pens led by three goals. What I'm trying to say is - this is a collapse of epic proportions. When you add to the mix the fact that the team on the receiving end of this butt kicking is as "injury free" as they've been in years, a recent two-time Stanley Cup finalist, and the hands down favorite to win the Stanley Cup this year, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that we may be looking at one of the most monumental failures in sports history when one compares expectations against final results.

Everyone will point to a myriad of things on the ice - Malkin is currently playing as if hitting 50 goals for the season was the only objective he had for the year - he looks entirely disinterested on the ice against Philly. Crosby looks as if the word "back-check" is no longer in his vocabulary. Jordon Staal is losing so many races to the puck that I'm convinced his knee injury from earlier this year (courtesy of Mike Rupp) and his foot injury from a few years back (thanks to P.K. Subban for that one) must both be flaring up simultaneously in some sort of unexplainable delayed medical mystery. Mark Recchi won a Stanley Cup last year at age 43 and had more desire than I'm seeing from our 3 top centers combined. It's sad - so, so sad thinking of what could (and should have!!) been.

I don't want to believe this is a coaching problem. Dan Bylsma took an injury depleted roster to 7 games last year in the first round before losing 1-0 in Game 7 against Tampa Bay. That kind of effort was rewarded with the first ever "Coach of the Year" award for the Pens organization. This is the same coach that took the Pens from 10th place in the conference all the way to a Stanley Cup victory upon joining the team in 2009. Bylsma certainly deserves some blame, but I think this problem is a little higher up within the organizational stratosphere.

When the Pens won the cup in 2009, they were an offensive juggernaut as they are today. But they had 2 other elements that they no longer have : a shutdown defense (think Rob Scuderi and Hall Gill) and great character guys (think Billy Guerin / Max Talbot). Back then, if teams tried to intimidate the Penguins in the press like Torterella and Laviolette did in the last few weeks, the Pens would bear down and say "OK, bring it on." A couple years ago, coach's comments like that would have rallied the team together - remember Kevin Stevens in 1992 guaranteeing a Pittsburgh series victory after an 0-2 series start against the Boston Bruins? Remember Max Talbot "sssshhing" the Philly crowd in 2009 despite being down 0-3 in the game? This Penguins team has no swagger at all. There is no better example than when our team captain admits "yeah, Philly gets in our head and we don't play our best against them". Can you even imagine Max Talbot or Billy Guerin saying something like that when they played in the Burgh?? Think of other well respected captains through the years (Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Nick Lidstrom) - would they ever say something like that?? It's said to see this proud franchise get pushed around. The more opposing coaches speak up, the more opposing players push us around, the more the Penguins wilt - it's so, so sad.

How did this happen? Craig Patrick was a great GM back in the early 90's, making savvy trades that brought the likes of Ron Francis, Ulf Samuellson, and Rick Tocchet to Pittsburgh. However, at some point - Patrick lost his Midas touch. He traded Markus Naslund away and got nothing in return. Nobody blames him for trading Jaromir Jagr - Jagr had become a malcontent who wanted out. However, we got nothing in return for number 68. Eventually, it was obvious that Mr. Patrick had lost his touch and he was shown the door. Enter Ray Shero.

Ray Shero's shrewdness brought us Hall Gill to help the team earn Stanley Cup finals berths in 08 and 09. The Billy Guerin trade was a stroke of genius. I had never heard of James Neal before he came here, but Ray Shero knew what he was doing with that trade as well. However, some of his mistakes are really starting to show. The Salary cap makes things tough, I realize that. However, without knowing the exact numbers, I'm fairly confident that Gill and Scuderi both earn less than either Paul Martin or Zybenek Michalek. Which defensive pairing would you rather have? Shero traded a draft choice to obtain negotiating rights to Dan Hamhuis. Shero was confident that their prior relationship in Nashville would sway Hamhuis to choose Pittsburgh over his home town of Vancouver. When Shero was proven wrong, he made a very bad knee-jerk reaction and overpaid for both Martin and Michalek. Shero loved Steve Sullivan so much from his Nashville days that he chose Sullivan over Talbot. Nothing against Sullivan - I love his hustle. But let's face it, if forced to choose, who would you rather have - Sullivan or Talbot?

Ray Shero needs to be held accountable for this debacle. Given the Penguins talent and the limitations posed by the Salary Cap, his job is not an easy one. He was smart not to overpay for Gonchar with Kris Letang progressing the way he was. He's made other great moves as noted above. However, I firmly believe that a Gill, Scuderi, Talbot combination would be less expensive and substantially more effective than our current mix of Martin, Michalek, and Sullivan. Sullivan's contract is one year. Martin and Michalek however, may be albatrosses that the Penguins will not soon recover from. Oh, what could have been...