Rutherford's End-of-Season Media Availability Transcript
By
Michelle Crechiolo
Penguins Team Reporter
I wanted to ask about your coaching staff and the job that you feel like they did over the course of the season, including the playoffs. Do you plan on that staff returning completely intact next season?
We had a good regular season and dealt with some adversity and were able to get through that. You have to look at that and give credit in the right places. I also have to review what's happened here at the end of the last two seasons. There's been a pattern in both seasons. You go back to the Islanders series, and their goaltending was great. I thought we deserved to win the first two games, but then we started to fizzle out and we didn't have that same determination as we were getting closed out. The same thing happened in the Montreal series. They're a good team. They're better than their 80 points in the regular season. Their goalie (Carey Price) was great. He's the best in the game when he's on his A game, and he was. The first two games we played well and probably deserved to win Game 1. But we didn't. And my concern is when things don't go our way, we start to fizzle out. We don't have that same drive and determination that we should have and that we need to have. Based on that, I'm looking at everything now. I wish I could give you better answers. It's been a short period of time. I continue to ask questions and look at different things. If anything changes, I'll let you know.
I'm just curious whether your assessment of your goaltenders, Matt Murray and Tristan Jarry, has changed any within the past two weeks. And what is the future for those two players? They are both restricted free agents.
Well, it's going to be difficult to keep both. Everybody understands that based on the cap. My assessment of their year is that Tristan had an exceptionally good first half, made the All-Star Team. And then Matt was the better goalie in the second half. My assessment of our goaltending in the playoffs is that our goalies were good. I can't point the finger at the goalies. The problem that we had is that the goalie at the other end was great. That makes a difference.
With the way things stand right now, what do you see as your team's most pressing personnel needs among on-the-ice people?
I think we have to be careful as to how we approach this, because we still feel strong with the group of players, especially our core players. This could be a year where we try to get younger, but in a way that we feel we can still win - bringing that new, young energy in. We're going to have to make some changes because of the cap. We're not going to be re-signing all our players. We're not going to be able to even if we wanted to. I think a change in that area, (because) we get to certain points in playoff series and we're not the same team. We don't have that same drive as we get closer to elimination. It was so disappointing in Game 4 to see where we were at. You're waiting for the desperation from the drop of the puck, and it didn't come in the first period. It didn't come in the second period. It was even worse in the third period. There's something wrong if you don't have that drive to win at that point in the series. I don't know, did some of the players feel that they didn't want to put in the extra work to stay in the bubble longer and prefer to be with their families? No one knows the answer to all those things. But it's very disappointing, and changes need to be made. I think going younger, where guys are eager to prove themselves to get to a certain point in their career, but doing it cautiously so we can transition on the fly and still be a contending team.
You just mentioned that lack of desperation. (Mike Sullivan) has always praised the leadership group as being part of the reason you guys are successful. Is there concerns about that leadership in the room when you don't see that drive in those times when you absolutely need it?
(Sidney Crosby)'s leadership never changes and his approach never changes. He's the captain of our team. So to answer that directly, I have no concerns there. I think we do need a little more out of some of the other guys. Are they in a position to still give that leadership, whether it's lead by example on the ice or in the room verbally, or do we need some of the other guys to step up and do more? When you're doing that with that leadership, it's about what I just talked about. Maybe it's better to have those younger, more eager guys, that are just so happy to be here and happy to come to the rink for practice every day. That's part of what I'm trying to weigh now.
Last offseason at about this point, you declined to say publicly whether Evgeni Malkin or Kris Letang would be untouchable. I'm curious now a year later, are you planning to move forward with this core? Or if you get a trade that you like, are you open to the possibility of moving one of those two players?
I plan to move forward with the core. These are good players. They still have good hockey left in them. I always have to say, if some amazing trade comes along that makes sense for the Penguins now and in the future, you have to look at it, but I will not be actively trying to trade our core players.
Outside, there was a lot of criticism about that third defensive pair of Justin Schultz and Jack Johnson throughout the series. I was just wondering what you saw from them when they were on the ice.
Well, they could certainly be better. I know everybody picks on Jack and they have for a long time, but I think in that pairing, that Justin Schultz had a lot more to give. It wasn't there. He missed some time during the season. I think for the guys that missed extra time during the season, once the puck was dropped at a higher pace compared to what we were doing in practice, it became a little more difficult for them. That, for me, was a little bit of a problem on that third pairing.
If you look more big picture at the season, it seems like there was something special happening in December and January, when you put together such a nice record without Sidney Crosby. If you were to try and identify it, where do you feel like things started to unravel and can you pinpoint some reasons why that might have happened?
When we have one of our top players out, whether it's Sid or whether it's Geno, we play the game a different way. We play a team game and really play it more the right way. That's not saying anything about how they play. Don't take that the wrong way. But we realize when one of those really top players comes out of our lineup, we don't have the luxury of scoring a goal when we really need to. We don't have those guys to break the game open. So we have to tighten it down. Over the years since I've been here, that seems to be what happens. But as far as things unraveling, we had a little losing streak before the break and then we started to come out of it. It was natural that you're going to have a little losing streak. Things unraveled after Game 2, or the second period of Game 3, when things didn't go our way. Montreal played with more determination and wanted it more, and we went the other way. That's where it unraveled, and that's where it's very puzzling, when you get to the most critical time of a series or the season, that a team can't find that determination. And it's happened two years in a row. If it only happened this year, we'd say it's an oddity and it was because this was a team that couldn't adjust to playing in August and all those things. You can make all the excuses you want. But you can't make those excuses when it happens two years in a row.
Have you spoken with anybody from ownership since the season ended and do you feel, based on those conversations, that they still want you to be in win-now mode the way you have been for the past decade or so as an organization?
I had a couple of conversations with the owners as I always do at this point of the year and as I do periodically during the season. I'm very fortunate to work with these guys, who understand how this works and have very high standards. Their standards have not changed, as mine have not changed. We're here to be a contending team and win a Cup. That being said, we recognize that window starts to get smaller and smaller, and it's getting to that point. But we also recognize that it's still open and it's still doable.
What would you pinpoint as the main challenge you have moving forward here?
That's a tough one to answer because there's more than one. There's a few challenges here. Aside from change in the makeup of things - different ideas, different approach, younger, determined players - it's probably fixing the power play. Usually when you're trying to fix the power play, you're searching and you're saying, we've got to go out and find a player or two. We've got enough guys on the power play that can be successful. It's so frustrating to watch us go time and time again and not get good scoring chances, let alone goals, and then at a critical time of the season we had a 5-on-3 for a minute-and-a-half and don't get really any good chances. And man, you don't have to be around hockey long to watch the group of guys that we have on the ice and just be puzzled as to why that can't happen. There's a number of things that we have to try to change. Last year, at this time, I said the same thing. We made some changes that really helped our team, like adding (Brandon) Tanev and adding that energy. But we're going to have to make some more changes.
