Despite Penguins ugly playoff ouster Jim Rutherford may still emerge as a hero.

The Pittsburgh Penguins suffered an ugly, and many would say humiliating, series loss to the lowly Montreal Canadiens on Friday, putting an end to another short-lived Stanley Cup run for Sidney Crosby and company. It has been an ugly stretch of playoff performances for the Penguins who have triumphed in just 1 of their last 10 playoff appearances over the last several years, a statistic that no amount of excuse making from the Penguins is ever going to look pretty. 

All this is to say that things look relatively grim now for a franchise that has enjoyed a tremendous run of success over the years in which two of their young stars, the aforementioned Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, were among the most dominant players in the entire league. As grim as they look now however things could have been much, much, worse for Penguins fans who work up on Saturday morning following the tough loss had it now been for a piece of incredible foresight on the part of Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford.

Back in February of this year, several weeks before the National Hockey League's trade deadline, Rutherford finally pulled the deal on a long rumored trade between the Penguins and the Minnesota Wild. The trade brought forward Jason Zucker to the Penguins who by the way had a good showing in this series with 2 goals in the 4 games played against Montreal, but this isn't about that part of the trade. In that trade was included Pittsburgh's first round pick at the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, however in a move that raised some eyebrows at the time Rutherford had demanded that the pick be lottery protected. The addition of such a clause honestly seemed laughable with the Penguins well on their way to making the playoffs, especially given that they would in theory be increasing the potency of their lineup with the addition of Zucker moving forward. No one at the time could have predicted the shutdown of the NHL season as a result of the pandemic, no one would have bet on the Penguins to ever miss the playoffs. It now however looks like a strong of pure genius, or perhaps even clairvoyance, on the part of Rutherford. 

The defeat at the hands of the Habs has now left Pittsburgh with a 1 in 8 shot of obtaining highly touted prospect Alexis Lafreniere with the number one overall pick in the draft, a pick that without Rutherford's over abundance of caution could potentially have been handed over to the Minnesota Wild. If the Penguins do end up with the top pick in this draft Rutherford will quite likely be hailed as a hero for having the forethought to add such a clause.