Too late for Penguins’ Sidney Crosby to make MVP push?

By Tim Benz

https://triblive.com/sports/tim-benz-is-it-too-late-for-a-sidney-crosby-mvp-push/

March 5, 2019

Dale Weise #22 of the Montreal Canadiens skates for the puck against Sidney Crosby #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL game at the Bell Centre on March 2, 2019 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Francois Lacasse/NHLI via Getty Images)

Is Sidney Crosby making a late push to get into the MVP conversation?

It was a topic on the KDKA Sports ShowdownSunday. It came up on Mark Madden’s show on 105.9 the X Monday. “The Athletic” mentioned it after Crosby’s four-point performance in Montreal. And it was featured on the ESPN Pittsburgh radio blog as well.

Well, I guess if we are having this much discussion about the conversation, let’s have the conversation then.

The Penguins captain has 25 points since Feb. 1. He’s now tied for fifth in the league in scoring with 83 points.

Via an assist with some stat crunching from our Penguins beat writer Jonathan Bombulie, Crosby’s 4.4 on-ice goals for per 60 minutes of ice time is tops in the NHL among forwards with at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 play. That’s according to advanced-stats website Natural Stat Trick.

This recent hot scoring stretch has buoyed a consistently good defensive effort throughout this season. Crosby’s 2.02 goals against per 60 minutes of ice time at 5-on-5 is better than the likes of Patrice Bergeron (2.47), Anze Kopitar (2.57), Mark Stone (2.63) and Jonathan Toews (3.01).

Kopitar, Toews and Bergeron have all won the Selke Trophy (best defensive forward). And Stone is renowned as a strong two-way player as well.

Maybe we should be talking as much about Crosby for the Selke as we should be for the Hart Trophy (most valuable player).

Let’s stick with the Hart discussion for the time being, though.

Crosby’s two-way acumen has to be part of the analysis. So does the fact that his offensive emergence has come at a time when other top scorers in Pittsburgh — such as Patric Hornqvist, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel — have been injured, suspended and slumping.

Unfortunately, advancing that argument makes as much of a case for Patrick Kane putting the Blackhawks on his back via his 94 points as it does for Crosby.

If you want to dismiss Kane and Connor McDavid (92 points) because their teams likely aren’t going to make the playoffs, that’s fine.

But then you have to try to make the argument for Crosby against Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov and Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin.

Kucherov leads the NHL with 106 points on a team that is going to win the President’s Trophy with the league’s best overall record. Ovechkin’s 45 goals are best in the NHL on a Capitals club that’s on top of the Metropolitan Division.

Then there’s Johnny Gaudreau with one more point than Crosby on the Pacific Division-leading Flames.

All that is to say nothing of defensemen Brett Burns, Mark Giordano and Morgan Riley, who may deserve to be in the race, too.

In the case of Kucherov, I’m trying to envision a media person in Pittsburgh telling Penguins fans that Crosby — in a year when he wins the scoring title by double digits on the best team in the league — shouldn’t win the Hart Trophy.

Do you think Penguins Twitter would condemn that person to death or merely organize a good tar-and-feathering in the middle of Grant Street?

When it comes to the praise of Crosby’s two-way play, that’s great. It is well deserved.

But a few years ago, when some were trying to say Toews’ was the best player in the league, I remember Penguins loyalists telling me that stuff shouldn’t matter.

Goals and points. That’s what’s mattered.

Let’s avoid moving the goalposts depending on which argument better fits the guy we like. Crosby’s charge to a potential third Hart Trophy may simply be occurring too late in a year with too many good candidates.

Want to put Crosby in the top five right now? Sure. Top three? That’s a stretch. Win the Hart? No. Not yet.

To borrow a line from Le’Veon Bell’s infamous agent, Adisa Bakari, “barring something exceptional,” this probably won’t be his year. However, March is a long and important month. No. 87 had 20 points between March 1 and the end of the season last year.

Things can change. And to borrow another line from a different estranged Steeler, Crosby does have “exceptionalism.”

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@tribweb.com or viaTwitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.

Categories: Sports | Penguins | Tim Benz Breakfast With

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Sidney Crosby and Carey Price are linked in time, greatness

Superstars were drafted in the same year (2005) and have been the backbone of their respective teams for more than a decade.

