Sully has his hands on the powerplay as much as anything else.
He's the head coach and the buck stops there.
It's not like the powerplay issues have happened under Reirdan, they predate him. But they aren't predating Sully.
You can't just scapegoat Reirdan. When your PP doesn't score for years, you don't just wash your hands of it, say "it's someone else's thing" and walk away from it.
Especially when it's been costing this team year after year. It cost them the playoffs last year and will do so this year too.
So it's very much Sully's issue. He's not capable of fixing it. Otherwise by now it would be. It's not like he doesn't have the players to make it work. He does. What else can you blame. At some point it's the coach.

As for Jake, I agree. If they aren't getting an A+ prospect back they shouldn't do it. By A+ I mean someone who is really talented and can step in next season to make an immediate impact.
Not a hope and dream player.
I don't view Jake as totally irreplaceable. I'm more than willing to put Iggy or Yager on his wing next season and I think Crosby will build them up. He's done more with less, can we say Sheary.
So I'm not adverse to making the right move. But if it's not there, they should resign him. Because there is no benefit to not doing that.

Can you tell me how you know he does? And no they dont predate him, since becoming head coach the PP has ranked top 5 in the NHL 4 times, only once (aside from this year as of right now) ranked below 16th in the NHL. Even last year they finished 21.7% which is decent middle of the road. So I’m not going to say sully is not to blame I’m also going to assume that he isn’t 100% to blame, its probably a combination of the 3, sully, reirdan, and the players. But all that being said whether or not fans or i agree that sully should be fired, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a 99% chance he wont be.

Pretty good chance Yager is not ready and it could be a grave mistake to bring him up and expect him to play as a 1st line winger at 19yo, as for iginla, from what i saw hes slated to go 13th in the draft, so he 100% is not ready for the nhl Yager was drafted 14th overall and Yager will 100% be better next year then iginla will because the depth of this years draft is way more shallow then last years, therefore its a pretty good bet iginla wouldve went lower if he was drafted last year.

As for Jake being irreplaceable i mean if they wanna truly compete, this team could (key word COULD) be a contender if they figured things out, but without Jake I can’t see that happening. If they get rid of Jake it wont do all that much to “accelerate a rebuild” and if they try to flip assets i sincerely doubt it’ll end up being better for the team then if they were to just keep him.

How do I know the head coach has his hand in the power play? Never played organizational hockey eh? He has his hands on it.

As for the powerplay, it's been bad for years, pens fans know this. You can use some fancy stat all you want, but it's been bad since he chased Kessel out the door and everyone who watches games realizes that. This ain't the first year they are having games where they consistently go 1/6 or 1/8 on the PP. It predates Reirdan. That is fact. That's why he got the job there was a problem before. Like I said you can mark the decline of it at the kessel trade. What has the answer been, Sully has had years to fix it? It's only got worse.

As for Yager, age and draft place has nothing to do with success at the NHL level. It's this thinking that sinks teams. Look at Seth Jarvis. He came in 1st year out of the WHL and he was the 13th overall.
He's played far better than people ahead of him.

Depicting if a player is ready at the NHL level is more based on 3 things. 1 is speed, 2nd is shot, 3rd is elusiveness.
If you have those 3 things on the NHL level you can compete. Everything else can be coached up to a degree as long as you have the strength to play at that level. Think Sprong getting back checked to the ground regularly.
So if you look at a guy like Iggy, if you watched him play, or even read on him. He's fast, he has a pro shot, he's elusive and he throws his weight around. Having a father who knows what it's like at the NHL level also gives him a major advantage as you know he's been coached up and prepped far better than other players. You can see that in his game with his work on the boards.
As for Yager, I realize he may have some issues playing off puck but he's hard on the puck. No one expects it to be perfect right away you got to give them the opportunity to grow and let the talent and speed make up the difference, just like it has done for Jarvis and many other young players.

I have played organized hockey lol. The PP was ranked 14th last year is average, not bad. And since reirdans taken over in 2020 the PP has only ranked top 5 once, and every other season it’s ranked outside the top 14 so I would say more that its been a problem slightly before him and especially with him. And there is no fancy stat, it’s literally just the PP%. I will reiterate it, it’s definitely a combination of personnel, reirdan and sully, and out of those 3 reirdan is the only touchable, they aren’t gonna fire sully, even if you or I or the fans think they should, and they can only move the personnel around.

That is just so wrong, if draft position doesn’t matter then no team would tank because it doesn’t mean anything, so since we are throwing insults that is a beyond braindead take. It’s literally a statistic, in the average draft (not the one Yager was drafted in) you go outside like the top 10 the chances drop significantly that the player becomes an nhl regular. And yeah you can literally find steals all over the place, but those are outliers, look at guentzel (3rd round), letang (3rd round), point (3rd round), kaprizov (5th round) etc, you can find a lot of outliers, that doesn’t make it the norm, look at derrick pouliot (8th overall) who couldn’t become an NHL regular. And if that’s the case then iginla should be way higher in the draft if what you say is true, but hes not, and the people who scout and rank these guys are a lot more knowledgeable then both of us. And yeah but idk why people have their hopes so high for Yager next year, hes not even playing in the AHL yet, yeah hes doing very well in the WHL but very few players will make the jump to the nhl from a league other then the AHL, id expect him to play in the AHL next year and maybe if there’s injuries get a call up, unless he just wows the coaching staff and dubas at training and pre season. And yeah that’s why they have player development, trying to force a prospect to the NHL too quickly can end very badly and there’s more then 1 example of that happening in the NHL right now.

