“Teams To Remember” follows iterations of Pittsburgh teams throughout the years, and what made the memorable, whether those reasons be good or bad. In today’s edition, the 2014-15 Pittsburgh Penguins.

It’s a season that doesn’t get talked about much, because of what happened afterwards. After this crazy season, the Pittsburgh Penguins would go on to win back to back Stanley Cups, and any ill will or quarrels over the 2014-15 season had faded away.

But this was a particularly fascinating season in Penguins history, one that deserves a look back on. It was Mike Johnston’s only full year as an NHL head coach, and a season that the Penguins just barely squeaked into the playoffs. 

Now, if you’re wondering why this was Mike Johnston’s only full season as an NHL head coach, perhaps the story of this season will show you why. 

Under Johnston, the 2014-15 Penguins finished with the lowest win total since the 2005-06 season, and their win total was the lowest of any playoff team that the Penguins had iced over their 16 year playoff streak. (Both stats exclude lockout and pandemic shortened seasons). 

He simply was not equipped to handle the challenge that the job provided, particularly in a market like Pittsburgh. In press conferences and media availability, he routinely looked like a deer in headlights, maybe not knowing that he, as the team’s head coach, had to answer for the struggles of the club. 

Meanwhile, Jim Rutherford has just begun his tenure as Pittsburgh’s general manager. In his first offseason, he was rather busy in making his mark on the team. He traded James Neal to the Nashville Predators, acquiring Patrick Hornqvist and Nick Spaling in the deal. 

In the free agency department, Rutherford brought in forwards Blake Comeau, Steve Downie, and Daniel Carcillo. He also added Christian Ehrhoff on the back end, and signed Thomas Greiss to be the backup to Marc-Andre Fleury. 

Now, in fairness to Johnston, the Penguins got off to a roaring start. Through their first 13 games of the season, the Penguins sat at 10-2-1, including rattling off a 7 game win streak to propel the Penguins to the top of the Eastern Conference. 

But the Penguins would soon suffer a massive blow to their lineup. Pascal Dupuis, a veteran of over 800 games in the NHL, suffered from a blood clot in his lung, forcing him to miss the remainder of the season. Dupuis would play just 18 more games in his NHL career before he would be forced to hang up the skates. 

His Penguins teammates rallied around him, supporting Dupuis in whatever way they could. 

“We are just trying to be here for him and try to support him the best we can,” Kris Letang said at the time. 

Blake Comeau would more or less fill in for Dupuis in his extended absence, as the Penguins had yet to feel the full impact of the loss of Dupuis. 

By the end of November, the Penguins were sitting at 17-5-2, looking like potential Presidents Trophy contenders within the NHL. However, this record was heavily inflated due to an easy first part of the season schedule for the Penguins. 

To their credit, the Penguins did what they needed to do: win the games they should. But as the schedule started to get tougher, especially around the turn of the new year, Pittsburgh struggled to maintain their dominant record. 

In December, Jim Rutherford decided to make his first move during the season. He shipped out minor league defenseman Philip Samuelsson to the Arizona Coyotes for defender Rob Klinkhammer. Klinkhammer wouldn’t last long as a Penguin, but we’ll come back to that in a moment. 

For the most part, the Penguins were able to keep chugging along in December, although it did come to an end with the team losing 4 of their final 5 in the month. At the start of the new year, Pittsburgh sat at 23-9-5, still very comfortably in a playoff spot. 

On January 2nd, Rutherford made another trade. That Klinkammer guy? He’s gone already. The Penguins traded him to the Edmonton Oilers with a draft pick for forward David Perron, in an effort to help shore up the middle-six for the Penguins. 

Perron had 19 points in 38 games with the Oilers at the time of the trade, and he was counted on to pick up some of the production left by Dupuis. This individual trade sparked a crazy turn of events, one that could have very drastically altered Penguins history had it not happened. If you want to read more about that, you can find that here.

Meanwhile, January would see some hardship for the Penguins. As their schedule got tougher, stringing together wins became harder and harder to do. For the second month in a row, the Penguins suffered a four game losing streak as several key players were missing time with injury. 

Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Sidney Crosby, Paatric Hornqvist, as well as several other players all missed at least one game in either December and/or January, and Hornqvist would miss nearly a month. 

Injuries were a major factor during the middle part of the season. During the entirety of the 2014-15 season, the Penguins had a total of 341 man games lost to injury, the majority of which happened in December and January. 

Mike Johnston, meanwhile, was struggling to maintain his team’s early dominance. He made some puzzling lineup decisions, while trying to apply his defensively-minded system to a Penguins team that was built to score. 

At the same time, Pittsburgh’s power play had completely stalled out. Despite co-authoring a book that included power play strategies in it, Johnston’s power play for the Penguins was far too passive. They played way too much in the perimeter of the offensive zone, and weren’t nearly aggressive enough in getting shots on net and pucks in front. 

Was that all Johnston’s fault? No, the players also needed to perform better, and they had a particularly tough time on faceoffs during power plays. But a struggling power play will always fall back on the coaching staff. 

Jim Rutherford seeked more changes. On January 27th, the Penguins swapped players with the Blues, sending struggling forward Marcel Goc (who had just 6 points in 43 games) to St. Louis while obtaining the equally struggling Maxim Lapierre. 

Neither player would go on to be any better in their new cities. 