By Jack Todd
https://montrealgazette.com/sports/jack-todd-nhls-sidney-crosby-and-carey-price-era-is-a-joy-to-watch
March 3, 2019

In my mind (which admittedly isn’t what it used to be), Sidney Crosby and Carey Price are inexorably linked.

They were born the same month: August of 1987. They were taken in the same NHL draft. Price made his NHL debut against Crosby’s Penguins in Pittsburgh, a game I covered. They led Team Canada to Olympic gold in Vancouver in 2010 and again in Sochi in 2014. If Crosby is the greatest player of his time, Price is the greatest goaltender.

And while the first time I talked to Price was in a post-practice scrum at the Bell Centre when he complained about how hard NHL goalies had to work, my first interview with Crosby was rather more memorable.

For reasons that escape me, I went to talk to the 16-year-old Crosby in Chicoutimi when his Rimouski Océanic were in town. Getting there in winter involved a white-knuckle ride from Quebec City to Chicoutimi on Highway 73 along the fringes of Parc National de la Jacques-Cartier in a snowstorm.

Having arrived at the hockey arena, I got the bad news: Crosby would not be in the lineup. I watched the rough-and-tumble game with the raucous Chicoutimi crowd and hoped that the interview scheduled for the next morning would yield something to make the trip worthwhile.

It didn’t.

Any hope I had of some revealing quotes that would offer a peek inside the mind of the teenage phenom when Crosby came rolling into the hotel coffee shop the next morning with an Océanic PR person in tow. Had Crosby taken it into his head to say something controversial, the PR guy was there to warn him off.

There wasn’t the slightest danger. Crosby was pleasant, thoughtful, accommodating — and as bland as a bowl of white bread in skim milk. At 16, he had already perfected the art of submitting to endless interviews while saying nothing.

A couple of years later, I was one of dozens of journalists crowded around the television sets in the media tent at the FINA world championships on Île-Ste-Hélène in 2005, when the NHL held the draft lottery that marked the real end of the most damaging lockout in league history.

The Canadiens hung in a surprisingly long time, so that some of us had begun to wonder if they would make it all the way to No. 1 and the right to draft Sidney Crosby. But the Habs came away with the fifth slot, Pittsburgh would draft No. 1 — and the rest is history. With the no-brainer pick, the Pens took Crosby before the Habs grabbed Carey Price at No. 5.

A noisy faction (it’s Montreal, there is always a noisy faction) wanted Gilbert Brulé, who fell to Columbus with the sixth pick and was last seen playing hockey in Russia. Pittsburgh would pull off a draft coup by picking up Kris Letang with the first pick in the third round, while the Canadiens wasted their second-round pick on Guillaume Latendresse.

Much that has happened in hockey since (especially in Pittsburgh and Montreal) was decided in a few days’ time in that summer of 2005. Last week, one of the online sports media sites made public a poll that had the players ranking Crosby as the best two-way player in the league by a wide margin, with Price rated as the goaltender you would most want to have in a Game 7.

When the Penguins came to town Saturday evening, there was much anticipation, with Price about to tie Jacques Plante in total wins for the legendary Canadiens team, while Crosby had a chance to move ahead of Jaromir Jagr into second place on Pittsburgh’s all-time goal-scoring list.

Everything was pretty much settled 21 seconds in, when Crosby picked Jordie Benn’s pocket and scored on Price. On this night, the milestone (and the surprisingly easy 5-1 win) would go to Crosby and the Penguins.

There will be more tussles. Crosby and Price will both turn 32 in August, so it’s not inconceivable that they could face each other for another decade. Since that 2005 draft, Crosby and Price have marched more or less in lock-step through their careers. Crosby is the greatest all-around player of his time, Price the greatest goaltender. They have faced each other countless times and they have been teammates on the biggest stage of them all, the Olympic Games in Vancouver in 2010 and Sochi in 2014, winning gold medals on each occasion.

Bragging rights, of course, belong to Crosby: the three Stanley Cup rings. That bauble has eluded Price so far, and it’s not inconceivable that he will retire without a ring. Perhaps that’s why Price can be a surly cuss at times, but he can also be extremely generous. Crosby remains as much a mystery now as he was at 16, with even his considerable charitable efforts carefully hidden from the public eye.

