Column: Colossal change needed? Be serious

Maxim Lapierre and Marc-Andre Fleury react after the Rangers score in overtime Wednesday. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

Jim Rutherford isn’t getting fired. Nor is he quitting, barring something unforeseen.

I’ve been told that definitively, right from the Penguins’ brass.

Mike Johnston isn’t getting fired, either.

Heard that tonight.

Neither Sidney Crosby nor Evgeni Malkin is going anywhere.

That comes from the very, very top.

You know, when it comes to the Penguins, maybe the most simultaneously star-laded and starcrossed franchise in professional sports, the solutions that tend to get suggested for any problem, large or small, are gargantuan. And that’s probably not a coincidence. For years, the public and press — I’m no exception — would coo with every one of Ray Shero’s larger-than-life trades, and he’d seldom disappoint, at least if measured by headline font size. The answers would come in the form of Marian Hossa, Jarome Iginla, so many others. It was all big, big, big.

Well, larger-than-life solutions aren’t coming. They won’t happen this offseason.

And if you ask me, that’s ideal. Because what this team needs, more than anything, is to get younger, faster, fresher and more systematically inclined, not necessarily in that order.

It needs energy.

And I’ll cite as Exhibit A, oddly enough, what was by far the Penguins’ most energetic showing of these Stanley Cup playoffs, their 2-1 overtime loss to the Rangers tonight at Consol Energy Center.

The home team, whipped up a relentlessly loud and supportive sellout crowd of 18,619 — I’m sure I wasn’t alone in looking around to make sure I was in the right place more than once — came out ablaze from the opening drop. They forechecked with fury, finished every check, fired every possible puck toward Henrik Lundqvist and, most impressive, held New York to two harmless shots.

The sellout crowd at Consol Energy Center included many young fans, the result of late student sales. — GETTY

It wasn’t just their best period of the playoffs. It was the best period I’d seen from them since a similar firestorm up in Calgary in early February.

“We did some good things,” Crosby said. “I thought we were more aggressive. We weren’t as tentative. We didn’t give them any time. But the last goal wins, and they got it.”

You bet. And that’s because, as the game wore on, the Penguins wore down.

For all the emphasis on their lackluster starts and hot finishes, maybe no one had considered what the reverse would look like. It sure wasn’t pretty.

By the second period, the Rangers began claiming all the 50/50 pucks, even some of the 60/40 and 70/30 variety. They were breaking out crisply. They were going east-west, like they love to do, almost as quickly as they went north-south. Once emotion was reduced again to being a neutral factor, the visitors were … well, younger, faster, fresher and more systematically inclined.

The overtime goal offers ample evidence all by itself:

Start with the puck at the right point, where Matt Hunwick raps it hard down the boards. As it curls behind Marc-Andre Fleury’s net, Martin St. Louis picks it up with his back to the rink. Ben Lovejoy closes on him quickly but goes to St. Louis’ left and allows him an easy lane to spin to the right and emerge toward the goal line.

It looks like a terrible play by Lovejoy, but it’s no worse than a C-minus in reality. That’s because the defensive system of Johnston and assistant coach Gary Agnew requires the defenseman to take precisely that position when the puck is being wrapped around like that. The opposing player is not to be allowed to emerge on the other side, even if that means the defenseman must “sell out,” according to one player.

And no, that player wasn’t Lovejoy. Here’s what Lovejoy had to say when I asked:

Regardless, in a perfect world, Lovejoy not only turns back St. Louis but also gains much better body position on him than what followed. It certainly looked awful.

When a defenseman does as Lovejoy did, a forward is expected to pick up that forward. As the video shows, that could have been any one of Maxim Lapierre, Nick Spaling or Daniel Winnik, all of whom are paid to be defensive specialists, by the way. No one was close.

From there, it’s mostly chaos through the crease until New York’s terrific 22-year-old rookie winger, Kevin Hayes, tapped it home in front of an apparently comatose Paul Martin.

(I’ll pause here to remind that the concept of rookie wingers remains very real with at least 29 other franchises and that it only seems like Pittsburgh hasn’t seen one of note since current Florida winger Jaromir Jagr’s mullet-headed great grandfather.)

I can’t say what Martin was thinking. He wasn’t available for interviews, which isn’t like him at all.

But I can say with full certainty that his play overall has looked much more like a man on a survival mission than the Martin of old. And given that the poor roster management by Rutherford — easily his most egregious error as GM, even with the injuries to Kris Letang and Christian Ehrhoff — has forced Martin to log about a half-hour every night for a month, man, I’ve got the hardest time faulting Martin too much. It’s not as if he’s got some slacker’s reputation.

He just had nothing left.

Like most everyone else wearing black.

There’s no point wasting anyone’s time with solutions for the rest of this series. The Rangers now have a 3-1 stranglehold, they just withstood the Penguins’ very best, and they’re headed back to Madison Square Garden for Game 5. That’s as gloomy and doomy as it gets.

But I feel plenty comfortable looking at this team’s issues heading into 2015-16 and reiterating that nothing remotely seismic is needed.

The current roster is missing half its regular defense, two-thirds if one assumes Derrick Pouliot could have been part of it. That’s insane. And on top of that, these are four of the Penguins’ top five puck-movers. Johnston won’t admit this publicly, but I’m told that’s the principle reason he modified the breakouts in the season’s final few weeks, because his trademark move-the-puck-in-a-pack motion was DOA with the current group.

That’s crippling on countless levels, and there wasn’t going to be an answer for it this spring, with all due respect to the yeoman’s work being done by Taylor Chorney.

But there should be several answers this fall: Letang, provided an uncertain return from concussions, will be back. So will Olli Maatta. Pouliot will have at least a partial NHL season to his resume. Brian Dumoulin, Chorney’s partner now and through most of the AHL season, has acquitted himself this series. Scott Harrington might be ready. Lovejoy can return to being a third-pairing guy, as he’d been most of his career. And Rob Scuderi, who’s been exposed all series long by the Rangers’ many fast wingers, could be bought out.

Add all that up, and it’s a defense that’s younger, faster, fresher … oh, you know.

Next, toss Kasperi Kapanen into the top-six mix, hope for Pascal Dupuis‘ health, make a call on Chris Kunitz, and the glaring lack of speed on the Penguins’ wings gets a big upgrade. Or use some of that cap space freed up by Martin, Ehrhoff and buyouts to add through free agency.

Think that won’t open up all kinds of ice for Crosby and Malkin?

Oh, and all concerned can once and for all bury the fears about Fleury. He’s been as strong as he was last spring, and probably stronger than that:

Graphic: DALI KOVACEVIC    Photo: GETTY

Now tell me, seriously: What about any of this requires some draconian action?

If the Rangers are the Eastern Conference’s best team — and the Presidents’ Trophy would indicate they could be more than that — and every game of this series has been decided by a solitary goal and the Penguins are playing with an arm tied behind their backs and the officiating was astonishingly imbalanced before this game, then what about any of this requires some draconian action?

Deep breaths. It might almost be over, but not really.