In February, the Penguins would go 7-3-2, finishing the back half of the month with a 3 game losing streak and a 3 game winning streak. As the trade deadline loomed closer, Rutherford wanted to help bolster the team even more. 

On February 25th, he paid a fairly large sum to acquire forward Daniel Winnik from Toronto. In exchange, he sent the Maple Leafs underperforming center Zach Sill, a second round pick in 2016, and a 4th round pick in 2015. 

Winnik would disappoint in the goals department, scoring just 2 (with 7 assists) in 21 Pens games. As a rental, he did not re-sign in Pittsburgh after his contract expired. 

But that wasn’t the only deadline-type deal Rutherford made. With just hours left on deadline day in 2015, Rutherford sent out defenseman Robert Bortuzzo (and a seventh rounder) to get defenseman Ian Cole. 

Cole, of course, would go on to play a big role in the team’s future success in the next few years. 

Rutherford also seeked another change on the blueline, swapping Simon Despres for Ben Lovejoy from Anaheim. Lovejoy would serve largely as a depth player, but an important one. 

But even with the new additions, the Penguins took a tumble in March. Playing just about .500 hockey, they were losing ground in the standings, and falling further and further into wild card territory, if even a playoff spot at all. 

Several teams behind them were rallying to take a wild card spot, including the surging Boston Bruins. 

The Penguins needed to turn things around, but instead, they took the other approach; Pittsburgh lost 5 straight games, only ending that skid with a win over the Buffalo Sabres in their final game of the season. 

Mike Johnston’s team had crashed, but their hot start had ultimately helped aid them cling onto a playoff spot.

The Bruins just couldn’t quite pick up enough points to unseat Pittsburgh. In the end, early season success had saved the Penguins, but they were now limping badly into the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

As the second wild card team in the East, the Penguins landed the Presidents Trophy winning New York Rangers as their first round opponent. 

The Rangers, a Stanley Cup Finalist in 2014, had finished with a record of 53-22-7, and had beaten the Penguins in a tough 7 game series the previous season. 

Now, in the rematch, the Penguins looked to be at a much greater disadvantage. 

To Pittsburgh’s credit, they kept every game close; Every game of the series was decided by one goal. However, the Penguins found themselves on the wrong end too many times. 

After a 2-1 loss in Game 1, the Penguins found a way to steal a game in New York, winning Game 2 by a final score of 4-3. 

Game 2 was the highest scoring game of the series, and that Penguins win stands as the only Stanley Cup Playoff game win in Mike Johnston’s coaching career. 

Back in Pittsburgh for Games 3 and 4, the Penguins lost both, by the same score of 2-1 in each game. Game 4 was an overtime loss, adding some extra song to a game that now put the Penguins on the brink of elimination. 

With their backs against the wall, the Penguins entered a must win situation for Game 5, but ultimately, they fell in overtime by a score of, you guessed it, 2-1. 

Of all the midseason acquisitions by the Penguins, David Perron was the only player to register even a single point in the playoffs. 

Sidney Crosby led the team with 4 points, but the offense as a whole evaporated when the team needed it most. Johnston wasn’t of much help, either. His inability to adapt as the series went along was one of many contributing factors in Pittsburgh’s defeat. 

The Rangers, meanwhile, would make it to the Eastern Conference Finals before losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the East’s rep for the Stanley Cup Finals. 

In terms of the regular season, Sidney Crosby led the team with 84 points. Evgeni Malkin had 70, and Kris Letang had 54. But those three, along with Patric Hornqvist (51) were the only players to eclipse 40+ points. 

In net, Marc-Andre Fleury put up a .920 save percentage and a 2.32 goals against average over 64 starts. He had a very good year, but was unsuspectingly nearing his end as the surefire starting goalie for the Penguins. 

Backing him up, Thomas Greiss had a respectable .908 save percentage and a 2.59 goals against average. 

The disappointing result prompted some big changes within the Penguins roster, most notably the trade to bring in Phil Kessel. 

Daniel Winnik and Maxim Lapierre, midseason trade acquisitions, both left the team after the season. The former left for free agency while the latter opted for a career in Europe. 

Both Ian Cole and Ben Lovejoy would remain with the team into the next season. 

As for Mike Johnston, he survived the overhaul of the offseason. The Penguins opted to retain him as head coach, but his work would be scrutinized a lot more in the following season.

Johnston’s Penguins struggled mightily to open the 2015-16, drawing criticism and critique from all sides, even his boss, who openly questioned some of Johnston’s lineup decisions, particularly regarding Daniel Sprong.

Pittsburgh’s offense was stalling, and after posting a record of 15-10-3, Rutherford was prompted to fire Johnston in December of 2015 and promote the team’s AHL head coach, Mike Sullivan. 

Under Johnston in 2015-16, the Penguins had a record of 15-10-3. Sullivan found a way to turn the team around in short order, leading them all the way on a Stanley Cup run. 

Since then, Johnston has coached several more years, but none were at the professional level. 

After being relieved of his job by the Penguins, Johnston returned to his old job with the Western Hockey League’s Portland Winterhawks. Upon returning, Johnston reclaimed his role as head coach, while also taking on the additional roles of general manager and team vice president. 

The Winterhawks have fared pretty well, at least in terms of regular season results, since Johnston’s return to the organization. He remains there today.

(Featured photo by Gene J. Puskar/AP)