Now two of the giants of their era are leading their teams as they battle toward the playoffs. When it’s all over, they’ll stroll into the Hockey Hall of Fame and we will count ourselves lucky that we were there to see it all unfold.

About last night ... Penguins cruise to 5-1 win

By Mike Boone

https://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/hockey-inside-out/about-last-night-penguins-cruise-to-5-1-win

March 2, 2019

Jake Guentzel #59 of the Pittsburgh Penguins scores a goal on goaltender Carey Price #31 of the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL game at the Bell Centre on March 2, 2019 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Francois Lacasse/NHLI via Getty Images)

They looked great against Detroit.

They looked great against the Rangers.

Then the Canadiens played a good team. And they didn’t look great – from the net out.

With a chance to tie Jacques Plante on the Canadiens’ all-time win list, Carey Price spent the first 10 minutes of the game playing like André Racicot.

And you just don’t want to channel Red Light against Sidney Crosby.

In beating the Wings and Rangers, the Canadiens didn’t face anyone as good as Pittsburgh’s #87. Crosby scored Pittsburgh’s first goal and set up the next two as the Penguins beat Price on three of their first four shots.

The goaltender chasing Jacques Plante did not look great on Geno Malkin’s 50-foot snapshot. But Price had no chance on either Crosby’s opening goal, off a brutal Jordie Benn turnover, or Jake Guentzel’s conversion of a perfect Crosby feed

At least the ignominy of a home-ice shutout was avoided by Brendan Gallagher’s 29th of a splendid season.

And the Canadiens had an eye-popping 77 shot attempts, to 43 for the team that won.

But Matt Murray outplayed Price. And the Pittsburgh goaltender stymied any hope of a home-team comeback – a prospect that faded after two futile Canadiens’ power plays in the first period.

The early dumpster fire notwithstanding, the Canadiens did not play a terrible game.

Max Domi and his linemates hustled and created chances.

Shea Weber had a mind-blowing 13 shots, four of which Murray had to stop.

Phillip Danault went 13-9 on face-offs.

But no fewer than 14 Canadiens skaters were on the ice for goals-against at even strength. Jonathan Drouin and Mete were each minus-2.

And after a lovely warm spring-is-around-the-corner day in Montreal, the Canadiens hit the ice and took their own crowd out of the game.

It was a measuring-stick contest for a team that still holds down a Wildcard spot – and still might on Sunday night, if Winnipeg beats stumbling Columbus, which was shut out on home ice by Edmonton Saturday afternoon.

But the Canadiens did not measure up against Pittsburgh. And they are taking their tenuous playoff position across the continent to California.

That will be a challenge, as will six other road games down the stretch.

Garry Galley thinks the Canadiens deserve to make the playoffs.

“They’ve had a real good season,” the TSN colour man added.

Indeed they have … up till now.

03/02/19 Condensed Game: Penguins @ Canadiens

Pittsburgh's increasingly cold relationship with the Pirates is an example of modern baseball gone awry

by R.J. Anderson
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/pittsburghs-increasingly-cold-relationship-with-the-pirates-is-an-example-of-modern-baseball-gone-awry/
February 27, 2019

If faith is lost incrementally, the way time and fortune are, then Juan Nicasio on his own did not shatter Pittsburgh's belief in the Pirates. His departure from the organization, however, further eroded a dwindling trust between the fan base and team. 

The Pirates capsized in August 2017. They were drubbed on the penultimate day of that month, losing 17-3 to the Cubs and dropping to 10 games back with 28 games left in the season. Yet Pirates fans maintain that the season's low point did not occur until the following afternoon, when Pittsburgh granted a waivers request on Nicasio. In doing so, the Pirates handed Nicasio to the Philadelphia Phillies without netting a return. Charity to baseball's worst team wasn't the motivation, and neither was inner-state love; the Pirates just wanted to save the $600,000 outstanding on Nicasio's contract. 

In theory, Nicasio should have had some trade value. Contenders are always looking to rent relievers ahead of the stretch run, and Nicasio was in the midst of a good season: In 60 innings, he'd compiled a 2.85 ERA and struck out more than three times as many batters as he had walked. In reality, Nicasio would be traded to a contender soon enough -- within a week the Phillies sent him packing to the Cardinals in exchange for a prospect. The player in question never appeared in a regular-season game for the Phillies organization, but it didn't matter. Pirates fans were incensed. 

