FanHouse RayShero

I don't know how Penguins general manager Ray Shero pulled it off, but he managed to not only retain the services of Ruslan Fedotenko and Bill Guerin, two of the teams top-six forwards from their Stanley Cup winning team, but he did so while getting them to take paycuts.

After signing Guerin to a one-year deal on Monday, the Penguins announced that they agreed to terms with Fedotenko Friday afternoon. Rob Rossi of the Tribune Review reports the deal as being worth $1.8 million, down from the $2.25 million he made a season ago.

The Pittsburgh Penguins ended a 17-year Stanley Cup drought on Friday night with a 2-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings, giving the franchise its third championship. While current general manager Ray Shero will get his name on the cup for overseeing the hockey operations the past three seasons, former general manager Craig Patrick also had a hand in putting this team together.

After the jump, a player-by-player look at how the 2008-09 Penguins were built over the years.

It's not exactly a national secret that hockey teams tend to go through coaching changes about as often as a high school kid goes through a change of clothes (speaking on personal experience, that's about once per year). As we begin the conference finals, it's probably worth pointing out that three of the four teams taking part -- the Pittsburgh Penguins, Carolina Hurricanes and Chicago Blackhawks -- experienced a change behind the bench during the regular season.

When Dan Bylsma took over behind the bench as the Penguins interim head coach, the season was looking bleak. They were sputtering along at a 27-25-5 pace, sitting outside the Eastern Conference playoff picture. Some people (including yours truly) were so down on the current squad that it appeared as if a coaching change wouldn't make much of a difference. So much for that.

A coaching change and a couple of astute roster moves later (hello Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin), and the Penguins are one of the hottest teams in the NHL, awaiting a second-round opponent after dispatching the Flyers. Apparently that was all the Penguins front office needed to see, as they signed Bylsma to a long-term contract extension on Monday night, removing the "interim" tag.

After days of speculation and holding their captain out of two games, the Islanders have finally parted ways with Bill Guerin, sending him to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In return, they get a fifth round draft pick which turns into a third rounder if the Penguins win a first round playoff series. Long Island, your long nightmare is now over.

The Penguins were busy on Deadline Day last year, acquiring Marian Hossa, Hal Gill and Pascal Dupuis. Today, they've added Guerin and Andy Wozniewski in addition to their acquisition of Chris Kunitz earlier in the week. Yet again, Ray Shero is gearing up for a playoff run and isn't afraid to get some outside help.

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The Dallas Stars reportedly placed Sean Avery on re-entry waivers Monday morning, giving the 29 other teams in the NHL an opportunity to pick him up for half price (Dallas will be responsible for half of Avery's contract). It's long been assumed that the New York Rangers will be Avery's eventual landing spot, allowing him to raise his particular brand of hell in the Atlantic Division once again.

It's worth pointing out that after Avery was given his ridiculous suspension for cracking a sex joke, John Tortorella, the current Rangers head coach, had some harsh words for the NHL's premier agitator.

It was reported earlier this week that Toronto Maple Leafs defensemen Tomas Kaberle and Pavel Kubina were going to give management a list of teams they would be willing to accept a trade to. Trouble is, one of those guys may not even be on the market if we're to believe general manager Brian Burke.

Burke was quoted in Tuesday's Toronto Star as saying, "I like this guy, bet on him staying," in regards to Kaberle.

The first game of the Dan Bylsma era in Pittsburgh looked remarkably similar to the last couple of games in the Michel Therrien era. In other words: it was a loss. Of course, the Penguins haven't even had an opportunity to practice under Bylsma and break in a new system, so, obviously there's a lot of work and not a lot of time to do it.

That said, the Penguins fell, 3-2, in a shootout loss on Long Island Monday afternoon, capping off a rough two-game stretch where they picked up only one of a possible four points against Toronto and the Islanders.

Late last night after news of Michel Therrien's firing as head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins was announced, NHL Network ran an extended excerpt of a conference call with Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero. For the most part, his comments were pretty much the same thing you hear from GMs after they kick a head coach to the curb.

There was one exception, and that was when Shero mentioned that it seemed as if the Penguins had fallen prey to a common phenomenon that we've seen in the NHL over the years -- that the team that loses the Stanley Cup Finals disintegrates on the ice during the following season.

Perhaps the best news coming from the Penguins on Thursday isn't the fact they pulled off a somewhat improbable come-from-behind win on Wednesday night, but the news that Sergei Gonchar may be closer to returning to the lineup than originally believed.

On Monday, Gonchar was cleared to take part in contact drills in practice, and according to Dave Molinari of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, his workout went quite well. So well, in fact, he described his return as being possibly "sooner than we expected."