GMJR Steps Down

Blue Canary
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Blue Canary » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:01 am

ugh
I know.

I’m not at all conflict avoidant, but I simply can’t stand manufactured drama. Unfortunately, that’s the stock in trade of sports media.
Last edited by Blue Canary on Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

dodint
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby dodint » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:05 am

Isn't there a statue of Shero in Philly? I think I could stomach Hextall.

Blue Canary
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Blue Canary » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:08 am

Isn't there a statue of Shero in Philly? I think I could stomach Hextall.
Fred Shero, yes.

mikey
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby mikey » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:11 am

Look at the defense Hextall built in Philly...

Look at ours.

I'll pay for his Uber black to come here...

DigitalGypsy66
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:14 am

Copy Pasta:
Jim Rutherford, Hockey Hall of Famer and GM of three Stanley Cup-winning teams, hadn’t been planning his resignation from the Penguins for months or weeks or even days.

He never even considered stepping down as Penguins GM until Tuesday.

“I never expected it to be as sudden as this,” Rutherford told The Athletic Wednesday.

But before the Penguins took the ice in Boston on Tuesday night, Rutherford told team president and CEO David Morehouse that he was done. There was no talking him out of a decision that became public Wednesday afternoon.

“It was just time,” Rutherford said.

The decision caught employees at every level of the Penguins by surprise and created a chaotic day in Pittsburgh and Boston as team officials, from co-owner Mario Lemieux on down, tried to come to terms with what happened and plot the organization’s next steps.

“All I can tell you is we’re scrambling,” said one senior member of the organization.

“Mario is stunned,” said another.

Nothing about this decision, especially the timing, makes sense on the surface.

“Well, listen,” Rutherford said. “I agree with you if you think the timing is odd. I completely agree with you. And you know what? I agree with you if you think the timing is weird because it is.

“But I’ll just say this: It’s important to me to leave the Penguins on a positive note, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to get into the details of the past couple of days.”

The past couple of days have forever changed the future of the Penguins. Up until then, Rutherford was firmly fixed on trying to get a team led by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang back to Stanley Cup contention. As recently as last week, he spoke to The Athletic about his thoughts on the Penguins through four games and how some trades might be necessary because of the 56-game schedule. He didn’t sound like a general manager who was taking his last dance.

“Because I didn’t think I was,” Rutherford said.

Initially, Morehouse believed Rutherford could change his mind by Wednesday morning, team and league sources said.

When it became clear Rutherford hadn’t changed his mind, Morehouse organized a call with select members of the Penguins executive team Wednesday morning when he told them of Rutherford’s resignation and Patrik Allvin’s interim appointment. A search for a full-time replacement would begin immediately, Morehouse said.

Eventually, the news made it to the Penguins’ traveling party in Boston on Wednesday, an off day between games against the Bruins. Coach Mike Sullivan had ended his Tuesday night expecting to speak with Rutherford on Wednesday morning, a conversation he expected would be focused on options to replace defensemen Brian Dumoulin and, possibly, John Marino, each injured in the Penguins’ 3-2 overtime loss on Tuesday night.

Sullivan and Rutherford did talk Wednesday morning, team sources said, and the Penguins’ defensive depth did come up. But everything was an afterthought to Rutherford’s resignation.

Most players were not aware of the news until after the Penguins’ noon practice in Boston. Crosby and Letang, among the first to learn, took it upon themselves to speak with other teammates at the Penguins’ hotel, multiple team sources said.

A person with the Penguins in Boston described Wednesday as “weird.”

“But not as weird as you’d think considering our GM quit on us.”

The downtime of the pandemic has given Rutherford plenty of time to consider his future.

“I’ve been home almost exclusively for almost a year now,” Rutherford said. “So, all of that time at home gives you extra time to talk with your wife and to talk with your children. Lots of family time. Through that time, Leslie (his wife) and I had long conversations about how much longer I was going to do this. What our next steps as a family would be. Stuff like that. But it was just kind of a general conversation, and I never expected it to be as sudden as this.”

His decision was so sudden, he didn’t even discuss it with Leslie.

Rutherford, 71, acknowledged the past 11 months have been brutal for him.

“But that’s not why I’m done,” he said. “I realize there have been a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people in this country, who have had to deal with far worse than what I’ve dealt with.”

Rutherford offered particularly kind words for Lemieux and co-owner Ron Burkle.

