Penguins: Shouldn’t You be Playing Playoff Hockey Right Now

Watching last night’s game, it could easily get discouraging.

I am sorry, but it is true.

No, I am not talking about the fact that the team lost. I am talking about the trends that I am seeing.

Last night was just one more road loss. Several of our readers have bemoaned this recently, and they are very right to do so. Columbus, who is now breathing down the Penguins neck in the standings and who picked up Ian Cole off of Ottawa for nothing more than a 3rd round draft pick has a weak road record at 17-17-3. Unfortunately our Birds of Winter have a worse record on the road, a losing record on the road, 15-19-4. Barring a miracle, the Penguins are going to have to at least face an Atlantic Division team on the road to get to the Cup. (Yes, probably the Capitals too, but the Capitals are the Capitals) So, the team will have to be perfect at home and find a way to steal at least 1 road game. If the team loses 1 at home, the odds will get very long against them.

Another trend that concerns me is that last night they gave up 40 shots (and countless post and cross bar hits) to a team that is 18th in the league in shots/game. If this were October, November or even early February, that wouldn’t be cause for concern. It is hard to stay focused over the entire 82 game marathon. So a clunker night doesn’t mean we have to run around like chickens without our heads yelling the sky is falling. However, this is almost April, and there were only 10 games left going into last night’s game and it was a road game, a game you are supposed to try and focus on team defense and yet they managed to yield 40 shots against.

To me, the worst part of what I am seeing is the lack of fire with which the team seems to be skating. With a shot at pulling back even in the race for the top spot in the division the team got out hit 25 – 17. Yes the Islanders are 10th in the league in hits but the Penguins are 6th in the league in that department. More importantly, the Penguins were behind the 8-ball most of the game, they fell behind early and sat around watching the chance to come back evaporate. Granted, they held the edge in even strength CORSI (most of the Islanders Offense came when they were on the power play). However, the Penguins showed very little fight.

Not only did they show very little fight, but frustration was evident. Patric Hornqvist, who usually channels his emotions into fight, took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty over a High Stick on the puck call. Taking a penalty like that, that early in the game (6:47 of the second period) may be a sign of a frustration that goes deeper than the sleep walking performance that was going on around him, by his teammates.

On the second goal against, Kris Letang tried to force the puck to a covered Jake Guentzel, therefore, it came as no great surprise to me that the Islander defenseman was able to force him to cough up the puck. I do not necessarily want to blame Letang, not completely anyway. Yes, he could have tried to skate with the puck a little longer, the Islander fore-checker was closing on him, but not quite there yet, but Guentzel did not try and skate to the puck, he basically stood there waiting for the puck to come to him. He made it easy for the Islanders to defend it.

Guentzel did miss a shift or two after that, however, with the glut of penalties that occurred, it is hard to determine why Guentzel was sitting. Maybe, Mike Sullivan sat him for his lazy play, maybe not.

But he wasn’t the only play letting the play come to him. The only players I really saw skating to the puck rather than waiting for the puck to play him, with any consistency was Carl Hagelin and Phil Kessel.

If Sullivan did sit Guentzel for that lazy play, then I would support him. I like Guentzel but I hate lazy passive mistakes. However, before I would have sat Guentzel, (and I know he scored the lone Penguins goal) Conor Sheary would have been given bench time. Long before Guentzel made his lazy guffaw, Sheary took himself out of position and then got totally used to help give the Islanders their first goal.

As the play developed all three Islander forwards were all off in the corner to Matt Murray’s right. No one was in front of the net or in the slot, yet Sheary drifted down between the circles, leaving both Islander defenders open. The Islanders won the puck and got it back center point. Sheary, instead of being there to cover the center point had to give chance. The Islander defender beat him like a rented mule, to steal a phrase, and slipped the puck around the Penguins out of position winger, to the Islanders’ Johnny Boychuck, who hammered it on to the net. Boychuk was originally given credit for the goal, but it was later changed to Mathew Barzal.

Of course Sheary didn’t get a sit down for his guffaw. No actually, according to a comment from Bob Errey, made during the game, Sheary has been drawing praise from Sullivan. For what, I don’t know. Yes, he score the lone goal, but it was Kessel that did the work and just like the playoff goal Sheary scored against the Predators, it took a great, great, look off by the player creating the play, freezing the goalie, to give Sheary the chance to score. In last year’s playoff game, it was Chris Kunitz who really deserved credit for the goal and last night it was Kessel. In fact, last night, Sheary barely got the puck into the net. By no stretch of the imagination was that a goal scorer’s goal. He didn’t bury it. He got no elevation and just sort of pushed the puck towards the net, bouncing it in off of the goalies pads, just inside the post. If Christopher Gibson did not respect Kessel as a shooter, the Goalie would have been in position to stop that play, very, very easy. It would have gone down in the long line of opportunities that Sheary gets, that get squandered.

I have said it before and I will say it again, there are several players in the Penguins organization that I would be playing before I would play Sheary. Yes, he has tons of heart, and is a feel good story, but he doesn’t get the job done. With other players in there, rather than Sheary, the team doesn’t need last night’s game as much as it did (not that they are in a bad position, but they could very easily be having the Capitals chase them), nor would they have been fighting to get back into the game, last night, if Sheary didn’t get burned on the first goal.

If the Penguins fail to 3-peat, it just may be due to some serious blind spots when it comes to personnel.