Penguins Lurching at the Quarter Pole

I don’t know about you. But watching our Penguins get skewered yesterday afternoon by the Minnesota Wild was tougher for me to swallow than a leftover turkey sandwich without the mayo. Especially after the Pens had demolished a very tough Rangers squad only two days earlier in arguably their finest effort of the season.

Indeed, the team’s play leading up to the quarter pole of the 2016-17 campaign has been positively bipolar. Up one game. Down the next.

“It’s hard for me to try to explain it,” said exasperated Penguins coach Mike Sullivan. “If I could, I could probably solve it.”

There are plenty of factors contributing to the team’s recent slide. Injuries to feisty crease crashers Patric Hornqvist and Chris Kunitz, for one.

Poor decision-making hasn’t helped.

“We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the puck in that end zone,” Sullivan noted. “If we’re not sure, sometimes the best play is no play. We’ve got to have more of a conscience on where we’re putting pucks.”

An unsettled defensive mix is an issue, too. While the third pairing of Ian Cole and Justin Schultz has been a pleasant surprise, the top two tandems have struggled at times. Sullivan only recently reshuffled the deck, teaming Brian Dumoulin with old partner, Trevor Daley, while elevating Olli Maatta to the number-one pairing beside Kris Letang.

Then there’s goaltending. Truth be told, the Pens have been a far different club with Matt Murray guarding the net than Marc-Andre Fleury. When the kid plays, they resemble Stanley Cup champs. With “Flower” between the pipes, they morph into The Bad News Bears on ice.

A classic case of the chicken or the egg. Is the goaltender’s performance a by-product of his team’s play? Or does the team takes its cue from the goalie?

Predominantly the latter, I say. When Murray tends the twine, the Penguins appear much more structured and settled. The numbers support my observation. The locals have yielded an average of 28.7 shots on goal per 60 minutes with the Thunder Bay native in net. Perfectly in line with the 29.4 they allowed during the 2015-16 regular season.

With Fleury? The average spikes to an ungodly 34.3. An unfortunate reflection of Flower’s frenetic style?

Perhaps.

Although not for a lack of effort, there’s no denying No. 29’s struggled this season. His .901 save percentage lags far below the league norm (.914 according to Quainthockey.com). Likewise, Fleury’s inflated goals against average (3.38) harkens back to the days of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and skinny brown pads.

Maybe he’s having trouble adapting to his new role as a part-time starter. With seven seasons of 60-plus games, Flower’s accustomed to a hefty workload. Or maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he realizes his days in a Penguins uniform likely are numbered.

Whatever the root cause, Fleury appears to be pressing. When he presses, he makes mistakes.

Take the grievous 5-2 home-ice loss to the Rangers on November 21, for example. The Pens raced to a quick lead on a pair of feel-good goals by rookie Jake Guentzel. The building was rocking; the black and gold appeared to have the game well in hand. Then New York’s Rick Nash scored from point-blank range early in the second period, set up by an unfortunate bounce off a sprawling Schultz.

The goal clearly wasn’t Fleury’s fault. But he reacted as if it were. He began to scramble and overcompensate, culminating in a puck-handling gaffe that led directly to the Rangers’ second goal. A tally that knotted the score at 2-2 and sucked the air out of PPG Paints Arena. Shades of his lone playoff start against Tampa Bay last spring.

It was all downhill after that.

Flower’s mental makeup stands in stark contrast to Murray, who seems to shake off goals—even the occasional softie—with a preternatural cool. A quality Sullivan lauded on numerous occasions during the Cup run.

So what’s a coach to do? It would seem incredibly harsh to consign Fleury to a backup role, given his career achievements and immense popularity among his teammates. Perhaps you pull the two-time team MVP from the rotation for a brief spell and afford him a chance to reset.

Then there’s the option no one wants to consider, but which may well be the best thing for him and, ultimately, the team.

A trade.

In the meantime, here’s hoping Flower’s able to work through his funk.

Same with our Penguins.