“These guys are the best owners in all of sports,” Rutherford said. “I mean that. They’ve treated me so great. I’ve had a great relationship with them both. And just to be in the same organization as Mario and Sidney Crosby has been so great. Sid is amazing, both as a player and in terms of the way he treats people. He’s really some kind of a leader, some kind of a person. Mario and Sid. Those are two hockey legends and I got to get to know them, got to win with them. I’ll never forget it.”

Rutherford was asked about his relationship with Morehouse.

“Good,” he said. “Good. We worked hard together.”

Morehouse told The Athletic that Rutherford did not resign because of any disagreement with him and/or ownership over proposed personnel decisions — either involving players or members of hockey operations. But tensions have mounted there, especially this offseason.

Rutherford had not wanted to fire assistant GM Jason Karmanos, multiple league sources said, adding that the move caused what one described as “a big blow up.” Rutherford had long considered Karmanos, who initially started working with Rutherford when he was GM of the Carolina Hurricanes, a second son. He said the firing of Karmanos was one of many difficult dismissals he made after the Penguins’ loss to the Canadiens in the Stanley Cup qualifying round last August.

Other firings included all but one of Sullivan’s assistants. Those moves, too, were not made solely by Rutherford, league sources said. Also, Rutherford balked at an internal push to bring on Dale Tallon in some capacity, team and league sources said.

“I don’t know a lot of people around the league that saw what happened in Pittsburgh after the season and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s all Jim’s doing,’” a source said. “But, look, expectations are high there and losing early in the playoffs isn’t going to go over well.”

The Penguins are defendants in a lawsuit filed by former AHL assistant coach Jarrod Skalde, who says he was fired in retaliation for reporting former Wilkes-Barre/Scranton head coach Clark Donatelli for sexually assaulting Skalde’s wife in 2018.

Rutherford said his resignation has no relation to the lawsuit and spoke to The Athletic for the first time about the case.

“To my knowledge, we handled it as well as we could have,” he said. “When it came to my attention, I immediately took it to our HR department. That’s really all I had to do with the situation. I think it’s in litigation now. It’s a very unfortunate thing. I feel absolutely horrible about it. That’s about as much as I can say about it.”

There also were no signs that Rutherford’s contract situation — Morehouse had not approached Rutherford about a contract extension — influenced his resignation. Despite disappointing opening-round playoff defeats in 2019 and 2020, Penguins ownership anticipated Rutherford would remain as GM for at least this and another season, one source said.

“Why would he leave?” one league source said. “He had this job for life.”

Now the Penguins and the hockey community try to figure out what comes next.

“This is **** gigantic,” one league source said. “If you’re asking me a scale of 1 to 10, I’m telling you 75. … I mean, there isn’t a playbook for a GM like Jim up and leaving in the first month of a season.”

Though the franchise employs a couple of former GMs in Craig Patrick and Eddie Johnston, the Penguins are thin when it comes to management experience atop hockey operations. It’s a noticeable difference from Rutherford’s first season when Jason Botterill was associate GM and Tom Fitzgerald and Bill Guerin served as assistants.

Fitzgerald left to join the Devils after the 2014-15 season; Botterill was hired as GM of the Sabres during the 2017 playoffs, and Guerin took over the Wild before the 2019-20 season. Karmanos had worked under Rutherford with the Hurricanes and originally oversaw the building of an analytics operation in Pittsburgh. He eventually became an assistant GM and had been assigned stewardship of the Penguins’ AHL affiliate before his surprise firing this past October.

Allvin, who has spent 15 seasons with the Penguins, was promoted to assistant GM in November. He had spent the previous three seasons as director of amateur scouting.

Allvin’s promotion was one of several moves facilitated by Rutherford after his offseason review of hockey operations. Other moves included Sam Ventura becoming director of hockey operations/research and Erik Heasley adding manager of hockey operations to his role as assistant GM of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

Allvin will be a candidate for the GM role, Morehouse said Wednesday, though there likely will be a long list of people the Penguins consider.

Morehouse said the next GM should be expected to “add banners” to those hanging at PPG Paints Arena. He called Rutherford’s hiring “the move I staked my career here on.”

And it almost failed miserably.

