Building A Stanley Cup Champion: The 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins

A little over three years ago, on May 25, 2006, the Pittsburgh Penguins introduced Ray Shero as their new general manager and gave him a whopping five-year contract and the keys to one of the league's burgeoning young teams. 

Even if they finished 29th overall the year he took the reins.

Then only 43, Shero had grown up a hockey brat, living in the shadow of his legendary father, Fred, who coached the Broadstreet Bullies of the mid-'70s to back-to-back Stanley Cups when his son was just 11 and 12.

Thirty-four years after celebrating his father's last win as a Flyers fan, Ray Shero's name is on the Cup, too. And while it's worth noting that, in the finals, it was this team's depth that got the job done — not the marquee stars he was handed on a silver platter prior to taking the job — Shero's role was actually mostly as a caretaker in charge of keeping his brilliant core together long enough to win a championship.

What follows is a look at how he acquired the players that won this year's title.

Incumbents (the nine pre-Shero acquisitions): Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre Fleury, Sergei Gonchar, Kris Letang, Brooks Orpik, Maxime Talbot, Rob Scuderi, Tyler Kennedy

Other transactions (adding the other 13):

So there's the 13 additions over two years and nine months, a group that's made up of one draft pick, five free-agent signings (all after July 1), six trades (four at the deadline) and one waiver claim.

The Penguins' six players who played the most minutes in the finals were all onboard before Shero got there, and that group doesn't include two more key cogs in Fleury and Talbot. The biggest of Shero's additions, in terms of minutes played, were Eaton, Gill and Staal, followed by Kunitz, Guerin, Fedotenko and Cooke.

The remaining seven players averaged less than 13 minutes a game in the finals.

Somewhere, I imagine, Craig Patrick — who was the GM of this franchise from 1989 until 2006 when Shero took over — is smiling. This team, with nine of its top 15 players in place during his tenure, rose from the ashes of the club's bankruptcy and, essentially, its destruction and is now the best team in hockey.

I'll join PensBurgh in tipping my hat to him for that.