Roughly a third of the way through the season, I’m still not sure if our Penguins are a playoff team, let alone a Stanley Cup contender.
There are holes galore. The fourth line is virtually non-existent. The “Two-Headed Monster” ain’t what it used to be. Our ‘d’ touches nary a soul. The special teams stink.
We could desperately use in no particular order a scoring winger, a net-front presence and some good old-fashioned muscle.
Yet for all of our apparent flaws, this bunch possesses an indefinable something. Call it resilience. Call it character. Call it heart. With few exceptions, when the chips are down we respond. Just we did last night when we chased down the Islanders at rickety old Nassau County Coliseum to register a 4-3 overtime triumph.
It was the Pens’ sixth victory when trailing going into the third period. Pretty remarkable stuff from an otherwise unremarkable team.
Typical of our never-do-things-the-easy-way approach, we totally squandered two early power plays. Shortly thereafter, the Isles cashed in on their lone man-advantage of the night. I’ll give you three guesses as to how it happened. If you said burly Brock Nelson was granted free-and-clear access to the front of the net to score on a deflection, you’d be correct.
Down by a goal early in the second period, we mostly watched as Matt Barzal circumnavigated our zone and wired the puck home off the stick of John Marino, invoking memories of Jaromir Jagr’s skate-through-the-entire-Blackhawks-team effort in the ’92 Cup Final.
Can anybody take the body in our own end? Sorry, I digress…
At this stage, it appeared for all the world as if we were headed to a dismal defeat. After all, the Islanders were fresh off a 7-2 demolition of Boston and we didn’t look so hot. Guess I should’ve know better (oh ye of little faith).
Our rally started with a couple of gifts. Make that three, actually. Oliver Wahlstrom drew a boarding call. Someone (Sidney Crosby to be precise) actually shot the puck on the power play. And Isles goalie Semyon Varlamov fell down. That’s right…he tripped over his own skates and fell. Splat.
The goal had scarcely been announced over the PA system when Kasperi Kapanen left Ryan Pulock in the dust behind the New York net and dished a sweet backhand pass to Kris Letang in the right circle. “Tanger” beat Varlamov, deep in his net, low to the stick side.
Pretty play. Pretty goal. Scored tied at 2-2.
To quote Robert Pastorelli’s deranged character in the made-in-the-Burgh flick Striking Distance, “Now we got us a game.”
Then Islanders took over, dominating the second half of the period. With five minutes to go Josh Bailey culminated a beautiful series of tape-to-tape passes by beating Tristan Jarry from the slot.
But like the marching band in Don McLean’s classic American Pie, the Pens refused to yield. On the opening shift of the third period Evgeni Malkin blew past a pinching Adam Pelech to set up a 2-on-1. Looking like the Geno of old, he deftly slipped a pass into Jared McCann’s wheelhouse and No. 19 did the rest, ripping the puck home. Welcome back Jared. We missed ya’.
With 26 seconds remaining in OT, Letang brought the final curtain down, splitting the Islanders’ defense following a coast-to-coast rush and beating Varlamov from the slot.
Puckpourri
The Pens outshot the Islanders, 31-27, but lost the faceoff battle, winning only 46 percent of the draws. New York outhit us, 30-23.
Speaking of hits, Anthony Angello delivered a team-high five in a shade over nine minutes of ice time. The big guy (6’5”, 210) impressed with his skating and intensity and even saw second power-play duty. He joined Sam Lafferty and Colton Sceviour on the fourth line. Drew O’Connor was returned to the taxi squad. Mark Jankowski sat out with what’s being described as a day-to-day injury.
The second line seemed revitalized with McCann joining the mix. They held a 13-7 edge in 5v5 scoring chances and a 20-11 advantage in 5v5 shot attempts. Perhaps most encouraging, Malkin is starting to look like Malkin again instead of a poor excuse for a doppelganger smuggled in by the KGB.
However, the third line of Teddy Blueger, Zach Aston-Reese and Brandon Tanev was uncharacteristically dominated for the better part of the game. Once again rendering us a two-line team.
Coach Mike Sullivan swapped out struggling Pierre Olivier-Joseph for Marcus Pettersson on the top defensive pairing. While receiving sheltered minutes next to Cody Ceci, PO enjoyed an 11-5 advantage in 5v5 shot attempts. Ceci authored a typically solid game (two hits, two blocked shots and a takeaway).
Letang’s two-goal effort was his second in the past four games. He has seven points over that span.
We appear to have found a chink in Varlamov’s armor. Nearly all of our goals of late have gone in on the stick side. Upstairs in particular.
Pryor Hire
Yesterday the Pens hired 60-year-old Chris Pryor to serve as director of player personnel. He replaces Derek Clancey, who filled that role for parts of two seasons.
Working as GM Ron Hextall’s right-hand man in Philadelphia, Pryor had a hand in drafting such plums as Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim, Ivan Provorov, Travis Konecny and Carter Hart.
An Eye for an Eye?
When asked about the possibility of adding a Tom Wilson-type physical presence, Hextall replied with a bit of double-speak.
“I think every team in the league would like to have that type of player,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of them. And you’ve got a short roster size. It’s tough. If we could find someone to certainly play that role and give us a more physical element, we’d certainly look at it. But part of me is with Mike (Sullivan) where if you make them pay for those penalties, they’re going to think twice about taking the penalties. But in short, yes, if we could add someone like that, we’d like to.”
It should be noted that Hextall actually defanged the Flyers during his tenure in Philly, focusing on adding skill and speed.
