Want a solution?

Like, a real solution?

You know, to this sort of thing …

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… that being the Penguins’ third flat-out phenomenal failure out of four games so far on this hellish homestand, this time throwing away a three-goal, third-period lead toward a 5-4 overtime loss to the Mammoth today at PPG Paints Arena. And this after allowing the Ducks to tie with a tenth of a tick on the clock, then setting fire to what should’ve been a four-goal rout of the Sharks.

It’s a self-immolation hat trick.

It’s also unlike anything I’ve witnessed in a lifetime of loving and covering hockey, and not just from the Pittsburgh perspective. I can’t recall seeing it happen anywhere. To anyone.

I kinda got the impression that Dan Muse hadn’t, either, from this eternal exhale before answering the first question of his press conference about how this can be fixed:

      

He was anything but alone after this. Throughout the undercarriage of the place, eyes were widened, jaws dropped. Players. Coaches. Staff. Arena workers. And that’s to say nothing of the 15,686 paying customers on hand, who’d just spent part of the third period booing the home team as if all 20 players were Tom Wilson.

And I get it. The whole thing’s extraordinary. Really is. No matter what anyone thinks or thought of these Penguins’ potential entering this 2025-26 NHL season, no one can rationalize these three collapses. Nor, for that matter, the eight total blown third-period leads out of 30 games. Certainly not for a team that’d otherwise been one of the league’s most pleasant surprises.

But hey, let’s get a little clear-headed here, all right?

To start, take all this down with a pill or five:

• They’re 14-8-9, still in an Eastern Conference playoff position and, believe it or not, seven points behind the first-place Hurricanes. There’s no definition by which they can be described as out of anything.

“We’re right there,” as Erik Karlsson would tell me. “We know that. We all know that.”

• They’ve taken at least a point from 74% of all of their games, the highest such rate in the conference, somewhat mitigating the 1-9 record in games that go to overtime or shootout. Put another way, the Penguins’ eight regulation losses are the fewest in the conference, fourth-fewest in the entire league.

“I mean, all these games we’re talking about, we’re in a great situation to win it,” Sidney Crosby would say. “So we’re obviously doing something right there to be in these situations.”

He’s right that they are. Most of the time. Not this one. Utah commanded the puck in this one from the outset, owning dominant edges in shots (37-16), shot attempts (78-30) and high-danger chances (12-2). But it was the other way around against the Ducks and Sharks, pre-collapse.

• The power play’s still No. 1 in the league, converting at 32.1% and producing nearly a third and accounting for 27 of the team’s 99 overall goals. That’s a real and sustainable weapon.

• The kids are here. And Ben Kindel and Rutger McGroarty, in particular, just had a handful of games that’d be cause for excitement in pretty much any other environment. Heck, Kindel buried this breakaway with enough conviction that he might’ve earned his way into the next shootout:

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• Bodies are being added. Justin Brazeau popped his first two goals here since the injury that interrupted his six-goal start. Rickard Rakell’s back on the top line. Blake Lizotte, who’d been a key contributor in early success holding leads, might be another week. And Evgeni Malkin, without whom the Penguins have lost all five games, was back on the ice for a solo skate this morning.

Also, remember that the two players acquired in the Tristan Jarry trade, Stuart Skinner and Brett Kulak, missed this weekend while waiting on U.S. immigration coming from Canada.

It’s not like there’s nothing there. 

And yet, it’s also not like this very real, very painful problem isn’t there. And still waiting, weeks later, for what’ll apparently have to be a very potent solution.

So … talk it out.

The sense I get within the Penguins’ orbit, above and beyond all others, is one of being disjointed. And by that, yeah, I partially mean how they’ll panic on the ice when being pushed …

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… but also the causes of that panic.

I’ve posited for some time now that they began with Arturs Silovs’ early yips and, within this, that they were best positioned to win — and make the playoffs — with Jarry as their main guy, and it’s kinda hard to argue the data: They went 9-3-1 with Jarry, 5-5-8 without him. That ain’t close.

Why isolate on Silovs?

Because it was just past the 10-game mark or so that he’d begun paying for his inability to control rebounds, to use his stick, to see longer-distance shots, to stay upright … and that’s right around when those same yips spread to the skaters, in my view. Ask anyone who’s spent so much as a minute within hockey at any level, and they know the feeling all too well. If that trust in the goaltender isn’t there, all kinds of compensation can happen all over the rink, and almost all of it’s passive.

