April 10, 2015
Friday Insider: Penguins’ core won’t be touched
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Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, teammates since 2006, have combined for 1,554 NHL points. — GETTY
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
Roundup of a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our teams …
• Should the Penguins miss the Stanley Cup playoffs, or even if they qualify and make little more than a cameo appearance, there could be significant change.
Significant, but not stupid.
In my extensive face-to-face interview with Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle last May at Consol, an extraordinary session not only for the access to two private men but also for their candor, the franchise’s co-owners stressed one point above all: They believe in the team’s two superstars.
As Burkle told me that day, “We wake up every day with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. So we wake up in a pretty good place.”
And this, too: “We don’t want to wait five years. I’ve got Crosby now. I’ve got Malkin now. I don’t think a five-year plan makes sense.”
Lemieux and Burkle believe in the entire core, actually, including Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury, as they’ve demonstrated most powerfully by investing roughly $300 million in that quartet with extensions signed over the past three years.
And all that’s changed in the interim?
Crosby is in line for another scoring title, Malkin has been terrific when healthy, Letang is in the running for the Norris Trophy, Fleury is in the running for the Vezina and, if anything, the Penguins’ most valuable players look more valuable than ever.
Nothing about the stances of Lemieux and/or Burkle has changed in this regard, I was assured yesterday in no uncertain terms through one well-placed phone call and another very well-placed email. Nothing has changed with the ownership view at all. Not about Crosby, Malkin, Letang or Fleury. As I was further told, the subject has never even come up.
So start any post mortem for the 2014-15 Penguins in the proper context: Change could come, but it will not involve any of the core four.
• In this same context, I’ve heard nothing related to Mike Johnston’s future. The only certainty there is that, as was the case last summer, the ultimate thumbs up or down will come from the very top.
• The Penguins do need cap space, but $9 million — more than Crosby makes — would come through the free-agency departures of Paul Martin and Christian Ehrhoff. And I very much get the feel they’ll depart. The organization can only afford so many supporting-cast luxuries, and defense is the only position of strength in the minors. Scott Harrington and Brian Dumoulin will be in the NHL next season.
• I’ve covered Fleury’s career since before he joined the Penguins, gotten to know him as well as any athlete on any of our local teams. And I have never seen him as angry as he was after the game in Ottawa.
Not down. Not disappointed.
Angry.
I mean, at one point, he dropped an English swear word while giving an answer in French to the RDS television crew from Quebec, then asked them — in English — not to air it.
Read into that what you will, but the pattern from this view is that Fleury performs at his absolute peak ever since he’s infused that particular emotion into his game. And he was superb against the Senators, just as he was for the better part of the playoffs last spring.
• For all the righteous heat the Penguins’ medical staff for having allowed Olli Maatta to return too soon from his shoulder surgery, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that Blake Comeau — now, sadly, demoted to the fourth line since he no longer can shoot a puck with any force — was very clearly allowed to return too early from his broken wrist.
Hope all those big games in February were worth it, because that decision cost the team its most precious resource: A consistent winger providing secondary scoring.
• Ian Cole is a good, potentially very good NHL defenseman with a bright mind and relentlessly upbeat attitude. Reminds me so much of Matt Niskanen, on and off the ice.
Infinitely more important, an actual talent evaluator told me the other night in the Ottawa press perch: “He’s just so sound, so solid. And it looks like he’s coming into his own.”
• The Penguins’ TV ratings of late have been markedly below par, especially for this time of year. One day last week, they posted a 6.1 on Root Sports — pretty much what a typical Pirates game gets — and lagged behind not one but two NCAA Tournament games. Say what you will about the short-term impact of bracket-mania, but trust me on this: That’s unsettling for all concerned.
• Josh Harrison’s new extension is yet another case of sign-everyone-but-Neil-Walker, at least if one only skims the surface. Their situations actually are strikingly similar.
