By Joe Starkey
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/joe-starkey/2019/07/01/brandon-tanev-penguins-free-agency-mike-sullivan/stories/201907010101
July 1, 2019
Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images)
We need to be hard to play against.
If you’ve heard Penguins coach Mike Sullivan say it once, you’ve heard him say it a thousand times.
OK, maybe a million times.
And by “hard to play against,” Sullivan isn’t talking about his team’s star power. He’s talking about physicality and puck pursuit and shot-blocking and playing the game intelligently. He’s talking about sandpaper, grit, jam and any other hockey cliché that means “hard to play against,” and the Penguins, for the most part, have been missing it since they won consecutive Stanley Cups.
They never replaced the sheer determination and will of a Chris Kunitz or a Nick Bonino or even an Ian Cole or a Trevor Daley — guys who would crawl over broken glass to win a game. Consider the “series” against the New York Islanders. Nothing happened. The Penguins went down meekly.
Their bottom-six forwards, in particular, have lacked any definable personality over the past two seasons. Too often, they were easy to play against.
All of which is why you should be quite pleased with the club’s latest addition — winger Brandon Tanev — and not overly concerned that his contract will take him roughly to age 84.
The Penguins signed Tanev, 27, to a six-year, $21 million contract at the opening of free agency Monday because he provides what they have lacked. He is, as his father described him in a recent Sports Illustrated article, “a bundle of fire.”
Click on the link below to read the rest of the article:
No comments:
Post a Comment