Its Looking Rough

The defense is great. The trades have saturated down for me and I understand them a lot more than I did the second I freaked out over both of them. I like the aggressiveness from Hextall and I like that he’s taking action. And I don’t think enough Pens fans are taking notice of that. He’s no longer sitting back. He knows the time is running out and we need to win now. And he wants change and he’s doing it now. I respect it. I respect it a lot and it’s something we haven’t seen out of him that we are now starting to see.

We sold very high on Matheson which I like and our coaching staff completely turned his career around. I don’t think he will be HALF the player he was for us that he will be in Montreal. And for Petry, the guys a great player and a vet that brings a good vet experience to our locker room. Playing with Sid, Geno, and Letang will open up so many doors for him to keep his career going and that’s just what he needs.

As far as the Marino deal, sure we could’ve maybe negotiated that 3rd down to a second and the trade wouldn’t look half as bad but in the meantime we got a very very young dman that’s just opened his eyes to the game. Feels like NJ gave up on him way too early and Ron took note of that. We won’t be rushing him into the lineup for good reason, I’d love to see him take it slow for a little and get a feel for his confidence and his game sense down in WBS and then maybe call him up for a few games. Reviving him in a sense.

Overall, trades weren’t bad at all. I am SO much more confident about our defense right now than I was the last 2 seasons. Did we win the trades? Meh, probably not. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t benefit us and won’t make us a better team. And who knows, maybe we will look back and have won 1 or both of these trades. Ron’s had a phenomenal off season, I certainly am not putting it past him to have nailed these 2 trades.

The defense is good yes but you have to look at what it's costing the forward group. They had 9 NHL defenseman and no cap space - they made 2 trades and still have 9 NHL defenseman and no cap space. How can that be viewed as a positive? The Marino trade made sense, it was a cap dump. But then he went and spent the money on Petry, not a forward. It makes the Rutta signing look even worse now too. Aggressiveness isn't a good thing if the trades/signings make no sense lol.

It's not that the trades were bad value, nobody is saying they are. If you just look at the trades in a vacuum they're fine. Marino was a cap dump and Petry is better than Matheson. But for a team with an abundance of defenseman, no cap space and a terrible bottom 6 - the moves are extremely questionable.

I could not be more of the opposite opinion lol. I think we probably did win the trades, but the moves made no sense and didn't fix the team's issues. We were 5th in the league in goals against last year - defense wasn't an issue. Sure you may be more confident in the defense this year, but the forward group is significantly worse. Every year we complain about secondary scoring, and this bottom 6 is significantly worse than it was at the end of last year.

I don't know about phenomenal. The re-signings of Rust Malkin and Letang were great. The Rutta signing was bad, qualifying Kap was bad, and making these last 2 trades together is extremely questionable.