The Friday poll returns with a look back at the 2024-25 Penguin season
It’s the offseason, it’s Friday, you know what that means. Or maybe you forgot, if so fear not the Friday Polls are back. We start today by looking back at the Penguins’ 2024-25 season. It may feel like a forever ago that many or most accepted that the Pens were not a very good team, but there was still a lot of optimism as little as seven months ago about the team’s prospects.
Despite loud voices to the contrary, most people tend to be outwardly optimistic or not expect worst case scenarios given how the last 20 years of Penguin hockey has conditioned us all.
Looking back, it’s a bit wild over 60% of folks here thought or at least voted with their hearts to expect the playoffs. Pittsburgh didn’t upgrade at all over the off-season, using most of their cap space to take on unwanted players like Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass and/or make short-term bets on players like Anthony Beauvillier and Matt Grzelcyk. Some of those guys play well and were traded for a second or third round picks, some of them, well not so much.
Only 3% were brave enough (and likely at least half were simply trolls) to be right about ending up as a bottom-10 team. I suppose that goes to show expectation and hope will always spring eternal on the eve of a season. Nothing wrong with that, why invest so much time, energy, effort and often times money in a team going nowhere fast.
It’ll be interesting to see how the answers sway today. Unlike the past few years, the Pens at least had a token outside chance of sneaking into the playoffs up until the very few games of the season in 2023 and 2024. This year they were all but out of the playoff race easily before 4 Nations in February. That’s a lot more time to process the acceptance of the situation. Last year at this time, over half (52%) of respondents were level 4 or 5 angry over missing the playoffs. (Then again, that pre-season a whopping 95% of our responses indicated they thought/expected Kyle Dubas to return Pittsburgh to the playoffs in his first season on the job, which gives good reason to also be miffed about the end result from last year).
But that was then, this is now. You’ve had more time to deal with the fact the Pens weren’t a playoff team from pretty much opening night’s 6-0 loss. We’re not asking this question mere hours or days after the team fell short, it’s been a result months in the making.