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review polled fans about the move the next day: 39 percent classified the deal as a "pure salary dump," and another 41 percent voted that it was a "typical Pirates move." More typical Pirates moves followed. Over the ensuing six months the Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole, the face of the franchise and the staff ace, respectively, for underwhelming returns. Winter passed without the Pirates so much as signing a single free agent to a big-league contract. And so, when spring arrived, so too did a grievance from the Players Association, inquiring about the Pirates' revenue-sharing spending. 

With those poor optics serving as the introduction to a new era in Pirates baseball, the club needed a strong season to course-correct. A roster brimming with unknowns and misfits delivered, winning 82 games and providing management with enough inspiration to pull off the surprise deal of the summer, as the Pirates landed Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for three well-regarded youngsters. 

In some cities, the winning record and bold deadline deal would have coerced locals to get back on board, to support those plucky underdogs who used new math to win an unfair game. Not so in Pittsburgh, where modern baseball has left fans marooned without hope or recourse.  

When Tim Williams says last season was a "rebuilding year," he isn't talking about the Pirates. He's talking about his website, Pirates Prospects. 

Williams started the site more than a decade ago to maintain his work ethic after he was laid off. The site first grew into his job, and then into an experiment. In April 2015, he installed a paywall. Under his previous business model, heavily dependent on ad revenue, he had estimated the site had three years left. The subscription approach would scare off some readers, but enough cash flowed in order for him to hire additional contributors, thus expanding the site's in-person coverage. 

Last June, Williams posted a concerning message. Pirates Prospects was dying. Not enough people were signing up for or renewing subscriptions, leaving the site well below its conservative revenue projections. Readers would tell Williams they had lost interest in the Pirates, or that they were no longer willing to spend money on the team -- or on website memberships. As the budget dwindled, Williams scaled back. He refused free help while dismissing the contributors he could no longer afford to pay -- he could barely afford to pay his own bills. He started looking for a new gig, convinced the site was a goner. 

Pirates Prospects has since staved off extinction to see the start of another spring training. Ask Williams what started the endangerment period and he'll say Nicasio. "That was the move that set the fan base off," he told CBS Sports. 

Juan Nicasio in 2016 (Justin Bert/Getty Images)

After the Nicasio salary dump and the subsequent trades of McCutchen and Cole, Pirates fans began to push back. They, along with some advertisers, called for a boycott of the team. A Change.org petition demanding owner Bob Nutting sell the team received more than 60,000 signatures -- and while signing an online petition is as effective as throwing a batting practice fastball to Mike Trout, there were real changes at the PNC Park box office, where attendance dropped for the second consecutive season. 

The Pirates lost nearly 6,000 fans per game, the fifth-steepest decline among teams and the largest among teams with a winning record. Pittsburgh's total attendance was the lowest it's been since 1996, and finished worse than the Baltimore Orioles, a team that had as little to offer paying customers as any in recent memory. 

It can be argued that attendance is an especially poor way to measure Pirates fans' interest. Pittsburgh has the fifth-smallest metropolitan population among baseball markets. Even during the Pirates' three-year stretch of postseason appearances, the club peaked at ninth in attendance among National League teams. The first competitive teams in the PNC Park era being unable to draw more than that suggests Pittsburgh will never be among the league leaders in attendance -- unless, perhaps, they win a World Series. 

The Pirates' television ratings, meanwhile, remained good despite a slight decline.One report had the Pirates with the sixth-best ratings among the 29 American-based teams. 

Still, the reduced attendance wasn't the product of random fluctuation or even rock-bottom expectations entering the season. McCutchen and Cole were gone, but the Pirates entered the season with PECOTA projecting them to win more games than the Atlanta Braves and Colorado Rockies, two NL teams who reached October. Something else was at play. 

Ask most any Yinzer and they'll express discontent with the Pirates. One, former blogger Pat Lackey, wrote in an email to CBS Sports that "the reason that I'm so frustrated right now, is that the way the Pirates have behaved since 2013 has obliterated the idea that a good front office can overcome a tight budget." 

If Pirates fans no longer believe in "Moneyball," it's because the team's ownership has placed more emphasis on the "Money" and not enough on the "ball."   

As recently as 2012, Pirates fans would've thrown a parade after an 82-win season. 