See, Harrison’s new contract pays four guaranteed years at $27.3 million, then has two club options. That’s the way these things get explained to the public, anyway. What this really is about from the team standpoint is, first, cost certainty and, second, years of control. And in this case, the Pirates know precisely how much they’ll pay Harrison through his final three arbitration-eligible seasons — rather than going year to year before an arbitrator — and they know he can’t leave through free agency until 2021.
The athlete, of course, signs up for the security. One never knows what can happen in a professional sports career, and he’s set for life either way.
So why can’t or won’t the Pirates do this for Walker?
Surprise: They actually have.
Walker is further along in experience, with only one arbitration-eligible season remaining, but on both occasions where the Pirates and their second baseman have engaged in long-term talks — four years ago and again briefly this winter — I can tell you unequivocally that they offered a similar term to what Harrison just signed. Meaning they offered to buy up his arbitration years plus a year of free agency, then to tack on a club option or two.
This isn’t what Walker is seeking. He’s looking ahead to his big contract, and that term, for any player, involves only years in which he could be a free agent.
That’s the difference. It’s not about the Pirates treating Walker differently. It’s about Walker looking much, much further ahead than the team did for Harrison or even Andrew McCutchen.
• The Pirates had a rough stay in Cincinnati, but it might have been cathartic for Andrew Lambo.
Yeah, he went 0 for 2 with a walk, hardly a big deal. But the first of those was the much-discussed 13-pitch at-bat Monday that ended with a laser to deep center, and the other official at-bat yesterday was a rocket to right.
Before I left Cincinnati on Monday night, I checked his temperature after another rough spring but at least the beginning of some validation: “Honestly, my goal is to go have good at-bats and have fun. That’s it. I’m smiling. I’m laughing. I’m enjoying it. And I’m going to continue working for my opportunity.”
• Starling Marte struck out seven times in the series, including some atypical swings right through fastballs. It hasn’t looked good. He’ll make no excuse for that, but I’m here to tell you that sliding collision with Jordy Mercer in the opener took a real toll on his left leg. I strongly suspect that, once that’s fine, he won’t be whiffing on straight heat.
• Jung-Ho Kang’s Korean translator continues to tail him everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He’s even in the dugout during games.
• One national publication suggested that A.J. Burnett will experience a major regression this season because he’ll have lost his fastball and will compensate by throwing the curve too often and, thus, walk a whole bunch of batters.
I put up the Bat-signal on that one and loved the response: “Yeah, I’m going to change who I am at this point in my career. All curves. Makes sense.”
The comment dripped more acid than the Ajax Chemical Company.
So Burnett went out yesterday and pitched pretty well while going with 33 sinkers, 23 four-seam fastballs, 28 curves and one changeup. It’s a fairly high ratio of curves and, for what it’s worth, six of his 10 swings and misses came on curves.
In his face?
Nope. The fastball to set up the count, as it has forever, and the heat sat at a healthy range of 91.2-93.1 mph.
• Social media can be fun every once in a blue moon. When I tweeted out at 2 a.m. yesterday that, given all that’s befallen the Penguins and Pirates this week, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Steelers also found a way to lose, I got the following right back from running back Josh Harris …
Told you he was quick.
• I had a couple other items on the Steelers, but they seem so small compared to tonight’s news, so …
Troy and Theodora Polamalu, with their sons Paisios and Ephraim. — GETTY
Good dude: Troy Polamalu.
One of the best of all time.
I’m happy for him, but most of all, based on some of the stories he’d tell about how terrified his wife was with every snap of the football — especially as he aged — I’m happy for Theodora and the kids. Because this is a man who, for all that freakish athletic ability, has one of the most fertile minds anyone could hope to encounter. If you wanted to talk football, he wanted to talk about a book he’d just read. Or the endangered habitat of a given whale species. Or the effect a certain flower’s scent can have on one’s ability to breathe better. Or, most often, his latest charity endeavor.
He’s had concussion issues. He’s thrown his body at opponents, while loving his family, as if he had no one in his life for that split-second other than the Steelers.
Let the family have him, and all that mind has to offer, all to themselves.
The rest of us have been spoiled long enough.
