2025-'26 NHL Season

Don Wassall said:

The Penguins were widely predicted to be a bottom feeder in contention for the first overall draft pick this summer, but instead they're right in the middle of the playoff hunt. GM Kyle Dubas is collecting draft picks after the team traded their top picks for many years in an effort to "win now" and as a result they have some young, talented and hungry players on the roster with more in the pipeline.

More importantly, new head coach Dan Muse has them playing with structure, discipline and accountability for the first time since Sullivan's first two years. The past half dozen years they regularly blew leads, had no discipline and took endless stupid penalties, were terrible on defense giving up unbelievable amounts of odd man breaks against, and overall were soft and had no heart. All that changed instantly when Sullivan finally was fired. Muse by the way was hired away from the Rangers, where he had been an assistant coach.

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The Penguins continue to be enjoyable to watch for the first time in a long time. Sunday they were down 4-1 to Boston in the third before tying the game and then winning in OT. Tonight they were down on the road 4-2 to first place Carolina late in the third before tying it and eventually losing in the shootout (which they are very poor at unfortunately with a 1-10 record). And they did this without Sidney Crosby, injured since the Olympics, and Evgeni Malkin, serving a five game suspension for an idiotic and dangerous head-high slash on an opponent.

During the Sullivan era the Penguins blew one third period lead after another, played with no discipline, gave up innumerable odd man breaks against, and regularly took idiotic penalties. I'll say it again, Mike Sullivan is quite simply a terrible NHL coach who has lived off striking lightning in a bottle in his first two seasons with a talented Penguins team ever since. Thank God he's finally gone, now leading the Rangers into bottom feeder status. The Penguins now play with heart and discipline whereas before they had neither. Great to see, fun to watch.

Auston Matthews out for the rest of the season with a torn medial collateral ligament in his left knee after colliding knee on knee with Radko Gudas of Anaheim. I haven't seen it and the Ducks claim it wasn't intentional, but Gudas has a reputation as one of the dirtiest players in the NHL.

Just watched the Senators defeat the Rangers 2-1 at MSG. The score was close only because the Rangers have a world class goalie in Igor Shesterkin as Ottawa outshot New York 33-9! And did it in Madison Square Garden! I've watched a ton of hockey games and may have seen some games that were more lopsided in shots than this one but none come to mind. The Rangers are exactly 100 years old this season and this putrid performance tied their all-time low for shots in a game.

I briefly checked some post-game comments on the Rangers' forum on Hockey's Future and there didn't seem to be much vituperation toward Mike Sullivan yet, who was signed to a lucrative contract after the Penguins finally moved on from him. Give it time, Rangers fans will come to despise this loser as much as Penguins fans did.

The Rangers are old, slow, soft and unmotivated, which is exactly how the Penguins were the past half dozen seasons until mercifully jettisoning Sullivan, while this year's Pittsburgh team, while not uber-talented, plays with determination, lots of heart, and a fair amount of skill and are finally fun to watch again.

Yes, I can't stand Sullivan and after he ruins the arch-rival Rangers I hope he's hired by the Flyers and does the same to them!