Small thoughts at large -- July 5

Some idle ramblings and off-the-cuff opinions for a Tuesday morning:

*** If Steve Sullivan can stay healthy – and that’s an “if” bigger than the 5 foot 9, 161-pound Sullivan is – he’ll have more of a positive impact for the Penguins in 2011-12 than some might anticipate. Of course, at age 36, he’s not the player he once was, any more than Jaromir Jagr is the player he was when he was winning scoring championships with the Penguins. Nonetheless, Sullivan still can skate and handle the puck, and he has a pretty fair finishing touch. Sullivan can’t do any of that while in a body cast or wheelchair, though, and the hard truth is that, thanks to a variety of physical issues, Sullivan has missed 186 of a possible 410 regular-season games during the past five seasons. Which is why general manager Ray Shero might want to try to sell ownership on the idea of adding a faith healer and a shaman to the team’s medical staff, just to maximize the chances of Sullivan making more than an occasional appearance in the lineup during the coming season.

*** That’s quite a chemistry experiment that they’ll be conducting in Philadelphia during the coming winter. The Flyers were willing to part with core players like team captain Mike Richard and Jeff Carter, at least in part, because of concerns about the interaction in the locker room. Looks now like it will be Chris Pronger’s team going forward, and he’s got a reputation as a bit of a polarizing figure. And, of course, Philadelphia will be stirring a potentially volatile ingredient, Jagr, into its personnel mix. Keep an ear cocked toward the other side of the Commonwealth later this year, and you’ll probably hear some sort of explosion. The question is whether it will be the Flyers erupting, or simply blowing up.

*** As noted in today’s editions of the Post-Gazette, the Penguins don’t seem to be moving aggressively toward finding an enforcer to replace Eric Godard, who was allowed to leave via free agency, although they seem open to the notion of signing one if he’s willing to accept a two-way contract. The tragic death of New York Rangers tough guy Derek Boogaard might take away some of the urgency other Atlantic Division feel to maintain their own nuclear deterrents, and coming up with just the right guy for the job isn’t easy as you might believe. Finding one who is willing to fight, and is reasonably proficient at it, isn’t what’s challenging; the difficulty comes in trying to identify one who can do that and play the game well enough to handle a fairly regular shift. And locating one who can do all that without consuming too much of a team’s cap space is the final piece of what can be a surprisingly complicated puzzle.

Sparrow Cove Penguins Discovery Falklands

On our Cape Horn trip we stopped in the Falkland Islands. We went to Sparrow Cove and got to play all day with penguins! It was a blast! They were all very young, teenagers if you will. You can see from the video that they still had down on them so they could not go into the water yet. They were very curious and would come right up to us. There was a rope set out that we were not allowed to cross, (to protect them), they could go any place, and did. This was the highlight of our trip!

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