Rozner: Great coaching helped Penguins survive attrition
Some baseball teams call up a player and immediately place him in the lineup.
After all, the guy's been a star at every level - and played every day - since Little League, so it doesn't make much sense to bring him up to play once a week.
And some hockey teams call up players and turn scoring stars into fourth liners, or place them on checking lines, the proverbial racehorse turned plow horse.
And then there are other teams that bring in fast players with skill and tell them to go play fast and display their skill.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are such a team.
They put players in the lineup instead of making them prove their worth before getting a chance to play on a top line. Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan sticks them right in with top players and offers them the opportunity to prove they can't do it.
It makes sense.
It's a different kind of thinking and it's changing the NHL.
In a cap era when young players must contribute and contribute quickly, the Penguins have recognized that there's a better way, especially since young players today do not respond to antiquated methods.
These guys have been coddled and catered to, and they're agents have already told them that entry-level deals don't last forever.
So Pittsburgh brings in Jake Guentzel and plays him off the draw with Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin.
They say, in essence, you've been a goal scorer your entire life. You've been a top-line player your entire life. You've been a skill guy your entire life. Go play on the top line, display your skill and score goals.
It makes sense.
The game is changing and coaches are adapting, understanding that dictatorships are not the way of the future.
Sullivan identified the skills of players like Guentzel, Conor Sheary and Bryan Rust and put them in a spot to succeed.
They gave roles to role players - gave them responsibility like the penalty kill - and had them invest in those roles so Crosby and Malkin didn't have to take on more responsibility.
The Penguins didn't have a No. 1 defenseman and probably not a No. 2, but they rolled six defensemen and instead of constantly matching up or pulling guys against certain forwards, they allowed the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Some very average defensemen gained confidence as the staff displayed confidence in them, and while Nashville - which had a far superior top four - continued to play four, it was clear that the Preds' defense was suffering by the end of two months of brutal playoff hockey.
It doesn't mean there's been a shift in the best way to win in the postseason. You would still rather have great defensemen than average ones.
If you play in your own end you will lose hockey games, and when the Pens got caught running around in their own, they did lose hockey games.
But the Penguins got great goaltending from a pair of netminders, got extraordinary play from Crosby, and their best forwards were always back helping out the defense, which did not try play outside their limitations.
Not one of them pretended to be Kris Letang.
They also weren't afraid to play against the other teams' best players because they didn't fear getting benched if they made a mistake, much the same way the coaches played their young forwards on top lines and gave the kids some rope.
Pittsburgh did not reinvent the wheel in winning back-to-back titles, but they did show confidence in young players, instilling in those players the belief that they were good enough to win.
In today's NHL, it makes sense.
brozner@dailyherald.com
• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM and follow him @BarryRozner on Twitter.