Answers are escaping the Pittsburgh Penguins. A befuddled and bewildered locker room should, in fact, beware because this current six-game winless streak has the potential to hit nine or 10 quickly, with the Ottawa Senators, Montreal Canadiens, and Toronto Maple Leafs anxiously awaiting to gobble up points against a team that has avoided them like toxic waste.
Yes, this current slide feels bad. Very bad.
However, we made the mistake before of writing off this Penguins team. We thought the bottom dropped out in late November, only to watch the Penguins claw several improbable wins.
But this current slide feels worse than the bottom dropping out. It feels like a terminal spiral with the hopes and expectations pureed. Soft goaltending from all three of the organization’s top goalies, the blue line getting walked, and the forwards unable to light the lamp have oscillated through parts of the season, but have now emerged simultaneously, especially when the team has a lead.
They also occurred without a lead, as was the case in their ugly 6-4 loss to the Edmonton Oilers Tuesday. If not for a Bryan Rust goal with three minutes remaining, which he barely celebrated, and a Danton Heinen goal with a mere 13 seconds remaining, the score would have been a deflating 6-3. Or 5-2.
There was an unraveling quality to the postgame Tuesday night.
Erik Karlsson seemed to strike down every level of the Penguins’ effort, from the coach to players, in two sentences.
“I don’t think we played poorly, but I also don’t think we played the smartest game for the matchup that we had. That’s on us in here, too, to realize that a little earlier,” Karlsson said.
Indeed, the Penguins tried to play an offensive game full of stretch passes, cross-ice slings, and rush attempts into a waiting defense. The Penguins did not play behind the Edmonton defense, but instead, they played in front of it.
The evidence was buried in the advanced analytics, which showed nearly even shot attempts and scoring chances. But, when factoring in shot blocks for the blocking team, instead of the shooter–known as Fenwick–the Penguins were in trouble. Removing the third period of a decided game, the Penguins’ Fenwick score was a mere 38%.
That essentially means the Penguins were on the outside shooting and the Oilers were on the inside.
Even the professorial coach Dan Muse had an exasperated tone Tuesday.
“It obviously adds up. It wears on you. Yeah, as I’ve said before, it’s going to be different every night. Like, no two games are the same, and so we have to just focus on the things that we do,” said Muse. “Tonight it ended up being a lot of special teams … we put ourselves in a hole in the first period that I don’t think we necessarily needed to be in.”
Overall, it surely feels like the Penguins are close to imploding. It surely did not help to see former goalie Tristan Jarry turn aside their few legitimate scoring chances, while newly acquired Stuart Skinner leaked a couple of goals that he admitted shouldn’t have been.
However, despite the vibe check last Thursday, which revealed an upbeat team that was shaking off the extra-attacker losses, the remarkable losses in which they blew a four-goal lead Saturday and a three-goal lead Sunday seem to have hit them hard.
No other team in the NHL has blown more than one three-goal lead.
Yet the Penguins have lost while leading by three or more three times. The Penguins lost in regulation to the Toronto Maple Leafs and in overtime to the San Jose Sharks and Utah Mammoth. The Penguins also overcame their big-lead foibles to beat the Washington Capitals on Nov. 6 and the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 4.
Good News Lost?
Before the regulation loss Tuesday, the Penguins still had the fifth-best winning percentage in the Eastern Conference. That should be good, right?
But in the dark light of losing, even that seemed to be lost, admittedly so.
“I think human nature kicks in. It becomes tougher (to see positives),” Muse said Tuesday morning. “Sometimes, you’ve got to fight human nature and recognize those things. If you go last game–the Utah game–we didn’t play well … there are a lot of things we need to clean up. Did we deserve that lead as a result of our overall play? Probably should have been closer than it was.
“But if you go to San Jose, other games in that recent stretch, are there parts of our game that we really like? There are. We’ve just got to make sure we build in more consistency.”
That was before being soundly beaten by Edmonton. After the loss, the Penguins fell to the eighth-best percentage, but the entire Eastern Conference is now .500 or better (perhaps winning percentage in hockey should be calculated differently, too).
Sidney Crosby
For the icing on the cake, on the precipice of breaking the franchise’s all-time scoring mark, Sidney Crosby has not been on point. His body language is off, and his defense has been, shall we write, less than Selke-worthy.
According to HockeyStats.com, Crosby’s even-strength defense ranks behind 81% of players this season, which only exacerbates his scoring dips.
Perhaps his mini-slump should have been expected. He has one assist in the last two games, which mirrors his games before scoring his 1000th point (one assist in three games), and hitting 1500 (scoreless in two straight).
Since Crosby didn’t break Mario Lemieux’s franchise points record Tuesday–he’s one point shy of tying–it would seem the second-best place to do it would be in Montreal, a hockey hometown of sorts for both him and Lemieux.
Perhaps that’s the feel-good the Penguins need.
Tags: erik karlsson Pittsburgh Penguins Sidney Crosby
Categorized: PHN Blog