Rutherford considered resigning in April 2015, toward the end of a challenging first season in Pittsburgh. Mike Johnston, his second choice to replace former coach Dan Bylsma after Willie Desjardins declined an offer, had not clicked with Crosby or Malkin, and Rutherford’s moves at the trade deadline left the Penguins unable to dress a full complement of defensemen without breaching the cap. The Penguins bowed to the Rangers in the opening round, winning only one game.

Rutherford ultimately decided to honor his three-year contract and orchestrated a second-season turnaround that featured the arrivals of winger Phil Kessel, goalie Matt Murray and Sullivan. Those three men, along with a core led by Crosby and Malkin, helped the Penguins to Cup victories in 2016 and 2017.

Rutherford, a goaltender with the Penguins in the 1970s, said it was a dream come true to help deliver championships to Pittsburgh.

“The main reason I came back was to win a Stanley Cup,” he said. “And we did it twice. But I also wanted to come back just because of how much I like the city. There is a warmth to the people here that is so special. I love the people here. I was so, so happy to come back and I’m glad I did. It was a special seven years.”

Rutherford said that he and his family will remain in Pittsburgh for now.

“We love it here and we have a home here,” he said. “(His son) James has friends here. It’s a special place, you know? Ideally I’d probably like to see a little bit more sunshine in the winter, but that’s part of living in Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Rutherford isn’t closing the door on working again in the NHL, and many around the league expect he will work again once his contract with the Penguins expires in June. This isn’t a retirement. It is most definitely a resignation.

It all happened faster than anyone could have imagined, shocking so many people in 24 of the most surreal hours in Penguins history.

“It was a good run,” Rutherford said. “But it was time.”

Trip McNeely
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Trip McNeely » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:34 am

Look at the defense Hextall built in Philly...

Look at ours.

I'll pay for his Uber black to come here...
This. I’m all on the Hextall train

meow
Posts: 30448
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Location: I have four degrees and am a moron. Don’t let that fool you

GMJR Steps Down

Postby meow » Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:16 pm

Anyone that has punched Chris Chellios in the face is ok in my book.

Dickie Dunn
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Dickie Dunn » Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:59 pm

Copy Pasta:
Jim Rutherford, Hockey Hall of Famer and GM of three Stanley Cup-winning teams, hadn’t been planning his resignation from the Penguins for months or weeks or even days.

He never even considered stepping down as Penguins GM until Tuesday.

“I never expected it to be as sudden as this,” Rutherford told The Athletic Wednesday.

But before the Penguins took the ice in Boston on Tuesday night, Rutherford told team president and CEO David Morehouse that he was done. There was no talking him out of a decision that became public Wednesday afternoon.

“It was just time,” Rutherford said.

The decision caught employees at every level of the Penguins by surprise and created a chaotic day in Pittsburgh and Boston as team officials, from co-owner Mario Lemieux on down, tried to come to terms with what happened and plot the organization’s next steps.

“All I can tell you is we’re scrambling,” said one senior member of the organization.

“Mario is stunned,” said another.

Nothing about this decision, especially the timing, makes sense on the surface.

“Well, listen,” Rutherford said. “I agree with you if you think the timing is odd. I completely agree with you. And you know what? I agree with you if you think the timing is weird because it is.

“But I’ll just say this: It’s important to me to leave the Penguins on a positive note, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to get into the details of the past couple of days.”

The past couple of days have forever changed the future of the Penguins. Up until then, Rutherford was firmly fixed on trying to get a team led by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang back to Stanley Cup contention. As recently as last week, he spoke to The Athletic about his thoughts on the Penguins through four games and how some trades might be necessary because of the 56-game schedule. He didn’t sound like a general manager who was taking his last dance.

“Because I didn’t think I was,” Rutherford said.

Initially, Morehouse believed Rutherford could change his mind by Wednesday morning, team and league sources said.

When it became clear Rutherford hadn’t changed his mind, Morehouse organized a call with select members of the Penguins executive team Wednesday morning when he told them of Rutherford’s resignation and Patrik Allvin’s interim appointment. A search for a full-time replacement would begin immediately, Morehouse said.

Eventually, the news made it to the Penguins’ traveling party in Boston on Wednesday, an off day between games against the Bruins. Coach Mike Sullivan had ended his Tuesday night expecting to speak with Rutherford on Wednesday morning, a conversation he expected would be focused on options to replace defensemen Brian Dumoulin and, possibly, John Marino, each injured in the Penguins’ 3-2 overtime loss on Tuesday night.