Pittsburgh's well-chronicled run of futility was impressive in length and scope. The Pirates lost three consecutive NL Championship Series in the early '90s, then went more than 20 seasons before authoring another winning effort. When the Pirates reached the postseason again, in 2013, they won the Wild Card Game but were outed in a five-game Divisional Series. Pittsburgh lost the subsequent two Wild Card Games, running their grand total of postseason games to eight. 

Comparatively, the franchise's history of frugality has received less attention. The Pirates ranked in the bottom-five payrolls in each season from 2004 until 2013. They've ranked higher than 24th just twice since 2000, with the most recent occurrence coming back in 2003. The Pirates' average payroll has exceeded $90 million over the last four seasons -- a far cry from the $50-million range they used to gravitate toward -- but that's not as impressive as it sounds when the league-average payroll checked in around $135 million, per Cot's Contracts. 

With McCutchen and Cole off the books, last season's Pirates were once again bottom-five in payroll. Now, it appears they'll sink further. Barring a surprise spring addition, the Pirates are slated to enter the year with the second-lowest payroll in baseball, below $70 million. Only the Rays will spend less. 

There should be no question as to whether the Pirates can afford more. Unlike the Rays -- themselves shamefully below last season's payroll number -- the Pirates have a gorgeous ballpark, perhaps the best in baseball. They receive significant revenue-sharing funds each year, and soon the club will negotiate a new local television broadcast deal. "No one knows what the finances are exactly, obviously that's all speculation, but we know every team got that $50 million payment last year and know that revenues are just skyrocketing across all of baseball," said Brian McElhinny, who ran the Raise the Jolly Roger blog. "It would stand to reason that their revenues are still in good shape and that they can afford more." 

McElhinny and other fans aren't the only ones who think so, either.

Last winter, Scott Boras took Nutting to task for prioritizing profits to winning. Boras noted that the Pirates' franchise value has greatly increased ("Where else can you increase the value of your franchise to $1 billion and not have to win anything?"), and claimed the Pirates had generated $280 million in revenue in 2017. There's no way to verify that figure, but this wouldn't be the first time the Pirates have put the bottom line atop their priority list. Leaked financial documents from a decade ago had the Pirates as profitable despite their miserable on-the-field existence. 

Nutting's explanations for the Pirates' stingy ways often leave something to be desired. For instance, he said the Pirates didn't consider signing Manny Machado -- a move suggested externally due to Pittsburgh's payroll and proximity to the postseason race -- because he was concerned the salary disparity between Machado and the rest of the roster would harm clubhouse chemistry. The Pirates have used their players' salaries as a shield before, hand-waving off concerns about payroll by noting how much of their roster was making the league-minimum. That the advantage of having a cheap core is being able to use the additional budget space to buttress the roster seems to have been ignored or overlooked. 

Frank Coonelly and Bob Nutting (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

Nutting isn't the only one whose logic is hard to track. Team president Frank Coonelly used last year's Oakland Athletics as evidence that the playoffs can be reached by low-payroll teams. The reality is, the A's won in spite of their tight budget. Oakland entered the season viewed as a darkhorse contender -- if the A's young pitching took a step forward, the thinking went, then they had a chance to compete. No one, including the A's themselves, expected the club to compete with a rotation featuring Edwin Jackson, Brett Anderson and other blasts from the past. Probabilistic thinking -- baseball's new buzzword -- suggests the Pirates aren't going to be the new A's because the A's success cannot be replicated or sustained. 

The improbable can and does on occasion happen, but that doesn't mean it should be the basis of an offseason. 

Few markets have enjoyed as much pro sports success as Pittsburgh has over the past decade-plus. The Penguins have made the playoffs every season since 2006, winning three Stanley Cup Finals along the way. The Steelers have made the postseason 12 times in the last 18 years, winning two Super Bowls and losing another. Those runs have helped solidify Mario Lemieux and the Rooney family locally as something closer to saints than legends. Nutting and the Pirates are the third wheel, then, and that makes for unfortunate comparisons. 

"In the NHL and NFL, it doesn't really matter what city you're in -- it only really matters if you're a smart team, if you're doing things the right way, if you're putting together a good team. In baseball, it's totally different," said Williams, who lives in Florida and also follows the Rays. "You look at teams like Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, and when it comes to baseball you see their chances are so slim. But then you look in football, you look at hockey -- teams are in Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh, and nobody talks about small markets, nobody talks about their chances being so low of winning. If they're smart enough, if they've got a good enough team, you expect them to have a chance of winning from day one." 

