“Point-one seconds left,” Sidney Crosby said, shaking his head as he looked at the floor of the Penguins’ locker room on Tuesday.
“It’s crazy.”
The Penguins were well on their way to one of their better-played games of the season against the Ducks, producing a new season-high in shots on goal while simultaneously limiting the Ducks’ quality chances, though only having a one-goal lead to show for it.
The Ducks had goaltender Ville Husso pulled for the extra attacker when Chris Kreider tripped Danton Heinen with 17.5 seconds left on the clock. And instead of closing out what should have been an encouraging victory against a good team, Beckett Sennecke tied the game up with a tenth of a second remaining, setting the stage for the Penguins to eventually fall 4-3 in a shootout.
“You know, we did a lot of good things tonight,” an exasperated Crosby told me in a one-on-one conversation after the game. “It’s unfortunate.”
When Heinen was tripped late in the game, he was on the ice with Connor Dewar, Noel Acciari, Kris Letang and Ryan Shea. It was a sensible forward line to have out there late and defending a lead — those three had been on the ice for the fewest shots on goal all game, despite being relied on heavily for defensive zone faceoffs. They had fared well, keeping the Ducks off the scoreboard.
But when the Penguins got that power play late, Dan Muse sent out his forward line that had been on the ice for the Ducks two earlier goals — Crosby, Bryan Rust and Tommy Novak. On defense, he deployed one of his defensemen who had been on the ice for the two earlier goals against in Erik Karlsson, and another offensive-minded right-handed defenseman in Kris Letang.
All the Penguins needed to do was close out the game. There are no bonus points gained in the standings for a multi-goal margin in a win. They needed to protect the lead. If Muse didn’t want to leave his fourth line out there and wanted fresh legs, the “Kid” line of Rutger McGroarty, Ben Kindel and Ville Koivunen was having an exceptional game on both sides of the puck. On defense, Ryan Graves and Connor Clifton were putting together the best performance from their third pairing all season, conceding just a single shot on goal all game and controlling an astounding 97.8% of the expected goals.
“They went to pull their goalie, and we kind of fumbled the puck near their blue line,” Crosby told me of what then transpired, noting that he’d have to rewatch the sequence again to be sure. “They had a rim that was eight feet high, that somehow they were able to handle and try and play, and they got a bounce.”
It was Karlsson’s glove that put the puck over the line:
Muse defended his deployment choices in that situation.
“Both of those defensemen are out there in every situation,” he said. “They’re out there. They play five on six. They’re both guys that are used in defensive situations as well. You get into a situation like that, if you have possession, you know pressure is going to be coming. We feel like the goal is to keep possession. … We got it, tried to make a play there, it ends up going in. They pulled the goalie and they got space to get it to the net, so that absolutely can’t happen. But for who’s out on the ice, that’s it. The line that was out there was the same line that was out there for good chunk there five on six as well.”
Karlsson stated the obvious after when he said that was “definitely something that should not happen.”
“Being up a goal the way that we were with 17 seconds left, that’s a game that we should win 99.9% of the time.”
The Penguins have absolutely had trouble closing out games this season. When they enter the third period with a lead, they have the 28th-best points percentage in the league, at just .692. This wasn’t one of those games — after Acciari opened the scoring with the lone first-period goal and Jackson LaCombe and Troy Terry put the Ducks ahead 2-1 late in the second period, Novak tied the game with 19 seconds left in the second. It was Anthony Mantha’s power-play goal with 3:55 remaining that should have been able to stand as the game-winner.
The circumstances surrounding this latest blown third-period lead were different than the rest. This wasn’t letting off the gas, this wasn’t fatigue, this was hardly even on the goaltending of Arturs Silovs. With a different personnel combination at the end, maybe the Penguins could have managed to close it out.
“There’s always going to be reasons,” Crosby said of this blown lead. “We’ve just got to find a way to close it out. When you get in those situations, late in games, it’s not usually pretty. I mean, I think in this case, with the power play, with it just being even, you’ve got to find a way just keep the puck out of the net.
This marks seven games now lost in either overtime or a shootout, and seven points left on the table. That’s tied for the second-most overtime or shootout losses in the league.
The Penguins are only four points out of first in the division and a tightly-contested Eastern Conference. They’re in a three-way tie for the two wild card spots in the East, five points from next-to-last in the conference, and nine points from dead last in the conference.
The playoff race in the East seems likely to come down to the wire. Seven lost points will become massive by April. Even one could be the difference between making the postseason and yet another early summer — and of those seven, this one should have been the easiest to hold onto.