The Departed - Michel Therrien - 2-17-09

from the beginning of the season, when they were blowing 2- and 3-goal leads to the Rangers and Caps, it seemed like this team was just lacking focus.  the last 2 1/2 months have pretty much confirmed entirely that a change was in order.

I miss his style, I really wish things had worked out for HCMT. He ended up with a pretty nice payday though, $3 million for 57 games behind the bench. That translates to $52,631.58 per game!

The Ottawa Sun reports that the Pens have opened negotiations with Sykora on a contract extension.

dig the Therrien-esque use of singular:

      "Therrien may not have been universally loved by his player..."

Association football is up there with hockey when it comes to coach-chewing.

Seth - You're dead on - the team simply outgrew him.   I think we all knew it would happen someday - the kids have grown up (at least some have a little) and the FHTMT's methods weren't going to work once most of the Pens were beyond their three-year entry level contracts.    It seems to me MT is a great Major Junior or AHL coach, and a good NHL coach for a young team.   Not a bad niche to be in.

Shero's a genius! That new contract for MT after last year was brilliant!

some where along the way FHCMT lost this team.....I am not sure how and I am not sure why.  But let's be clear, FHCMT was not responsible for Hossa betraying the Pens.  He was not responsible for the dreck that was signed to contracts in the wake of the Hossa departure.  And he was not reponsible for taking the two top defensmen, the #1 goalie, and others out of the lineup due to injuries.  Even the great Scottie Bowman would have been impacted by all of that.

Try Detroit without Datsuk, Zetterberg and Lidstrom for a while and see how they hold up.  

While I love that FHCMT clip my only wish was that he held a similar press conference back in December 2008 - several of today's players are rather "Soff"

Not all is negative:

1. We're heading towards a top-15 draft pick. At least we didn't give up this year's pick in the Hossa deal.

2. We'll hopefully have a shot at Todd Richards next season.

3. Satan and his $3.5 million salary are off the books in a couple months.

4. New arena is coming.

I agree that MT came around at a good time and had a good run but his message and tactics appear to have been short term.

I also think this team just with Crosby, Malkin and a few others has enough talent to at least be top 8 in the conference.   Other than Ovechkin, Semin, and Backstrom who can name another Capital forward.   Who can name more than 4 forwards from Florida or Carolina?    Lines have to be established and the role players need to know their roles.

I hope that the rumor on another website about a trade almost happening with Toronto giving Staal for Antropov was as far from true as possible.   If not, then I have grave concerns about Shero.

I love this!

So MT was responsible for the Great Success of the Pen's, but he escapes responsibility for their failures since Hossa was not resigned.

Well that makes perfect sense. So despite having the # 1 and # 2 scorers in the league, one of the top goalies and a fairly solid supporting cast (remember last season when Tyler Kennedy and Max Talbot were wonderful?) and certainly way more talent than he had at his disposal say in the 06/07 season he cannot do as well?

Hossa decided on his own to go to Detroit. That is not Shero's fault - remember the salary cap?

Malone signed for waaaaay more than he is worth. Can't pin that on Shero either.

Ruutu, if any of you care to recall was a healthy scratch last season and probably averaged less than 10 minutes per game.

Roberts, whose doo-doo clearly stinketh not in these parts was on the IR here most of last season and has been on the IR in TB most of this season, so his grit would essentially be in a whirlpool for $2 million per year.

This team outgrew Rodney Dangerfield - period. He has consistently been out-coached on the ice (see all the too many men penalties and poor match ups - Boucher playing over Goligoski, anyone?).

If y'all are going to give him credit for how far this team went then you have to give him credit for how far this team hasn't gone.

And that is why he is (finally) gone.

Hey, that SmartCar passes me on the way home from work everyday! Slow down!

@ Bones: There is more than one like it in the neighborhood! They aren't that fast - at least that is what I will be telling the police when the time comes...

I'm pretty sure it's not you. Unless you commute to and from Minneapolis every day!

You betcha that wouldn't be me then!

@ Purple Re: Caps forwards

Well, there's Laich, Clark, Steckel, that goon Brashear (discounted for these purposes I suppose), Nylander, Kozlov, Fedorov, Fehr....Ok So my best buddy is a Caps fan and I live down here in Caps country..haha. But honestly, I see your point. I've said it all year, we have the talent to be in the top-8 in the East (and really, to hang with MOST teams in the whole NHL in the playoffs, but I digress). Right now, it's a young team, off a stanley cup run, in a bit of a rut. I expected this--not so drastic--but i had concerns. The key will be to stay the course and be patient. We can add a quality player in the draft and look towards a (still) bright future.

I travelled 3500 miles (all the way from the UK) to witness the Toronto debacle.

And i've never seen such a gutless collapse in my life (against a very poor team as well).

The best hope of a quick fix in time to save the season was to fire Therrien - he had to go.

I have watched every Pens game this year, so I know how maddeningly inconsistent they've been. Here is my question though: Doesn't back-to-back 100+ point seasons, a Division Title and SCF appearance buy a coach a little good will?

I think I read it here at EN a few weeks ago that with the Therrien's Pens teams have always closed strong. That's what bothers me the most...the first hiccup Therrien has, he's out of the door.