The Pirates are viewed as being smart enough. Every fan interviewed for this article made a point to distinguish between Nutting and general manager Neal Huntington, whose baseball operations department is viewed as solid to good. The belief is that Huntington's most confusing moments -- like the Nicasio relinquishment -- have been forced from above. When Huntington is left to his own devices, he and his team of quants and scouts are prone to finding solid, undervalued players -- to the point where some are concerned the organization has become too reliant on finding hidden gems. 

The past two winters have enhanced that fear. The Pirates were infinitely more active on the free-agent front this offseason, but that meant guaranteeing less than $5 million combined to Jordan Lyles and Lonnie Chisenhall. Even if the pair live up to their modest ceilings -- back-end starter and platoon outfielder -- they're unlikely to make the impact needed for the Pirates to reach the postseason. 

As it stands, the Pirates are projected to finish five or six games out of a playoff spot, per the projections offered at Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs. The Pirates, almost by definition, are in the exact spot where teams historically are most willing to spend more money in order to lock in those extra wins. The Pirates just don't seem motivated to make the most of the situation. Instead, they're likely to repeat the same cycle of developing an inexpensive core then trading players away once they earn more money without ever taking advantage of the cheap years. 

Is it any wonder then why the fan base feels dejected? "I feel worse about them now than when they were the worst team in baseball," said Alex Kirshner, a lifelong Pirates fan and a college football editor for SB Nation. "Why is it that the Brewers were able to sign Lorenzo Cain and trade for Christian Yelich and the Pirates were just sitting around, content to not sign a major-league free agent," he explains, "when they have an 80ish win team they could've made into a 90ish win team?" 

To make matters worse, the aforementioned boycotts and petitions don't seem to matter. Why would they? Baseball's shifting economic landscape means that fan rebellions are almost toothless. They're poor public relations, but teams are getting rich off television deals and publicly financed stadiums, not gate revenue. Besides, as one Pirates fan suggested, there seems to be a convenient pattern in place: the team lowers payroll, the fans revolt and go to fewer games, and the team can then lower payroll further citing poor attendance. All the while, the team is making money hand-over-fist without having to worry about the on-field results. 

This isn't just a Pittsburgh story, either -- or won't be. Other fan bases are or will soon begin to ask themselves why their favorite team won't invest more money in the name of winning games, or what they can do to make their voices heard. In the interim, they'll accept that their front office is smart enough to make do with a tight budget. They'll read quotes about how their team will spend more resources when the time is appropriate, and about how the team has a Process and a Plan to build a Sustainable Winner -- one that would be disrupted by splurging for expensive veterans, be it by using cash or prospects. 

And then, inevitably, those fans will feel like the Pirates -- disdainful and distrustful of the enterprise. "The whole 'bear with us while we build a foundation so that we can put ourselves in position to raise payroll and put us over the top' only works if the fans believe the team is working on good faith when they make promises," Lackey wrote. "The problem for Pirate fans is that we've sat through it before and accepted those arguments on good faith in the past and don't really seem to have received much in return."

Erik Gudbranson the guy Penguins want in their corner

By Kevin Gorman

https://triblive.com/sports/kevin-gorman-erik-gudbranson-the-guy-penguins-want-in-their-corner/

February 27, 2019

Erik Gudbranson was stranded Tuesday in Toronto’s airport for nearly five hours, plenty of time to contemplate the 11th-hour trade that sent him from the Vancouver Canucks to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

While following the box score of their game at the Columbus Blue Jackets on his phone, Gudbranson saw that the Penguins lost two more players to injury in Bryan Rust and Chad Ruhwedel.

So his early arrival for practice was perfect timing as the Penguins’ defensive depth has been depleted. Ruhwedel (upper body) joined fellow defensemen Brian Dumoulin (concussion), Kris Letang (upper body) and Olli Maatta (shoulder) on the injury report, forcing the Penguins to recall Zach Trotman from their Wilkes-Barre/Scranton affiliate.

Turns out, Gudbranson is just what the doctor ordered.

“I hope so, and I welcome that challenge, for sure,” Gudbranson said. “This team certainly has an aura about it. You know that there’s an expectation here to make the playoffs and go deep every year.

