While every NHL season begins with Stanley Cup hopes, the Pittsburgh Penguins are about as "NHL Championship-or-bust" as any team in the league thanks to their overall talent level and the disappointment of a string of seasons that ended well short of expectations. Reports from early in the season suggested that captain and star center Sidney Crosby was struggling with the weight of "organizational pressure" and the looming ownership issues were said to likely play a part in the focus on winning a Cup as quickly as possible.
Now, with the Pens playing better of late and sitting at 10-5-0 and third in the Metropolitan division after winning seven of their last 8 games, the immediate pressure has lessened, right?
Wrong.
The Penguins and GM Jim Rutherford, hell-bent on winning the second Cup of Crosby's career, have their sights set on upgrading what they see as their main deficiency and greatest impediment to a deep postseason run - their defense.
Per a report from TSN's Darren Dreger, appearing on Toronto's TSN 1050, Rutherford and Co. are focused on the addition of a top-4 defenseman, something he expects the franchise to pull off sometime between now and the NHL trade deadline in Feb.
"Jim Rutherford took the job in Pittsburgh as general manager because he believed and promised - he believed that he could win a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh and he could help that organization get back to the top very, very quickly," Dreger said, via Today's Slap Shot. "And he's made some bold moves. I don't think he's done yet. When you look around the league at all the teams that are in the market for an upgrade defensively, well Pittsburgh is near the top of that list. He will find a way to acquire a top-4 defenseman between now and the end of February, the trade deadline."
The Penguins are currently 22n d in the league in shots allowed per game, with goalie Marc-Andre Fleury seeing about 30.8 pucks every night. Thanks to Fleury's phenomenal performance this season - through 13 games he has a .931 save percentage and a 2.01 goals against average - the Pens are allowing just 2.07 goals per game, the fourth-best mark in the NHL.
This does not seem a sustainable situation.
Ian Cole, seeing first-pairing minutes alongside Kris Letang, has struggled with consistency. He has one point in 14 games and is a minus-9. He leads the team in blocked shots, with 41, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes that Cole is or should be a top-pairing blueliner.
Brian Dumoulin, part of the second-pairing with Ben Lovejoy, is still struggling to find his game - assuming he can. Lovejoy is a limited veteran and the third-pairing of Olli Maatta and Rob Scuderi doesn't offer much more, though there does seem to be hope that Maatta will round into form as he continues his return from a lost season last year.
So, it makes sense that Rutherford wants to upgrade the Pens defense. Can he do it? And can Fleury continue to make up for defensive deficiencies in the interim?
They're difficult questions to answer, and in the end, if the Pens want to make another deep run, Rutherford will likely be forced to pay handsomely for whatever blueline upgrades become available.