Sullivan and Rutherford did talk Wednesday morning, team sources said, and the Penguins’ defensive depth did come up. But everything was an afterthought to Rutherford’s resignation.

Most players were not aware of the news until after the Penguins’ noon practice in Boston. Crosby and Letang, among the first to learn, took it upon themselves to speak with other teammates at the Penguins’ hotel, multiple team sources said.

A person with the Penguins in Boston described Wednesday as “weird.”

“But not as weird as you’d think considering our GM quit on us.”

The downtime of the pandemic has given Rutherford plenty of time to consider his future.

“I’ve been home almost exclusively for almost a year now,” Rutherford said. “So, all of that time at home gives you extra time to talk with your wife and to talk with your children. Lots of family time. Through that time, Leslie (his wife) and I had long conversations about how much longer I was going to do this. What our next steps as a family would be. Stuff like that. But it was just kind of a general conversation, and I never expected it to be as sudden as this.”

His decision was so sudden, he didn’t even discuss it with Leslie.

Rutherford, 71, acknowledged the past 11 months have been brutal for him.

“But that’s not why I’m done,” he said. “I realize there have been a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people in this country, who have had to deal with far worse than what I’ve dealt with.”

Rutherford offered particularly kind words for Lemieux and co-owner Ron Burkle.

“These guys are the best owners in all of sports,” Rutherford said. “I mean that. They’ve treated me so great. I’ve had a great relationship with them both. And just to be in the same organization as Mario and Sidney Crosby has been so great. Sid is amazing, both as a player and in terms of the way he treats people. He’s really some kind of a leader, some kind of a person. Mario and Sid. Those are two hockey legends and I got to get to know them, got to win with them. I’ll never forget it.”

Rutherford was asked about his relationship with Morehouse.

“Good,” he said. “Good. We worked hard together.”

Morehouse told The Athletic that Rutherford did not resign because of any disagreement with him and/or ownership over proposed personnel decisions — either involving players or members of hockey operations. But tensions have mounted there, especially this offseason.

Rutherford had not wanted to fire assistant GM Jason Karmanos, multiple league sources said, adding that the move caused what one described as “a big blow up.” Rutherford had long considered Karmanos, who initially started working with Rutherford when he was GM of the Carolina Hurricanes, a second son. He said the firing of Karmanos was one of many difficult dismissals he made after the Penguins’ loss to the Canadiens in the Stanley Cup qualifying round last August.

Other firings included all but one of Sullivan’s assistants. Those moves, too, were not made solely by Rutherford, league sources said. Also, Rutherford balked at an internal push to bring on Dale Tallon in some capacity, team and league sources said.

“I don’t know a lot of people around the league that saw what happened in Pittsburgh after the season and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s all Jim’s doing,’” a source said. “But, look, expectations are high there and losing early in the playoffs isn’t going to go over well.”

The Penguins are defendants in a lawsuit filed by former AHL assistant coach Jarrod Skalde, who says he was fired in retaliation for reporting former Wilkes-Barre/Scranton head coach Clark Donatelli for sexually assaulting Skalde’s wife in 2018.

Rutherford said his resignation has no relation to the lawsuit and spoke to The Athletic for the first time about the case.

“To my knowledge, we handled it as well as we could have,” he said. “When it came to my attention, I immediately took it to our HR department. That’s really all I had to do with the situation. I think it’s in litigation now. It’s a very unfortunate thing. I feel absolutely horrible about it. That’s about as much as I can say about it.”

There also were no signs that Rutherford’s contract situation — Morehouse had not approached Rutherford about a contract extension — influenced his resignation. Despite disappointing opening-round playoff defeats in 2019 and 2020, Penguins ownership anticipated Rutherford would remain as GM for at least this and another season, one source said.

“Why would he leave?” one league source said. “He had this job for life.”

Now the Penguins and the hockey community try to figure out what comes next.

“This is **** gigantic,” one league source said. “If you’re asking me a scale of 1 to 10, I’m telling you 75. … I mean, there isn’t a playbook for a GM like Jim up and leaving in the first month of a season.”

Though the franchise employs a couple of former GMs in Craig Patrick and Eddie Johnston, the Penguins are thin when it comes to management experience atop hockey operations. It’s a noticeable difference from Rutherford’s first season when Jason Botterill was associate GM and Tom Fitzgerald and Bill Guerin served as assistants.