It's not about if they are willing to fire Sully or not or what they will do. The point is, the power play is on Sully. You can't keep blaming everyone else around it.
I assure you the power play isn't failing because you have Crosby and EK on the ice. It's not the players. It predates Reirden, we finally agree.... I mean what else can you blame. The sky is blue the power play will be bad? There are only so many things you can point the finger at. I'm pretty sure it's not the hall of fame players who are generational talents.

"you can find a lot of outliers" and just like you can find plenty of busts in the top of the draft. Yakapaw, Kakko, Pool party.......
I'm glad we can both recognize it's not where you are drafted but what you do with it. Which is the whole point. Clearly getting a generational talent tanking for 1st pick makes a difference but for every one of them there are 5 number 3 over all jack johnsons.
It's not the huge difference you think. Most importantly is the quality of the player you get. Like I said, 1 speed, 2. shot. 3. elusiveness.
If you have those 3 and the strength to play on the NHL level you will make an impact. And while those qualities tend to go high, they do drop down.
Not everyone picks players like that. They value different things. Which is how a guy like Jarvis fell to 13 and how a guy like Yager fell to the Pens.
Everyone has hopes on Yager because they either watched him play, saw highlights or whatever and have seen. Speed, shot, elusiveness.
You think these guys have to develop for 3 years in the AHL. This is some old model of pro sports. People come into almost every sport now at a young age. NBA, MLB, Soccer, the only one they don't is NFL and that's league rules because they need the players to gain more weight and strength as their weight are 220lbs plus depending on position. But that is becoming increasingly less problematic for NHL players who tend to be lighter averaging under 200lbs for forwards. Most of these guys don't need long to get there if they aren't already. You look at Iggy he's already 185-190 lbs. that's on par with the NHL. Yager was 170 his draft year they say he's gained 10 lbs.
You can't sit around and wait for them to be "perfect". There is no point it's too late by then. You have to give them a chance to play. This is the trend in the NHL. With more and more younger players getting ice time. It's the penguins who are behind the 8 ball on it. Look at Benson in BUF, the pick ahead of Yager, he's already playing in BUF. More of his draft class will hit the ice next year. He should too.
It use to be different. Prospects train year long now, they practice year long now. It's not hockey of the 80s and 90s. These younger players can get in much sooner than you think.

if you think the PP is completely on him then thats what you think, but the much more likely scenario is that its more of a combination of the 3, and once again we can say whatever we want about sully, but hes not going anywhere. i mean at some point you have to look at the players, some of them (EK and geno) are consistently making boneheaded decisions on the PP. and again the predates reirdan thing, it really just doesnt the PP before reirdan was finishing way higher on average then after. apart from the season sully was brought in the middle of, the pp was ranked top 5 until the year before reirdan was brought in, that year they finished 4th, now from watching the games the biggest problem they have is zone entries, and again ill blame both reirdan and sully, its obvious reirdans strategy is not working, and sully should be stepping in fixing it (which i havent seen a change in since they started this year other then changing the players) which leads me to believe that either sully only wants to change the players, or doesnt want to step on reirdans toes with the PP. like i said all 3 are to blame.

and again yes outliers exist but the fact still remains the lower you go in the draft the more unlikely someone is to make the nhl as a regular, and its not linear, its exponential. so we dont "agree" about outliers we only agree they exist. the fact is that outliers are less and less likely as you go further and further down, so draft position 100% matters. and idk that yager "fell" to the pens actually seems like a reach from dubas as the mocks drafts ive seen had him lower then 14th. as for benson he had an outstanding pre season from my knowledge so it makes sense, but it still stands that thats the outlier, im not saying yager wont be in the nhl next year, im saying its unlikely and it could be detrimental to his development if hes brought up too early. im also not saying everyone needs to have 3 years in the ahl either. as for the qualities of the player im not that into it, but theres definitely more metrics that go into it and again the people drafting the players and ranking the draftees are alot more qualified then you or me, and i would agree speed is #1. and i dont mean to wait till the prospect is perfect to bring them up, but you walk a fine line when deciding when they should get their chance, too early and you could destroy their confidence and hurt their development, too late and you may have missed an opportunity for them to accelerate it and make an impact quicker.

if you are saying it's on the players, than isn't it the coaches job to remove them and rotate them out?
I mean in the end it's always back to the head coach. The buck stops there. I'm not saying the assistant coach might not have a part, but he is not the final say.
In the end it predates him anyway. The problems have been there. Sully has not fixed them. If anything he clashed with the only guy who could make the powerplay work mainly because he didn't listen to him. At some point there just has to be accountability. But there is none. It's his job to adjust and be flexible. He as you pointed out can't. Which is how this all started. He's not capable of fixing it. It doesn't even matter who is to blame at this point. The question is can he fix it. The answer to that has been no for years.

Younger players getting into the NHL earlier is not an outlier anymore. It's becoming the norm. I don't mean the 1st and 2nd pick either. Benson 13th i think. Next year there will be more from his class in there.
Way to worried about the whole confidence thing. All of that can be handled. If anything the thing that holds teams back is the waiver wire rules.
But PIT shouldn't worry about that. because the FA market sucks, it's hard for them to attract FA, and they aren't going to turn the team around with what they get on it. So they don't have nearly as much to lose as people think. You got 2 years probably till Crosby is like Jpaw on the 3rd line. The best thing they can do is transition to youth starting now. While Crosby can still skate on a line with them. In 2 years this team is done. There won't be another Malkin contract, he'll be washed. Crosby will be slowing down, and god knows what you will get on Letang. There is nothing to lose at this point. People always talk about being all in. Well that's the best all in they got. As the FA is both too expensive and lacking enough to make the team a contender.