Chirps from Center Ice

I thought I was done with the blog till July. Guess not…

Announced at 11 a.m. on Sunday, the Pittsburgh Penguins have decided not to renew the contract of Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins head coach J.D. Forrest and assistant Kevin Porter. Other assistant coach Sheldon Brookbank’s name was absent in the release this morning.

The news comes as a surprise to me.

First, to be clear, this wasn’t a firing. This was a non renewal of a contract. Forrest wasn’t your issue. It was lack of depth and filling those spaces with guys who couldn’t function at the AHL level, much less NHL, and then when they could, you trade away for yesterday’s garbage.

He graduated Jack St. Ivany and Valtteri Puustinen; Joel Blomqvist is next.

He got this 6 cylinder Pinto of a franchise to a few points away from a second round bye in arguably the toughest division in the AHL.

Unless you’ve found the fountain of youth it will be more of the same under a different coach.

And I’m sorry but he didn’t trade away Rem Pitlick, Alex Nylander and Ty Smith. Radim Zohorna is not an NHL player, much less AHL.

Ask yourself this question: does AHL coach of the year Todd Nelson still have this team playing in the playoffs?

Forrest is a good man. Yeah, I called for his head many a time on here but then I stepped back, took a breath and looked at the bigger picture. He will find work, quickly.

Time is ticking on the new coach of this team. Have to think it will be a highly sought after position.