Crosby, Sullivan Have These Pens Back On Track

Picture by (__@Kessel)

The Penguins are hitting the final stretch in the NHL’s regular season and putting the league on blast heading to the playoffs. They're not only winning games, but scoring at high volumes. After hitting their watermark of 7 goals on Saturday afternoon against the Detroit Red Wings and fueling a remarkable comeback last night against the Buffalo Sabres, it's easy to see the depth in the Penguins lineup. But in my opinion, there are two guys that deserve a ton of consideration for awards in the offseason.

A case can be made for Sidney Crosby to win the Hart Trophy for the league MVP. It will be a stretch, but no team has seen this much of a surge in the standings be impacted by one player throughout the second half of the season. 90% of the fanbase began believing that Sidney Crosby had “hit a wall”. He was once lower than 200th in scoring in the entire NHL this season. He now leads the NHL in points since February 1st and is third overall chasing only Dallas Stars forward Jamie Benn and Chicago Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane.

Sid The Kid is one badass dude. Throughout his career, he's lugged two undrafted free agents (Chris Kunitz and Pascal Dupuis) with him on his line and made the serviceable NHL first liners. He's begun to find chemistry with Patric Hornqvist ever since Dupuis went down with injuries over the past two season. He's been dragged down and beaten by former head coach Mike Johnston. He's been amidst trade rumors (according to every “Penguins fan”). He's been targeted by many players and referees don't seem to ever notice. But Sid keeps chugging along. He kept his head down (at least Steckel wasn't there to blindside him) and continued forward knowing that this wasn't the end of Sidney Crosby.

This Sidney Crosby is a Hart Trophy finalist in my opinion but he couldn't have done it without a little help from head coach Mike Sullivan.

Look, I don't think Sullivan will be the Jack Adams award winner for “the MVP of coaching” to put it in simplest terms, but he is definitely deserving of being a finalist. Sullivan will probably come up short to Barry Trotz of the Washington Capitals. That's totally understandable seemings the Capitals have been lights out all season long.

It's a darn shame that “Sully” coming in and completely revitalizing a team and giving them new hope is probably still not going to be enough to gather him a Jack Adams award in the offseason. But that doesn't mean that Pittsburgh can't be appreciative of what he's done. If you compare the Penguins record between Sullivan and Johnston, you'll find a startling similarity in the wins and losses. What you will find with Sullivan is the consistency.

The Penguins never strung a long win streak together with Johnston at the helm. The Penguins recently had a six game winning streak snapped. You could argue that consistency isn't losing games to teams like Calgary or New Jersey, but every team is going to hit that rough game where nothing clicks and the Pens did that against these two teams.

If you've watched the Penguins in recent weeks, you've seen them consistently blowing out other teams and making remarkable comebacks, which is something nobody thought possible a mere two months ago.

A Sullivan/Crosby led Penguins team has proven it can do damage. It's proven that there is accountability for all players that Sullivan commands. It's proven Crosby has done nothing but make the players around him reliable again. And even when Crosby gets shutout on a given night, the Penguins are still deep enough to win hockey games and that's evident recently. Will they be able to sustain this through the spring? Only time will tell that, but it will be time well spent awaiting the answer.

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