For Jim Rutherford, Penguins still have winning culture, even if without results

New Year’s was fairly uneventful for Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford.

He quietly rang in 2021 without a party, celebration or company in his Pittsburgh-area home.

Such is life for a lot of people in the midst of a pandemic.

Then again, there hasn’t been a lot to rejoice for the Penguins, at least over the past three seasons.

After winning their second consecutive Stanley Cup championship in 2017, the Penguins have experienced a steady decline from that rarefied height.

Following their second-round loss to the rival Washington Capitals in 2018, they were swept from the first round of the 2019 playoffs by the New York Islanders, then upset in stunning fashion by the Montreal Canadiens this past summer during a preliminary-round matchup.

For an organization with an oft-stated goal of winning the Stanley Cup every season, the results have been woefully unacceptable.

Has the overriding message as well as the details of that pursuit become passe? Does it need to be stressed to a greater degree or conveyed in a different fashion?

Not for Rutherford.

“As long as the Penguins have the core players that they have, that’s the goal,” Rutherford said in a phone interview with the Tribune-Review on Friday, with the team set to open training camp Sunday at PPG Paints Arena. “The players that won the (franchise’s three most recent Stanley Cup titles) of course are (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang). And then some of our other core players like (Brian Dumoulin), they know what it takes to win.”

Knowing how to win and actually winning are two different things, however. And the Penguins haven’t done enough of the latter the past three seasons.

As a result, there was a purge of sorts of several key components from their championship squads of 2016 and ’17, including players such as Matt Murray, Patric Hornqvist and Justin Schultz. Also jettisoned were several off-ice staffers such as assistant coaches Sergei Gonchar, Jacques Martin and even assistant general manager Jason Karmanos.

Even with the setbacks of the three previous seasons and the personnel changes of the past four months, Rutherford seems satisfied that the group he has assembled for the 2020-21 season has a firm grasp of what is expected.

“When we talk to players about coming to Pittsburgh, and they’re making that decision, most of the players that come to Pittsburgh say we want to come and play in that culture and have a chance to win a (championship),” Rutherford said. “For the most part, they understand that.”

Rutherford touched base on a number of other subjects about the unique nature of the upcoming regular season, which will be limited to 56 games against divisional opponents because of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Most of the contests will be played in two-game “series” in the same city similar to an MLB schedule. For instance, the Penguins open their season with road games against the rival Philadelphia Flyers on Jan. 13 and 15, then host the Capitals on Jan. 17 and 19.

“It will impact things,” Rutherford said. “You have to wait until it plays out. If you have key injuries playing head-to-head, that can affect that two-game series. I understand why we’re doing it. It makes sense why the league is doing it that way. It can have an impact but not a whole lot different than some years. … But it’s different. It works in baseball and we’ll make it work here. You just hope you don’t have those key injuries when you get into one of those series where you might be fighting with that team for a playoff spot.”

• With the NHL mandating each team carry taxi squads of four to six reserve players in part because of the potential for potential coronavirus infections, in-season player movements, such as trades or waiver claims, are bound to be different.

“It will impact our decisions,” said Rutherford, who is no stranger to swinging a major transaction during a season. “We’ll have to look at it, if we make a trade, is it a trade that makes us better for now, helps us now and how do we do without that player for a quarantine period where the player is quarantining prior to being able to join the team? There will be more thought going into it. We’ll look at our schedule and consider who we’re playing, who our depth guys are that are ready to go into play, are they ready to go in and have game action and all that stuff. So there will be more thought going into it.”

Rutherford said he does not see any potential logistical issues in possible trades with Canadian teams while the U.S.-Canada border remains closed to what is deemed nonessential travel.

• The inclusion of veteran forward Jordan Nolan on the training camp roster raised some eyebrows given that Nolan, a bottom-six forechecking winger who occasionally will drop the gloves, doesn’t exactly seem to fit the Penguins’ mold based on speed and skill.

Ever since Rutherford took over as general manager in 2014, the Penguins have had on-again, off-again relationships with players who offer similar attributes to Nolan such as Steve Downie, Tom Sestito and Ryan Reaves.

Nolan will participate in training camp as a nonroster invitee vying for an NHL contract. He signed an American Hockey League (AHL) deal with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Dec. 6.

How would a player with his skillset, who did not play in the NHL last season, fit into this lineup?

“That’s what we have to make a decision on,” Rutherford said. “Are we plugging that person into the lineup to bring a certain element, or are we continuing to build our team on speed? The answer to that is that possibly the player gets plugged in for certain teams and not for other teams.”

Games against physical opponents such as the Capitals or Islanders certainly would appear to be where Nolan would be useful.

But he’s hardly guaranteed to make the roster.

“We’ve talked about getting him before,” Rutherford said. “So I’m pretty familiar with the player and the person. The question is going to be, are we going to be able to really evaluate this player in a short amount of time without playing (preseason) games? That’s going to be the question. We might not be able to do that just coming out of camp. And of course, the American Hockey League doesn’t start for a few weeks later. It won’t be as easy as it would be under normal training camp circumstances, but we’ll do our best to see what we’ve got there.”

• With the AHL season not scheduled to start until Feb. 5, Rutherford said the organization does not plan to bring most of their European prospects who are under NHL contract but loaned to teams on that continent, such as forward Kasper Bjorkqvist or defenseman Niclas Almari, to North America until their European teams’ seasons have been completed.

Most leagues in Europe have been playing since the early fall and typically conclude by mid-spring.

“We plan on leaving them there,” Rutherford said. “We feel the development for them is very good there. They’ve been playing, and we’ll leave them there until the end of that season.”

Follow the Penguins all season long.