#16 – Luck Be a Ladd-y Tonight

[dekedangle_rpf_mod]

This is the sixteenth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

THE RULES

1. Mods retain the right to delete, freeze, and/or screen threads and comments.
2. Meme rules do not require warnings.
3. Respect flock. Do not repost or share information from private tumblrs, locked twitter accounts, flocked LJ posts, etc.
4. No linking fans to their real life identities.
5. No looks bashing or body shaming. This applies to players and people associated with those players and their clubs, as well as fellow fans.
6. No embedded music.
7. No embedded images.
8. No spamming the meme, whether through repeated comments or other means.
9. No discussing trolling, individual trolls, or their efforts.

Meme rules do not require spoiler cuts. However, this layout does allow for them. Any of the following tags will create a spoiler cut when closed: <div cut>, <span cut>, <font cut>, <font color="white">

If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to The Mod Post.

Threaded View
Flat View
Top-Level Comment View

Next post opens at 5,000 comments.

Comments

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess all I get from this general situation is that maybe the Pens don't feel like it's as dire as needing a public call-out yet. Otherwise I can't understand being so worried about correcting perceptions on a team leader holding himself and his teammates accountable (ie something seen as a good thing in sports).

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

Certainly seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

na

Yeah I don't get it either. It's pretty common in all of sports for guys to be like "we're scuffling, we're all off-kilter and feeling frustrated with each other, we need to turn it around," and usually it's seen as honest acknowledgement of what's obvious to everybody, not being a traitor to the room. You can only say variations of "we need to score points and stop losing" so many times.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

da
My take: the organization is touchy because they're in an awkward position wrt Johnston. The defense was expected to be mediocre, but they should be producing offensively. With so many players are underperforming this season, it can't be a slump, it's his system. Management has to be aware of that. But there's no way Johnston will be fired with their current record, even though it's due to Fleury's stellar play. They'd have little hope of attracting decent candidates if they did.

I figure Johnston will be fired only after the Pens miss the playoffs or get bounced in the first round. So if they're not planning to do anything about him now, they'll do "ignore what's behind the curtain" in the meantime.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

I think there are too many feeler articles out about firing Johnston for your last point to be true. The Pens are notorious for using the media to rile fans up against someone they want to get rid of one way or the other. It's similar to what they did to Neal before his trade. They tried to "motivate" Sutter by leaking that they wanted Jordan back and that all but sealed Sutter's fate. They made Despres seem like a drunken gambling pirate after he got traded.

MJ is a problem and they know it. They're letting the media know it. I don't think they're willing to burn this year to save face on that.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Yeah, I think the Pens management is acutely aware of how much time they have left in Sid/Geno/Flower/(Letang)'s prime, so hopefully they won't deliberately ignore a problem because of potential bad PR. The problem for me is that I'm not sure firing Johnston will help - who do they get to replace him? I don't think the players need a wakeup call, the last few really bad games should have done that. And Johnston's system seemed to work last year, albeit with different personnel on the back end, so they might be tempted to keep trying with it even if it is the problem. Personally I'm wishful they'd at least get a new powerplay coach, whatever Tocchet's doing clearly isn't working.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

So far as I know the "gambling" thing regarding Despres has all been based on crazied reading way too much into a single sentence that used the word bet or something like that and not something anyone really believes the Pens were trying to deliberately put out there. They did try to deliberately put out that he wasn't well liked in the locker room, but that's not the same thing.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/has-marc-andre-fleury-been-great-or-lucky/

Jerkshire just put out an article about how Fleury isn't playing as stellar as people think he is. I mean, I love Flower and I hate Jerkshire, but still. I don't get why fans on this meme hate Johnston's system. The point is winning games? What difference does it make how? Especially, if the idea is that this is a team that can get into the playoffs as-is, then indeed, why complain? Scoring is down league-wide. You have to have other ways to win these days.

There is no magic coach that can be brought in that's going to make the Pens win multiple cups and get them to the third round, you know?

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

God, why is real life so boring.

/starts on a magic coach AU.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'd have to know how stellar people think Fleury is playing before I'd be able to know whether I'd agree with Jerkshire. There are ways of measuring the difficulty of the saves a goalie makes, but I don't know off-hand where to look at those. The fact remains, though, that Fleury is making a heck of a lot of saves, and if he'd missed a few more of them the Pens would have many fewer points. That just doesn't seem disputable.

As to caring how a team wins, people care because they want to know whether the team has a good chance of continuing to win. If you get ugly or lucky wins while playing poorly, that success is not sustainable long-term against good teams - ie, the kind you generally meet in the playoffs.

I can't tell what you mean by your last line, though. Coaching does matter, and all other things being equal, over a large sample size a well-coached team is going to beat a poorly-coached team.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

The point is winning games? What difference does it make how?

Critics believe that winning badly isn't sustainable; eventually, playing badly will lead to losses.

Yeah, scoring is down league wide, but when we lose games 5-0 it's not because scoring is down overall.

I don't believe in a magic coach but I don't understand why we keep playing not-great defencemen over defencemen in WBS who've performed well at an NHL level. In also don't believe Sid and Phil are both coincidentally slumping.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

In also don't believe Sid and Phil are both coincidentally slumping.

Okay, so what HAVE those two been up to together that is affecting their on-ice play, HMMMM?

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

also don't believe Sid and Phil are both coincidentally slumping.

The whole damn team besides Fleury is slumping! Maybe Fleury's not having as great a year as everyone is saying, but he sure as shit is performing better than the rest of the Penguins.

Everyone is on pace to post career lows except maybe Beau Bennett. Every defenseman has played like shit except Brian Dumoulin.

"But they're winning? They might do well in the playoffs? There's no magic coach?" This is wrong? They're not winning? They won't make the playoffs if they keep going like this? They don't need a magic coach, just a competent one?

I don't even want a Cup, I want someone to hit 30 goals on this team.

Re: Articles, Media, ect.

[(Anonymous)]

Because as pointed out in the article, their scoring remains near the bottom of the league while Fleury posts a career high SV%. So ok, if he sustains that, they'll win games. That was last year's Habs, where they found Price in a history-making year could only carry an offensively underperforming team so far in the playoffs.