Believe it or not, there are ways of discussing this hockey team without attaching everything to Mike Sullivan's departure.

And I'm going to give that one a shot today with something specific.

Good morning to you.

Good Friday morning. I'm

Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports. This is daily shot of penguins. It comes your way bright

and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots

of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this. Checking out the Stanley Cup

playoff games last night, Winnipeg surviving, Carolina advancing. One of the things that crossed

my mind between the two games, because all of these teams, in particular capitals who are now out,

carry young players in important roles.

And that can be dicey for NHL executives and in turn for head coaches because they're going to get good prospects. They're going to get gifted prospects. They're going to get the types that,

well, how do I put this? I don't want to make them sound like Daniel Sprong, like everybody's got

to be sprung. But they either score or they're not worth much to you, okay? And on most teams,

that's going to mean top six duty or bust.

And if you think about the nature of the prospects that the penguins have brought up in recent years,

they've been the Sam Pulland types where you think he can score.

You've seen some scoring in the minors, but you also see him skating around, using his size, using his forecheck to grind out offense for others. And you think, all right, well, there's somebody who can make a difference for us in a bottom six role. So if you're a coach like Sullivan, you're going to prefer that because you have guys

for the top six and you'd rather not mess with that. So final 10 games of this past season,

both Ville Coyvin and Ann Rutger-McGrathier called up. Could not be clearer that there was

some sort of stance adopted, whether that emanated from

Kyle Dubus, whether it was Sullivan's inspiration or whatever, I'm going to guess it was

Dubus, that, hey, listen, these kids are here, they're going to play, and they're going to play

...