All the things we do or don't know about Dan Mews, the ones that stand out the most to me are strategic, schematic, philosophical. Good morning to you. Good. Thursday morning. I'm Dan Kovachvich of D.K.

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Development is going to be a part of this man's coaching,

regardless of any other team-wide processes in which the penguins intend to engage this winter.

What I mean by that is this. Very plainly,

the penguins need to become a better defensive team than they were in the 2024-25 season.

That would apply unconditionally. That would apply if they were going for it, if they'd signed

a zillion-free agents. That would apply if they completely blew it up and went with nothing but children.

Why? Because there's nothing about being as Lucy Goosey as this team was,

in particular for the first two months of last season,

that's beneficial to anything or to anybody. So yeah, you want to instill a system.

You want to instill an identity. And you want it to be, and I say this with immense respect,

something beyond, yeah, it's Sidney Crosby's team. Of course it's Sidney Crosby's team.

But Cid's own identity is one that's built around winning.

Ultimate winner. Serial winner.

The guy who's won literally everything there is to win in the sport.

But where it gets a little bit tricky is that you can't take it too far.

If Muse wanted to be that guy who just said, listen, we're going to be all about cutting down

our goals against, we're going to be that team that is held to play against in the defensive

zone, we're going to be all over

you. We're going to be expending more energy in the back end than we are up front. Guess what?

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