start taking a step back<\/a>.<\/p>\nStill, would anyone in their right minds bet against Crosby recording at least a point per game for the 21st year in a row? He\u2019s old, but still is as solid as ever. Call it inertia, call it being ready to peak his game for maximum sharpness in February for the Olympics, but here\u2019s to betting Crosby\u2019s age-38 season looks a lot like his age-37 year and a lot of the seasons that have come before it lately.<\/p>\n
3. How does Muse follow Sullivan?<\/p>\n
Muse was hired as coach on June 4 to replace Sullivan, now coach of the New York Rangers, after winning the Stanley Cup twice in 10 seasons with the Penguins.<\/p>\n
Sullivan is still considered one of the League\u2019s best coaches. Dubas also views him that way, saying as much following the season and again after Sullivan parted from Pittsburgh on April 28.<\/p>\n
But Muse, 43, could better fit the current climate in Pittsburgh. There\u2019s an emphasis on looking to the future and developing young players without short-changing veterans.<\/p>\n
The classic Dad answer to this question: very carefully.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The more nuanced answer: Muse will be a fun x-factor to unleash on the roster this year. Maybe it was complacency, but it was pretty stagnant at the end for Mike Sullivan and the Penguins. NHL coaches don\u2019t usually last five years in one place, Sullivan completed a stint of almost a decade in Pittsburgh. Sometimes it is time for something new.<\/p>\n
But new doesn\u2019t always mean different. Muse could well be the next Mike Johnston \u2014 good hockey mind but best served developing players at lower levels and not capable of grasping the intricacies of the NHL game. Then again, Muse could be the next, rising star coach if he manages to freshen up the veterans on the Pens while also bringing along the youngsters. More likely, he\u2019ll be somewhere in the middle to not be a complete bum like Johnston but perhaps not be launching a 25-year NHL coaching career either.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be interesting to see how that one goes. On one hand, Muse is in a tough situation: the Pens aren\u2019t expected to be very good and coaches of teams starting a rebuild don\u2019t usually make it out of the rebuild. Muse wasn\u2019t exactly hired with the expectation of winning, but he still will be judged upon it to the degree that all pro coaches are held up by their record. On the other hand, it\u2019s a no lose situation: if the Pens are bad again, there\u2019s an unimpressive roster that will rightfully explain why. In some regards, the bar is low enough that it will be easier for Muse to impress than it will for him to preside over a disaster. (And even if it\u2019s a disaster, that will mean a good place in the draft lottery and possibility of a good pick, which wouldn\u2019t be the worst end result for this specific season either).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They ask, we answer. 1. Could this be it for Malkin? Evgeni Malkin, at 39 years old, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[9927,49,48,17952,53683,18802,27940,53680,20763,751,448,53682,753,82,53681],"class_list":["post-91219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-alex-ovechkin","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-corey-perry","tag-crosby","tag-geno","tag-kyle-dubas","tag-malkin","tag-mike-sullivan","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-pens","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-sports","tag-the-penguins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}