PITTSBURGH — Politely. That's how the Penguins bowed out this season. What else would you expect?
This isn't just the oldest team in the NHL and one of the lightest, it's also the politest.
If the Lady Byng Trophy were a group award, the Penguins would win by a landslide. If I told you they left the Chicago Blackhawks a handwritten thank you note for showing up the other night, would you be surprised?
The irony here hits like a sledgehammer, even if the Penguins never do. Think about the men who run the franchise. One is maybe the most belligerent goaltender who ever donned a mask (Ron Hextall — Hexy). Another is a hard-edged, booming voiced Bostonian (Mike Sullivan — Sully). The third is Mr. Truculence himself (Brian Burke — Burkie).
This is their team?
When the Penguins needed to get meaner and tougher — something we all assumed would happen when Hexy and Burkie came aboard two-plus years ago — Hexy's big deadline acquisition was little Mikael Granlund, who finished third in Lady Byng voting back in 2016-17. And is 31. And is so small he couldn't get on a ride at Kennywood. And makes $10 million over the next two years!
If one could create a hockey player who profiles as the precise opposite of what the Penguins needed, Granlund's your guy. The move already ranks among the worst trades in franchise history.
It's not that the Penguins lack toughness, necessarily, it's that their toughness often manifests in absorbing abuse. They'll take hits. They'll withstand chokeholds and cross checks to the spine. And there is some nobility in that.
But when do they dish it out?
Nobody here ever tortures opposing goalies. Half the team is allergic to blue paint. Very few move bodies or lay big hits, and no one really bothers other teams' stars or defends their own. The only guy who confronted New York Rangers headhunter Jacob Trouba after last year's playoff debacle was Evgeni Malkin, who should have other things to worry about — like scoring goals and setting single-game penalty minute records.
Mercifully, Team Polite was eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs Wednesday when the New York Islanders beat the Montreal Canadiens (and no, the Penguins did not send the Islanders a box of candy and a "So Proud of You" card). Can you imagine what the Boston Bruins would have done to them?
Listen, I know there are plenty of other problems with this team. I also can't imagine that two of the aforementioned bosses — Hexy and Burkie — will be here long. I'm still not sure what Burkie does, by the way, though I thought he was supposed to have veto power on hockey moves. If so, he surely should have exercised it on Granlund.
Also, Burkie never really delivered on the tough talk. This is the guy who once said, when he was running the Toronto Maple Leafs, that his teams require "proper levels of pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence."
You could have fooled me.
None of these tough guys had the nerve to tell Jeff Carter he'd be a healthy scratch even one time.
Sully has said roughly a million times that his teams need to be "hard to play against," and his early teams most certainly were. Remember what Patric Hornqvist did to goalies? Remember what Chris Kunitz did to opposing defensemen? Yes, Sully instilled a "just play" mantra when he arrived, but that was largely aimed at not whining to officials anymore.
This team's annoying passivity has made it easy to play against, and, I would imagine, difficult to root for. Sometimes you just want a pound of flesh. You want revenge. You don't want to see your team and its captain constantly bullied.
Two Penguins-turned-broadcasters — Bob Errey and Jay Caufield — last month put to words what so many people think of this team. Ottawa Senators tough guy Austin Watson had just laid out Sidney Crosby with a cross check to the back and never had to answer for it. Crosby skated by his lonesome back to the bench. He was the only one who showed any hint of anger. The game went on as if nothing had happened.
Errey told 93.7 The Fan that somebody should have intervened.
"Some of those guys can, quite frankly, try to get out of their comfort zone, bring a little extra to the table," Errey said. "It takes some courage sometimes to do something different, no matter what it is in life, doesn't it? That's a strength, a quality your teammates admire. Just an extra run at somebody, whether it was Watson or somebody else. You know, Sid wouldn't have even had to react. You know inside he would have appreciated it, though, because I know 66 (Mario Lemieux) appreciated it."
In another radio interview, Caufield endorsed Errey's take.
"I'm tired of seeing that," Caufield said. "There's no reason you shouldn't jump in. Without (Crosby), you're not making your money. How about that? ... When Sidney Crosby goes down like that, I wouldn't want to be in that locker room if I didn't do anything. That's a fact. I would not want to be in that locker room and look across to him. What are you going to do, ask him if he's OK?"
Well, that would be the polite thing to do.
