Joe Starkey

What's up?

Good.

11 of them, to be precise.

The Penguins put out a release.

11 guys are having career seasons of one sort or another.

You know, career seasons in one category or another.

That's a fact, and that's a good call.

Because, yes, with a better power play, they probably would have been playoff teams.

And they did have the talent.

It's not like they were bereft of talent going into the season.

I think another thought that people had was, man, if this gets off to a rough start, and it very well could, goodbye Raquel, goodbye Rust, goodbye maybe Carlson, who knows who else.

So all credit to Kyle Dubas for standing by his guys and for all the people he found.

And really, as I've mentioned many times on this show,

If you credit Kyle Dubas, and surely you must and you have to, then who are you really crediting?

And if you're going to begin the list of why this season happened, and I know they're not popular necessarily, you begin with Fenway Sports Group.

You have to.

They went out and identified Kyle Dubas, and just as importantly...

Once they hired him, they stood back and just let him shape the franchise in his vision, and they gave him all the resources to do that.

That's a pretty good hat trick.

Find the right guy, let him do his job, give him all the resources possible to do his job.