As for some players not liking Therrien and him having public feuds with players, give me a break! These players make tons of money but the bottom line is that the head coach is still their boss. How many players liked Scotty Bowman? The freaking '92 team to a man hated him - but they knuckled up and won a Stanley Cup, almost to spite him. I'm disappointed that these core players didn't adopt the same attitude.  

Shero better not make a stupid trade and he'd better have a damn good replacement in mind otherwise his can will be in the unemployment line next.

@lemieux67: indeed. i can count 4 players, minus gonch who wasn't here, that have played every game like they care and with their full effort. and no. sidney is not among them.

@purplemoose: those teams are more like last years pens team, in that they play TOGETHER. they play HARD, and for a FULL game. they don't set back and wait for malkin and fleury to bail them out. you know. like a PROFESSIONAL would do.

@josepagan: could you be any more naive or wrong? shero was dilluded enough to think hossa was his for the asking. he did NOT negotiate with ryan malone. ryan malone himself is on record as saying so. and more importantly as having said he would have taken less money to stay here. which makes the salary tampa gave him ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT. he would have been able to have been signed for LESS. shero, with his self assured idiocy, decided hossa was his and had no cap room for malone. the problem of course is that he did NOT have hossa. when he found out, malone was already gone. again, tampa's $$$ would have been a lot LOWER for the pens. they have a saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch, and another saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket. ray ray should have been a farmer or at least paid attention to those two sayings. when hossa bailed (as nearly everyone knew he was going to. everybody but the inept GM that is.) sherp had NO backup plan. he was left scraping the bottom of the barrel. and good for him. i hope they miss the playoffs and he gets his inept stooge of self fired for blatant incompetance. they fired craig patrick after on miserable offseason (the 4 pre-lockout when managment to him to sell his talent for dollar bills above talent doesn't count). hopefully they do the same. not only has shero (hopefully) cost them the playoffs with his stupidity, but add another $3 million for therrien to stay home and watch his kids and shero should be ran out on the first available rail.

I agree with lots that has been said here.  I particularly enjoyed MT, though maybe it was because he was able to hold players accountable and actually turn the team around after so many bad/miserable seasons.

That said, I agree that it felt like either the team outgrew him or the team just stopped listening to him.  I remember some talk about whether Orpik would resign or not based on how he disliked MT and I thought that was not a positive sign.  I also felt that after blowing the 3-0 lead against Nashville MT would be fired within the week, I guess it just took a month.  The team has just been looking somewhat off, and not just on defense, but the power play and so on.

There really is no question that although the team is not playing as well as last year, there is more than enough talent in this team to be a top 8 team.  Let's just hope that the firing makes the guys play together and with some fire.

Go Pens!

I think it's unanimous: Therrien should have been an "interim" coach. He was obviously effective at first and corrected a lot of what was missing, but the signs were there that he was not going to be able to continue  that with a more mature team.

It's too bad Shero couldn't see the obvious.

@ megawheel: Me, naive? Dense maybe, but not naive. Certainly not naive enough to accept what Ryan Malone may or may not have said in order to maintain his own good image here. I find it bordering on naive to believe that knowing Malone would have accepted less Shero would not have tried to sign him. Certainly he would have sounded out his agent first. I think Malone is just trying to run a little PR campaign to have everyone think nice thoughts about him and his decision to line his pockets - see Young, Warren as a previous example.

As has been pointed out, there IS a salary cap, a fine point that seems to have been missed by many.Shero offered Hossa almost exactly the same cash (by some accounts more) than Hossa took from Detroit. What else was Shero supposed to do?

No offense, but the problem for some folks is that you only discovered hockey when Crosby was drafted or prior to that, the Cup years.

For myself, I have seen coaches come and go. As against firing Bowman as I was just because Mario and Company didn't like him back in the days when the Inmates ran the Asylum, I am for moving MT along. He reached his level of incompetence here and was doing things on the bench I haven't seen since the late lamented Perre Creamer was back there.

The coach has to work with the players he has. Yes, Satan hasn't worked out, but essentially this is the same team that went to the Finals and the same team that got most of their 100 points without M Hossa, who, as I recall only showed up last February at the deadline.

MT was unable to take this same group with the top 2 scorers in the league and crack the playoff eligible teams. He has not performed and is paying the consequences. Just like some of the players will and just like Shero ultimately will if he brings in the wrong coach and fails to find a better crop of FA's.

@megawheel

"The freaking '92 team to a man hated him - but they knuckled up and won a Stanley Cup, almost to spite him"

You seem to be forgetting that he was fired because the players and management both hated him for not relocating to Pittsburgh and having an absurdly inconsistent practice schedule.

As far as the drivel you're writing about Malone goes, if it was at all possible to resign Malone, Shero would have done it.  Malone wanted to stay and acknowledged himself at the -time of the signing- that their futures would not line up financially.  Also every beat writer and person close to the Penguins agreed: He outplayed what the Penguins would be able to afford to pay and wasn't going to take a home town discount.

Shero's only blunders were having no backup plan for the Hossa deal and no suitable replacement for Conklin (who could not be kept due to wanting more playing time, which he wasn't going to get here).  Other than that he's signed the teams core to long-term, highly cap friendly salaries, and has filled every hole this team has needed in the past.  If the Penguins even had 1 top-flight wings, it would add instant depth.

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