{"id":153766,"date":"2025-08-09T16:39:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T16:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/153766\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T16:39:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T16:39:26","slug":"heartbreak-loss-should-stick-with-penguins-time-for-dubas-to-let-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/153766\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartbreak Loss Should Stick with Penguins; Time for Dubas to Let Rip"},"content":{"rendered":"

The heartbreak and realizations inside the Pittsburgh Penguins dressing room Saturday night<\/a> were palpable. From coach Mike Sullivan\u2019s subtle shift in tense and tone to captain Sidney Crosby\u2019s trailing voice, the loss to the Washington Capitals was a hard punch to the gut.<\/p>\n

The fight they\u2019ve waged to soldier forward together and stave off general manager Kyle Dubas\u2019s scythe effectively ended when they mightily failed to earn wins on the five-game homestand. A brief respite of hope after beating Buffalo on Friday<\/a> was then pancaked by the smothering Washington defensive scheme Saturday.<\/p>\n

The goal is to quickly turnaround the team to compete for a Stanley Cup again before Crosby is done. If so, the dirty work of that task needs to begin now.<\/p>\n

The Penguins didn\u2019t play poorly Saturday. They didn\u2019t abandon their game plan or make a laughable number of absent-minded mistakes. They brought something close enough to their A-game to be competitive.<\/p>\n

They were beaten by their rivals, who have for decades measured themselves against the Penguins. Even Washington\u2019s big moment was soon eclipsed by the Penguins; Washington got a superstar in the 2004 NHL Draft (Alex Ovechkin), and the Penguins got an all-time great (Crosby) in the following draft. Since the early 1990s, Washington has chased the Penguins with very little success.<\/p>\n

Yes, 2018. Many Capitals fans were more excited to beat the Penguins in Round Two than they were for the actual Stanley Cup. Yet in deference to the long-standing dominance, the Penguins were 5-0-1 in their last six jaunts through Washington D.C.\u2019s Chinatown arena. Regardless of its changing names, the Penguins have been the better team.<\/p>\n

Saturday, it was painfully obvious that is no longer the case. Washington is deservedly a first-place team that stifled the Penguins.<\/p>\n

Saturday, it was painfully obvious that Washington will be better for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Realizations can hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019ve just got to keep competing. And that\u2019s just the world we live in right now,\u201d Sullivan said with a dose of acquiescence. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to stay in the playoff race. Every game\u2026every game is important. We have to keep competing here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments were not made with rousing fire but as if there were no options left.<\/p>\n

Of course, you and I have seen this team summon strength we (and perhaps they) didn\u2019t know they had. The outlook was bleak well into November before a couple of days of practice in which Sullivan used both the carrot and the stick to inflate fallen egos and the stick to get the necessary buy-in to the scheme.<\/p>\n

The Penguins reeled off a great 14-game stretch, including 10 wins before the holiday break. However, with the breather went the Penguins\u2019 mojo. Or, more likely, the break brought about the regression to the mean. The Penguins are a competitive team, but compared to the refreshed Washington roster, they are indeed one or two goals short.<\/p>\n

Those big changes the players have known are possible but have been fighting to delay can no longer be delayed. They are fighting a losing battle, as only the similarly caught-in-transition New York Islanders<\/a> and the Buffalo Sabres trail them in the Eastern Conference standings\u2014not the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens<\/a> or Philadelphia Flyers<\/a>, and not the afterthought Columbus Blue Jackets.<\/p>\n

Only the imploded Sabres and crumbling Islanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot until the pain of the same is greater than the pain of change will you embrace change.\u201d \u2013 Dave Ramsey. Jul 7, 2009.<\/p>\n

As the Penguins careen toward their fate, it probably bears asking the championship core again: Are you sure you want to go through with this? Do you really want to ride this all the way to the end?<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: If Washington had been saddled with a struggling Nick Backstrom<\/a> and an impaired T.J. Oshie, they wouldn\u2019t have had the salary cap space or roster flexibility to make the changes they did. Perhaps not the motivation, either. From a salary cap standpoint (not from a human perspective), Washington got lucky, and without the opportunity, they would also be competitive but not the surprisingly stout and vibrant team.<\/p>\n

Fans should also note that Brian MacLellan and new GM Chris Patrick didn\u2019t go nuclear and tear down the roster. They began adding castoffs, such as Dylan Strome and Sonny Milano, to bridge the gaps. Then they took big swings with Chychrun and Pierre-Luc Dubois.<\/p>\n

Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas<\/a> has frequently stated he also intends to attempt a turnaround without a sweeping teardown.<\/p>\n

How Washington got Logan Thompson for a pair of third-rounders is still as mysterious as it was impressive and stands in stark contrast to Dubas\u2019s healthy contract to Tristan Jarry, now in the AHL. But that\u2019s beside the larger point that the Penguins are well behind. The loss Saturday might not have been a mortal blow, but \u2026 maybe it was.<\/p>\n

The crestfallen responses within the locker room were striking. It truly felt like the team was coming to grips not with a loss but with what they know is the end of the road as they know it. They lacked the fiery disappointment of their Western Canada trip last February into early March, which led to the Jake Guentzel trade days later, but the gravity of the moment felt the same.<\/p>\n

The Penguins players have some measure of control over on-ice performance and transactions, but the lessons should not be lost. Not on them or on Dubas.<\/p>\n

There seems no more pretense or reason to keep fighting a fight that was lost over the five-game homestand. It\u2019s time for Dubas to let rip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The heartbreak and realizations inside the Pittsburgh Penguins dressing room Saturday night were palpable. From coach Mike Sullivan\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,58,5,134,4,6634,100,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-153766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-kyle-dubas","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-penguins-game","14":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","15":"tag-washington","16":"tag-washington-capitals","17":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/114999798397224902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}