The Penguins' president says coach Mike Johnston will return next season. (USATSI)
Penguins president David Morehouse says coach Mike Johnston will return next season. (USATSI)

The Pittsburgh Penguins were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Friday night, making it the fifth time in the past six years they failed to advance beyond the second round and the third time in five years that their season ended in the first round.

As is always the case when the Penguins lose, speculation immediately turned to what changes might be coming during the offseason, especially after the team fired general manager Ray Shero and coach Dan Bylsma after last season's playoff loss to the Rangers. 

But on Saturday team president David Morehouse told Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Jason Mackey of the Tribune-Review that general manager Jim Rutherford and coach Mike Johnston will return next season, and that the team has no plans to trade either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin

Here is a portion of what Morehouse told Cook:

"Ron [Burkle] and Mario [Lemieux] have never given any consideration to replacing our general manager or our coach," Morehouse said. "Jim Rutherford is our general manager. Mike Johnston is our coach."

As for the two-center model featuring Crosby and Malkin, who take up a significant portion of the Penguins' salary cap space, Morehouse said, "We believe in the core group that we have. Our job is to build around that." Morehouse added ownership has "no interest" in breaking up the Crosby-Malkin duo.

It was a strange season for the Penguins that started with such promise but slowly crumbled late in the regular season and in the playoffs, especially as injuries mounted and the club's salary cap situation prevented them from bringing up replacements from the American Hockey League. 

On March 14, where there were just 15 games remaining, the Penguins were within three points of the top spot in the Eastern Conference and looked to be a legitimate contender for the Stanley Cup. But injuries to several of their top players, including Crosby, Malkin, Patric Hornqvist, Kris Letang and Christian Ehrhoff, sent the team into a tailspin. The Pens won just four of their remaining regular season games and needed to win their regular season finale in Buffalo just to secure the eighth playoff spot in the East. 

Injuries and salary cap mismanagement forced the team to play four games down the stretch with only five defensemen, and by the time the playoffs started they were without what should have been four of their top-six defensemen (Letang, Ehrhoff, Olli Maatta and Derrick Pouliot) and were using a patchwork group of overextended veterans and minor leaguers. It not only hurt the team's play in its own end of the ice, but also offensive play because of an inability to exit the zone and the lack of an offensive threat from their blueliners, a significant part of their system earlier in the season.

Because of those injuries and some questionable managerial decisions throughout the season it's difficult to put too much of the blame for the season on Johnston. 

But while injuries played a significant role in their late season struggles, this team still has some significant flaws and holes that need to be addressed over the summer.

Martin and Ehrhoff are both set to become unrestricted free agents, while they still need at least one or two more top-six wingers to complement their star centers. Depth also remains an issue for the bottom-six where Steve Downie, Blake Comeau and Max Lapierre are also set to become free agents. These are not new issues, either. 

And the Pens have to do all of this with limited salary cap space and a couple of contracts to aging veterans (Chris Kunitz, Rob Scuderi) that are not going to give them enough bang for their buck.

It's going to be another interesting summer in Pittsburgh.