“When it started to sink in a few hours after it happened, your mind starts racing a little bit, and you start refocusing. That day spent alone in the airport was a good day to get those thoughts through my mind and those feelings running through your veins. I’m excited to be here.”

The Penguins are excited to have Gudbranson, as much for the deterrent the presence of a 6-foot-5, 217-pound defenseman provides as his promise to play with physicality in front of the net and along the boards.

Simply put, the Penguins are counting on Gudbranson to be the antidote to their players getting pummeled by opponents. They are tired of teams taking — and getting away with — shots on key players and having no one to answer the call when it comes to throwing a counter-punch.

“He’s hard to play against. I think that’s how I’d describe him,” said Penguins center Nick Bjugstad, who played with Gudbranson on the Florida Panthers. “Definitely when you’re going into his corner, you know it. It’s good to have that on your back end. He’s a tough son of a gun and a good teammate to have. You know he’s coming at you with a heavy stick. … No forwards like to go into a corner with a D-man like that. That’s a guy you want on your side.”

Bjugstad didn’t stop there. He talked about how Gudbranson is a strong skater and a good passer who does the little things well. Those words were echoed by defenseman Marcus Pettersson, who was paired with Gudbranson in practice Wednesday at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry.

“We need him,” Pettersson said. “He can move the puck. He skates really well. I had the fortune to practice with him. He reads the ice very well. I think he’ll fit in, quite similar to a guy like Jack Johnson. It’s easy to read off him and play with him. He thinks the game very well. You know he’s always going to be in the right position.”

Which makes you wonder how in the world Gudbranson, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2010 NHL Draft, had a miserable minus-27 rating in Vancouver this season. The Penguins have to hope that the best explanation is that he was just a bad fit with the Canucks. Gudbranson admitted as much after his first practice with the Penguins, even though he knows that statistics don’t always tell the whole story.

“I didn’t feel like I played all that well there, to be honest,” Gudbranson said. “I just never got anything going, never got my confidence to where it was, to where it needed to be. I’m excited to come here. This is a team that can help guys out in situations like that. Even out there in practice, I felt a lot better than I had in Vancouver — that’s nothing against them; we worked hard there, and I learned a lot there — but that style we were playing in the D-zone worked well for me.”

The Penguins don’t necessarily need Gudbranson to perform to his pedigree as much as they require his size and strength in what coach Mike Sullivan called “the battle areas.” Sullivan talked about how Gudbranson will bring a physical element to the blue line, be a strong net-front presence and provide an edge to a corps that is crumbling.

“We think he complements some of the defensemen that we have,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got a lot of mobile guys, we’ve got puck-moving guys. This is a guy that brings a different dimension. He’s going to be hard defending down low. He can lean on people. He’s strong, so we think that skill set is complementary to the other guys that we have.”

If Gudbranson can deliver what Hal Gill, Trevor Daley and Ron Hainsey did as valuable veteran defensemen for their Stanley Cup championship teams, this trade will be an absolute steal. Gudbranson has stood toe-to-toe and traded blows with Washington Capitals forward Tom Wilson, and if Gudbranson can stop Wilson from taking — and getting away with — cheap shots, Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford might be willing to throw in another draft pick.

That’s not to suggest that Gudbranson is some sort of savior. If he’s better than Pearson, and the Penguins make the playoffs, the trade is still a win. The Penguins just need him to be a defenseman who plays with physicality around the net, hoping for more pluses than minuses but most of all the ability to stay healthy and keep his teammates that way.

Gudbranson had four hours in an airport to think about all of this, four hours to absorb a trade both brought about by injury and as a means to prevent the Penguins from suffering more.

“I think it’s unfortunate but fortunate that I kind of get thrown into it really quickly here,” Gudbranson said. “I’m not necessarily getting my feet wet. I’m diving right in.”

The shock of being traded soon turned to awe, both for Gudbranson and the aura of his new team and for the Penguins and their new-found physical presence. The sight of Gudbranson’s sheer size and skating had those thoughts running through their minds and those feelings running through their veins.

When it comes to the corner, they got a guy you want on your side.

Keep up with the Pittsburgh Penguins all season long.

Kevin Gorman is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Kevin by email at kgorman@tribweb.com or via Twitter .

Categories: Sports | Kevin Gorman Columns | Penguins