Shero Don’t Be A Hero

By Phil Krundle  
Friday, February 5, 2010   1:58 pm

With all of the trades around the NHL right now, most by two “Old School” GM’s Brian Burke & Darryl Sutter, it would be easy for Ray Shero to get caught up in the madness and trade away the Penguins future for another shot at winning the Cup. A little Pittsburgh Penguins history lesson might cure him of that and hopefully he will keep together what could be an incredible Pittsburgh future. These young players should be deemed Untouchable: Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, Letang, Goligoski, Staal

 

In 1991 Craig Patrick made arguably the best trade in Pittsburgh Penguins history getting Ron Francis, defensemen Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings for John Cullen, winger Jeff Parker and defenseman Zarley Zalapski. Whether or not this was what enabled the Penguins to win the cup in 1991 is open for speculation, but most around the league deemed it to be the reason. As a matter of fact Hartford Whaler play by play announcer Chuck Kaiton had heard all the talk about how Eddie Johnson was going to put together a Stanley Cup team “He didn’t tell us it was going to be in Pittsburgh.” Chuck Said. 

At the time of winning the Cup in Pittsburgh the Penguins had on their team what would be an unprecedented 6 players that would finish in the top 15 All Time Scorers in NHL history. Five of them in or before their prime. Ron Francis, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Coffey, Mark Recchi and Brian Trottier. The only team anywhere close to this was the Edmonton Oilers dynasty with Gretzky, Messier and Coffey. 

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  By Jean Pronovost, February 5, 2010 @ 4:48 pm

  And there is certainly no need to panic even though NJ has traded for Kovalchuk. I see Kovi becoming more like a New Jersey Devil than the Devils now becoming more like Kovalchuk. Trader Lou says they were able to make the deal because of organizational depth. He better hope he’s right because they sure mortgaged a good bit of the future trading Bergfors, Oduya, Cormier (Who will be an NHL stud despite his being suspended for the rest of the Junior season because of a wicked cheap shot) and this year’s upcoming first round pick. All of that for a rental player who will most likely be playing in the KHL next year. (He has a much better chance of getting the $11 million per year that his agent is asking for over there than he does of any NHL team giving a max contract to one guy) Again, all of this for a guy who has no proven playoff record having only recorded one point in his only four game playoff experience.
  There will still be plenty of guys the Pens should be able to trade for closer to the deadline that won’t cost them any of their top players/prospects.