Aaron Ward to the Ducks

The Ducks pick up some depth on the blue line while Carolina unloads the remaining salary of a soon to be UFA. Ward’s minutes will be replaced by Alexandre Picard who the Canes picked up from Ottawa in the Matt Cullen deal. Carolina also acquires goaltender Justin Pogge who, at one time, was the goaltender of the future for the Maple Leafs. So much so that Toronto dealt Tukka Rask to Boston for Andrew Raycroft. Wo, I’m betting Brian Burke wishes he had the ole Wayback machine to go back and undo that deal. Canes coach Paul Maurice had Pogge when he was with the Marlies so maybe he thinks he can work with him and get him to be NHL ready.

Shero Don’t Be A Hero

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. 

Pittsburgh Penguins Game Day Poop – January 14, 2010 – Edmonton

The Penguins play the Edmonton Oilers tonight at 9:30PM it will be shown in HD on Fox Sports Pittsburgh.

Wow, the power play last night looked amazing, there was movement, they were blocking the goaltender’s view and the best part was that they weren’t just standing there. The players were actually using their skills and rotating around the ice so Calgary couldn’t get the matchups the liked. Wow.

Alex Goligoski seems to be in a slump, he’s a -6 since returning from his groin pull injury in the middle of December, but when you consider this is his first full season in the NHL, he is #6 in scoring on the Penguins even though he has missed 10 games and he is still a plus 5 overall, it is hard to complain about the job he has done.

Brian Burke has had one of my favorite quotes of the last few weeks with “We can’t just take the 23 best players, If we just take the 23 best players and try to beat Canada and Russia, we’re going to lose at that game.” You are in charge of the USA team Brian, you are allowed to take the best players.

I don’t know if douche bag Ron Cooke from the Post Gazette’s goal is to get Evgeni Malkin to leave town or if he’s trying to get Penguins fans to hate Malkin, but the 2nd rate journalist from ...