Fitzgerald left to join the Devils after the 2014-15 season; Botterill was hired as GM of the Sabres during the 2017 playoffs, and Guerin took over the Wild before the 2019-20 season. Karmanos had worked under Rutherford with the Hurricanes and originally oversaw the building of an analytics operation in Pittsburgh. He eventually became an assistant GM and had been assigned stewardship of the Penguins’ AHL affiliate before his surprise firing this past October.

Allvin, who has spent 15 seasons with the Penguins, was promoted to assistant GM in November. He had spent the previous three seasons as director of amateur scouting.

Allvin’s promotion was one of several moves facilitated by Rutherford after his offseason review of hockey operations. Other moves included Sam Ventura becoming director of hockey operations/research and Erik Heasley adding manager of hockey operations to his role as assistant GM of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

Allvin will be a candidate for the GM role, Morehouse said Wednesday, though there likely will be a long list of people the Penguins consider.

Morehouse said the next GM should be expected to “add banners” to those hanging at PPG Paints Arena. He called Rutherford’s hiring “the move I staked my career here on.”

And it almost failed miserably.

Rutherford considered resigning in April 2015, toward the end of a challenging first season in Pittsburgh. Mike Johnston, his second choice to replace former coach Dan Bylsma after Willie Desjardins declined an offer, had not clicked with Crosby or Malkin, and Rutherford’s moves at the trade deadline left the Penguins unable to dress a full complement of defensemen without breaching the cap. The Penguins bowed to the Rangers in the opening round, winning only one game.

Rutherford ultimately decided to honor his three-year contract and orchestrated a second-season turnaround that featured the arrivals of winger Phil Kessel, goalie Matt Murray and Sullivan. Those three men, along with a core led by Crosby and Malkin, helped the Penguins to Cup victories in 2016 and 2017.

Rutherford, a goaltender with the Penguins in the 1970s, said it was a dream come true to help deliver championships to Pittsburgh.

“The main reason I came back was to win a Stanley Cup,” he said. “And we did it twice. But I also wanted to come back just because of how much I like the city. There is a warmth to the people here that is so special. I love the people here. I was so, so happy to come back and I’m glad I did. It was a special seven years.”

Rutherford said that he and his family will remain in Pittsburgh for now.

“We love it here and we have a home here,” he said. “(His son) James has friends here. It’s a special place, you know? Ideally I’d probably like to see a little bit more sunshine in the winter, but that’s part of living in Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Rutherford isn’t closing the door on working again in the NHL, and many around the league expect he will work again once his contract with the Penguins expires in June. This isn’t a retirement. It is most definitely a resignation.

It all happened faster than anyone could have imagined, shocking so many people in 24 of the most surreal hours in Penguins history.

“It was a good run,” Rutherford said. “But it was time.”
TLDR: "There was no catalyst for the decision that was done so suddenly Jim didn't even discuss it with his wife."

BULLSHIT. They did something to piss him of and he said "**** yinz bye. Enjoy my mess".

MR25
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby MR25 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:02 pm

Yeah there's definitely something going on that doesn't pass the smell test here.

meow
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby meow » Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:30 pm

Maybe he is senile. Not talking about something like this with your wife?

Gaucho
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Gaucho » Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:36 pm

Maybe he's tired of the injuries. I know I am.

Jim
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby Jim » Thu Jan 28, 2021 2:35 pm

However... Maybe he is just 70-some years old, has a big bank account, and was like, "F this. I'm tired of people at Giant Eagle telling me I f'd up with a signing or trade!"

shoeshine boy
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby shoeshine boy » Thu Jan 28, 2021 2:56 pm

the team should totally float the narrative that FGMJR wanted to trade LeTurnover. maybe he'll wake up and start playing smart/better hockey just to prove him wrong.

RonnieFranchise
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby RonnieFranchise » Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:58 pm

The reason the Karmanos and Coach firing narrative doesn't ring true for me is that it happened in the offseason and for some unknown reason rather than telling them if they made him fire them, he was gone too, he waits till a random Wednesday in January to suddenly and unexpectedly peace out?

mikey
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GMJR Steps Down

Postby mikey » Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:06 pm

Expectation is that we'll have a new GM in 2 or 3 weeks...Allvin is first interview...

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