Gut-Check Time for Our Penguins

During the 2014-15 season, the Penguins were riding high under rookie coach Mike Johnston. Following a 6-4 victory over Edmonton on March 12, they had a healthy record of 39-18-10, good for 88 points. The playoffs seemed a shoe-in.

But a spate of injuries to key personnel exposed depth issues and threatened to bring the team down. The Pens went on a four-game losing streak, scoring only two goals in the process…and never recovered. They went 4-9-2 over the last month, barely squeaking into the playoffs on the final day of the season and were quickly dispatched by the Rangers in the first round.

Sound eerily familiar?

It should. Just 10 short days ago our present Pens capped an incredible sustained run with a convincing 5-2 victory over Toronto to snag first place in the Metropolitan Division. Now we’re locked in the throes of a five-game losing skid, with no apparent end in sight.

Maybe we should’ve seen this coming. Like the ’14-15 squad, this one’s been decimated by injuries. It’s truly a wonder we’ve stayed hot for as long as we have. Still, I confess to being caught off-guard by the sudden and dramatic downturn.

Looking back, the signs were there, much like early symptoms of an illness that occur before you actually become sick. A rather dramatic drop in our puck-possession numbers, the increase in breakdowns and odd-man breaks against, the lack of speed through the neutral and attacking zones and the inability to generate shots and second-chance opportunities from the prime scoring areas, along with a unhealthy dose of East-west-itis.

All of the above have infected our game.

It appears that a lack of confidence has seeped in, too. Nobody seems to want to take the puck and just go. Our guys appear to be hanging back, as if anticipating some unfavorable turn of events. Well, if you linger too long on the train tracks, eventually a train comes.

I’ve observed on several occasions that the Pens appear to be a tired hockey team and I believe this to be true. They’ve been stretched so thin yet have battled so valiantly, the mental, emotional and physical wear and tear was bound to catch up to them sooner or later.

Perhaps too long in the fox hole.

Nor did it help that coach Mike Sullivan soured on his fourth line in the New Year, for all intents and purposes keeping it chained to the bench for the past two months. Which had the unfortunate effect of putting an extra load on guys who were already being taxed.

So how do the Pens snap out of this? With a KISS…as in keep it simple, stupid. We need to get back to the basics. We need to get back to north-south. Instead of trying to make pretty plays at the blue line, we need to dump the puck in and use our speed to pressure opposing defenses. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Perhaps no easy task for a tired team. But it’s what we need to do.

Help will eventually come in the form of defensemen Brian Dumoulin and John Marino. They should provide a welcome boost from the back-end and help spark the sagging transition game. But for now the guys need to pull together and find a way through this.

It’s not just on the players. Sullivan and his staff need to step up, too. In December, I opined that “Sully” should be a Jack Adams candidate, and rightfully so. But he’s fallen into some bad old habits.

Namely, playing favorites.

His handling (or mishandling) of Juuso Riikola is a prime example. With the defense already thinned due to injuries, Sullivan’s stubbornly insisted on playing right-handed shots Chad Ruhwedel and more recently Zach Trotman ahead of the young Finn, even though Juuso’s game passes the eye test and his metrics are solid.

Last night it came back to bite us. Struggling to man the off-side, Trotman had a significant hand in two of the three goals against during a disheartening 3-2 loss to lowly Anaheim. Not to pick on Zach…he’s being put in a position to fail…but he’s a minus-3 in his past two games.

We’ve seen this type of behavior from Sullivan before. He ran Ian Cole, a gritty defensive pillar on the back-to-back Cup winners, out of town because of a personal bias. It could be argued our defense hasn’t been the same since. FYI…Cole’s a plus-26 for Colorado this season.

Do what’s best for the team, Sully. Not your ego.

I’ll finish with another trip to the WABAC machine. Around the New Year holiday in 2012, a very good Penguins team suddenly lost six games in a row, scoring only six goals in the process.

Everyone was shocked, especially since Evgeni Malkin was in the midst of an MVP-season and James Neal was headed toward 40 goals.

After much wailing, hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth, the Pens pulled out of the slump in a glorious way, winning eight games in a row.

Maybe it’s a bit much to hope for this team to respond in the same dramatic fashion. But perhaps our guys can get a start tonight in San Jose.

Puckpourri

Jason Zucker scored both black-and-gold goals last night. He now has five goals in nine games since his arrival, including a pair of two-goal games.

Justin Schultz assisted on Zucker’s first goal, snapping a 21-game pointless skein. Former Duck Marcus Pettersson collected two assists against his old team. Jared McCann picked up an assist as well.

Matt Murray allowed three goals on 21 shots.