Precisely what Muse doesn’t want in such situations, as I re-clarified with him after this game.

“You can’t be cautious,” he’d reply firmly to my raising aggressiveness vs. passivity. “We don’t want anything to change. We don’t talk about change. We don’t talk about how, in the third period, hey, let’s sit back, let’s play it safe … I don’t believe in that. I think you have to play the whole game. We’re not approaching anything any different way. We’re just not playing well.”

Well, why aren’t they doing it, then, the way they did at Madison Square Garden?

I asked Karlsson, and I found his answer revealing:

           

“I don’t think we worry too much about the outcome,” he’d reply, referring to the first 10 or so games. “We were just playing hockey, staying in the moment. I think now, with the history that we’ve had here in the past couple of weeks, you start overthinking stuff, and you start worrying about the what-ifs, instead of just playing the situation. If they beat you, they beat you. It’s going to happen. We’re playing against the best players in the world, and we’ve got to remember that we’re a part of that group, and we’re more than capable to play with anyone. It’s more a mindset right now. I don’t think it has anything to do with systems or Xs and Os. I think it’s within ourselves, and we’ve got to find a way to regain that trust, individually and as a team.”

Mm-hm. And maybe the additions of Skinner and Kulak will help. Off the ice, as well. Both have been good players at various stages of their careers, and both bring voluminous experience with games far more important than a random Sunday against Utah. Intangibly alone, not having either in two could’ve only contributed to the air of uncertainty.

Along with, of course, trading Jarry amid what might’ve been the most inspired stretch of his generally star-crossed tenure in Pittsburgh. Believe me, they were buying what he was selling.

I’d say that should merit a little dialogue, too.

I won’t take this too far, but suffice it to say there’s been this awkward gap I’ve sensed between what management, specifically Kyle Dubas, has to say about the ongoing season, and what the players say and, on top of that, what Muse has to say. Myself, I’ve painted this scenario as one of parallel tracks — fortifying the future and making these playoffs — ideally steaming toward the same station, sooner rather than later.

But man, I’ll tell you, if there’s ever a time where Dubas should send some rock-solid signal that he’d prefer to see this group make the playoffs, that it’s as important to him as it is to them, this probably would be it.

See, it’s not that Jarry’s a great goaltender. It’s that he was their goaltender. Logic and rationality need not apply. And seeing him sent out, even in what might well be a win of a trade eventually, couldn’t have felt comfortable under these circumstances.

I speak with these players. I know their goal. And I know they feel, now that they’d spent some weeks being a hot topic in the hockey world, that they’d rather not give up what they’d gotten. Furthermore, they’d rather not have it taken away from above.”

More from Karlsson, even more revealing: “I think we all know the repercussions that it can bring after it’s all said and done. But then, at the same time, we can’t be too afraid of what’s going to happen in the future, and what-ifs. We’ve got to stay a little bit more in the moment? I think we’ve got to go back a little bit, maybe to a game-to-game basis and not look too far ahead and not worry about what could be, and just play our game. Because I think that we’ve shown for the majority of the season so far, that when we play the way that we want to, we’re capable of beating anyone.”

Have a meeting. Invite everyone essential. Locker room leaders. Coaches. Dubas, obviously.

And hey, if there’s an extra chair, ask one of those Fenway Sports Group overlords what they intend to do with that $13 million in unused cap space they’re about to pocket, since it can’t be rolled over to the following season. Better still, have Sid be the one posing that question while bringing up the massive discount he gave so that ownership could always spend up to the cap.

Muse can open with this, from his postgame today: “Right now, it’s obviously not feeling too good. The day off, we come back … we don’t have a choice. We have to stick together. We have to focus in on each day. Things come up, we address them, and we get them better. We’ll come back a day from now and get back to work, and that’s all we can do. The big thing right now is the group’s got to stick together. Otherwise, we’ll go the other way.”

Mario Lemieux attended both of these weekend collapses. If he showed, I’ll bet he’d have a thought or two to share this, possibly about what constitutes real commitment from the top.

Not that Fenway would ever want him in any such chair.

Oh, wait, one more: See that angry fan in the photo atop this column?

He flew to Pittsburgh all the way from the Netherlands, principally to catch all five games of this homestand. We met him this week at our Downtown HQ/shop. As passionate and knowledgeable as they come. He’s one of many who aren’t appreciating seeing stuff they’d never seen.

He won’t be needing a chair.