OT: Non-stop Brawl last night NYI and PIT

Couple things:

1. Tone down the hate. For most on the board the Red Wings are the home team, so be respectful.

2. After Detroit I have an affinity for Pittsburgh sports. Maybe it's cause the Steelers are the franchise I would have wanted. And the Pirates had Leyland and Bonilla and Bonds and Van Slyke. And the Penguins had Lemieux and Jagr. Those teams were so worth rooting for (Bonds became a villain only after he left). However, I can't stand the modern Penguins, because that team didn't take any savvy -- it was simply a combination of losing on purpose and league assistance.

Lemieux disassembled (and purposely got nothing of immediate value in return) one of the best rosters in hockey when he dealt away everyone from Jagr to Francis, down to the point where Rico Fata was on the first line, the trade deadline talk for other teams was basically a Pittsburgh menu, and the only reason to go to the Igloo was to see Mario trotting the husk of himself out there like it's an alumni game.

Unsurprisingly, fans didn't come, and Pittsburgh headed toward bankruptcy. Lemieux's goal was to make the team as bad and as cheap as possible, becoming Gary Bettman's poster boy for instituting a low salary cap because "hey, Straka's got 12 points in 22 games --- TRADE HIM!!!

Meanwhile, the Penguins' No. 1 overall pick Fleury was kept in the minors so a.) They wouldn't have to pay him his full contract, and b.) To keep the tanking going.

Here's what the Penguins got in return:

The reason for the tanking was to get high draft picks. Hockey more so than almost any other sport has a strong correlation between 1st round draft position and performance. Usually there's one to five guys who have "it" and while there's a few early picks who haven't panned out, the ones who reach that extra level of hype generally come through. Also, the way the salary cap is set up, the most valuable players are those you drafted yourself until their arbitration years are over.

Also, the sport is very star-dependent; like basketball an inordinate amount of scoring (and defensive value) will come from the top echelon of players. Thus, a 1st overall pick in hockey is worth more than in any other sport, and if you've got four guys picked from the Top 2 in a short period of years, that team will now be starting with four of those top-echelon players (most teams have 1, maybe 2, and 3 means you're probably a Stanley Cup contenter), and have them under contract for the next four to six seasons at a fraction of their actual value. Put that into a hard salary cap situation, and that team is majorly advantaged against its competition.

This is why "savvy" is a laughable description of that team. You'd have to be head-bang-into-a-spike stupid to have those 2002-'06 draft positions and not come away with a superstar team.

The penultimate tank, the one that preceeded the lockout, was the big difference maker, because it netted a top draft selection two years in a row. Evgeni Malkin was the just reward for that season. Getting Sidney Crosby after a year when nobody played was essentially Pittsburgh's reward for being Bettman's little bitch. Using the last played year's standings instead of giviing every team a shot was what Lemieux lobbied for, and made zero sense. Pittsburgh especially shouldn't have had a high draft pick because unlike teams that were actually talent-less before the lockout, the Penguins had simply gone into hibernation, stockpiling a pre-arbitration pool of talent. This could be termed "savvy" except for the effect it had on the game -- the talent dispersal began to severely favor the West over the East, and teams in Pittsburgh's division (the NHL's schedule being unbalanced) were taking mediocre squads to the playoffs. As for the fans, I thought at the time it was a really dick move to purposely lose for four years and send off all of those fans' beloved players but if you were willing to make that tradeoff, that's your bag.

Let's put this in context. Sidney Crosby was, long before the draft, already considered a Gretzky-like, once-in-a-generation talent, so much so that the 2005 draft lottery was called the "Sidney Crosby Sweepstakes." He was, quite simply, the LeBron of ice hockey. Except whereas LeBron was provided to a franchise that had been a longtime sufferer due to poor talent, Crosby got to join Fleury, Malkin and Whitney, all products of one of the most obvious lose-on-purpose fests in pro sports history.

The last tank was the year after the lockout. You saw right away what Lemieux's plan had been all along, as the team emerged from the lockout by spending twice as much as the next closest team on free agents, and playing all of those early draft picks while the NHL built  a marketing strategy around them. When that team started falling apart, rather than finish as a middling squad, Lemieux again went the trade-and-tank route to again be first in line at the draft day talent buffet.

During those years I was a lot more involved in hockey circles, where the general complaint was "Bettman's pals in Pittsburgh get to pick first, then the rest of us have to build our teams with what's left."

You could make the case that it was savvy of Lemieux to pick a winner in sidling up next to Bettman and giving him a bullshit posterboy for instituting a cap, and in return getting the prize of the century, plus a bevy of underpaid stars and a huge financial advantage over the competition. The lie was put toward to the whole "small market" B.S. that characterized the pre-lockout years when Pittsburgh immediately spent to the cap and began building a new stadium -- it wasn't that Pittsburgh's a small market; it's that Pittsburgh fans don't give a shit about bad teams who are trying to lose on purpose [stern look, Pirates].

Pittsburgh's now the NHL's darlings, beneficiaries of the league's best promotions (already two of the first four Winter Classics), and beneficiaries of the league's friendliest officiating. This is why the hockey world laughs when you put "savvy" next to "Penguins." This is why nobody in the hockey world has respect for Pittsburgh's franchise. It's not a team built on savvy. It's Bettman's bitches. And no self-respecting fan of hockey and the core value of sportsmanship can justify rooting for him or them.