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The Decade That Was:
Penguins
Dec. 23, 2019
The stench of the Game 7 meltdown against Montreal was gone, forever trapped in the old Igloo, by the time this Penguins decade dawned. Which, for our purposes, was the start of the 2010-11 season.
Once Mario Lemieux baptized the new arena's ice surface with water from the old arena's ice surface, the 2010s opened wide with possibility. Another Cup seemed imminent. A dynasty seemed possible. New and greater feats from Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were all but guaranteed.
Crosby was off to a phenomenal start in his age 23 season, and if you knew anything about age 23 seasons, you knew he might never be as potent again. Lemieux had 199 points at age 23, 31 more than in any other year. Jaromir Jagr had 149, by 22 his all-time best, and Wayne Gretzky had 205 for a career-best 2.77 ppg (he missed eight games).
Crosby was headed for about 60 goals and 130 points — a total we still haven't seen since Mario notched 166 in the mid-1990s. The Penguins were flying high in their new digs.
And then it all disappeared, beginning with a blind-side hit on a rainy night at Heinz Field. Concussion issues robbed Crosby of a chunk of his prime. Kris Letang and Malkin have missed even more time than Crosby.
The team kept winning — its 64.8% winning percentage in the 2010s is easily the best in a decade in franchise history — but repeated playoff failures prompted a GM change, two coaching changes and a pervasive sense of doom.
And then it all reappeared, just as suddenly as it had vanished. Jim Rutherford boldly revamped the roster. Mike Sullivan revived the stars. Crosby lit the path to back-to-back championships, the Penguins becoming the first team in 19 years to accomplish that feat.
Nobody could have predicted the dramatic twists — who saw Phil Kessel comin'? — but the jagged road only made the Cup runs sweeter.
The Penguins, indisputably, are Pittsburgh's Team of the Decade.
A closer look at the 2010s ...
Click a category below.
At one point during the presentation, I think I had figured out that Sid was getting a Ferrari for Christmas, had been forced off a roller coaster due to a perfect storm, and that the remedy for vestibular perception deficit was generally a matter of making sure all the cows are in the barn. Bottom line though — Sid will be fine. As to the question of when, well, right here we'll quote Dr. Michael Collins, director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program.
"No earthly idea."
Thanks, Mickey.
— Gene Collier, Sept. 8, 2011
I believe Phil Kessel will be traded. It might not happen this week or this month or even this offseason. But I believe it will happen sooner rather than later. Tocchet's departure could hasten the process. It was clear in June, by the end of the Penguins' second consecutive Stanley Cup run, that the organization wasn't thrilled with Kessel. ... My belief is Evgeni Malkin wasn't thrilled to play on the same line with Kessel. And Sidney Crosby? Sullivan acknowledged Crosby and Kessel have no chemistry together. None.
— Ron Cook, July 12, 2017
Before we finish, we really should do the Capitals' autopsy (although if that means finding Daniel Winnik's hands, we're going to be here for a while). At around 10:40 p.m., I spotted Capitals players somberly entering a room for a postgame gathering. Only 48 hours earlier, after their Game 6 win, they were whooping it up with a series of massive team cheers that could be heard in the hallway. You'd have thought they won the Cup.
In honor of Verizon, I ask: Can you hear them now?
— Joe Starkey, May 11, 2017
"How's your breath?"
— Pierre McGuire to Phil Kessel after playoff game in Tampa
"Not good, eh?"
— Kessel, misunderstanding the awkward question, which was meant to gauge Kessel's conditioning
"Hockey is a tough, physical game, and it always should be. But what happened Friday night on Long Island wasn't hockey. It was a travesty. It was painful to watch the game I love turn into a sideshow like that."
— Mario Lemieux, after Penguins-Islanders debacle
"Has this team been together too long? When do you have to make those changes? The players are doing everything they can to tell me now's the time."
— Jim Rutherford, early in 2018-19 season
"Phil Kessel is a Stanley Cup champion."
— Paul Steigerwald at 2016 Cup parade, a phrase that caught on quickly.
"I didn't even know I hit him."
— David Steckel, straining credulity after blindside head shot on Sidney Crosby at Winter Classic
"I know him pretty well, and he's always been a pretty good friend of mine"
— Brooks Orpik on Shawn Thornton after Thornton's sucker punch knocked Orpik unconscious and sent him off the ice on a stretcher
"It's one of the most arrogant organizations in the league. They whine about this stuff all the time, and look what happens. It's ridiculous. But they'll whine about something else over there, won't they, starting with their two [expletive] stars."
— John Tortorella
""For some reason, lots of people don't like Phil Kessel. He's only the best player Toronto had for eight years. He got the blame for everything, which is very unfair."
— Jim Rutherford
"Yes," Arron Asham says, "I'm sure people do remember that."
They remember it, all right. It's not often you see a punch delivered as sharply and grotesquely as the right cross Asham put on Capitals rookie Jay Beagle the night of Oct. 13, 2011, at Consol Energy Center.
Beagle was barking at Kris Letang. Asham noticed. He told the kid to cool it.
"I said, ‘If you do that again, we're going to have to fight,' " Asham recalls. "He wanted to go right there. I was like, ‘Fine.' Unfortunately, he got hurt."
The blow knocked Beagle senseless. Asham then made two gestures he would regret, mimicking pro wrestler CM Punk's "Go to Sleep" act. The Capitals went crazy. Asham apologized.
"Dumb on my part," he says. "But that's what happens when games get heated."
Asham, 41, never played a game in which he wasn't heated. The self-described "fourth-line plug" logged 118 games here and 789 overall for five teams. Fans and teammates valued his tenacity and team-first attitude.
He was more than a fighter, too, finishing with 94 goals and 208 points to go with 1,004 penalty minutes. He led the Penguins in playoff goals (three) the year Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin missed the Tampa series and scored a Game 7 clincher against Washington while playing for the Rangers.
Asham retired in 2014 and settled in Long Island, where he coaches New York Islanders-affiliated youth teams. He stays busy tracking his four children — daughters Azilyn and Oceane and sons Dexter and Cruzhis. Oceane plays prep-school hockey in Manitoba, where Asham grew up and where he still works with Indigenous youth.
His career highlight was playing for Philadelphia in the 2010 Stanley Cup final, though he cherishes his time in Pittsburgh.
"Fell in love with the city," he says. "Loved the people."
The feeling was mutual.
— Joe Starkey
Ten years is a long time. Ten years ago, the Penguins were still playing at Mellon Arena. Brooks Orpik hadn't yet turned 30. Alexei Ponikarovsky was here.
Ten years from now?
God only knows, but two large questions loom as we enter the 2020s: How long will Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin play, and will the hockey gods gift this franchise with yet another generational superstar? The Penguins have had at least one of those every year since 1984.
It's easier to picture a 42-year-old Crosby playing in 2029-30 than it is a 43-year-old Malkin, but the concept of either man (weren't they mere children 10 minutes ago?) being that old positively assaults the senses.
Oh, and John Marino will be 32.
Ten years is a long time.
— Joe Starkey
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