Recently, a writer from another blog whose work I respect a great deal opined that our Penguins are a very good team. Perhaps even a great one.
While I may agree with the first part of his assertion, I beg to differ with the second. In the wake of the Pens’ disappointing 6-4 home-ice loss to the Avalanche last night, we’re proving ourselves to be a notch below the NHL elite.
Make that a considerable notch below.
This isn’t a knock but rather a statement of fact. Going back to the preseason, most pundits including myself felt the Pens would be hard-pressed to make the playoffs. Barring a total and unforeseen collapse, we most assuredly are a playoff team. You might even say we’ve overachieved. However, unless we suddenly display another gear or a new-found affinity for discipline and structure, we won’t be celebrating a Stanley Cup this spring.
In many ways last night’s game was a microcosm of our season, or at the very least our recent efforts. We did a lot of things well. We overwhelmed the Avs out of the gate, piling up a 19-11 advantage in first-period shots on goal. In terms of possession, we dominated across the board, rolling up an impressive edge in shot attempts (68-52), shots on goal (45-32), scoring chances (37-28) and high-danger chances (19-11). For good measure, we controlled the faceoff circle, taking 63 percent of the draws.
We did everything it seems but win the game. An all-too-common common theme lately.
Defensive breakdowns again proved costly. On the Avs’ second goal, rookie Alex Newhook burst past Marcus Pettersson, turning the black-and-gold defender into the equivalent of a rusty gate. Resulting in an open look in the slot for J.T. Compher. Darren Helm’s backbreaker at 15:03 of the third period to make it 5-2, Avs, predictably came off a 2-on-1.
Nor does Tristan Jarry, a veritable Rock of Gibraltar for much of the season, get a free pass. He allowed long-range goals on rather innocuous-looking shots from Nathan MacKinnon and Josh Manson. Shades of his ill-fated performance against the Islanders last spring.
Manson’s dagger just 61 seconds into the final frame was particularly damaging. It gave the Avs a two-goal lead while snatching precious momentum away from the Pens, who’d been gathering steam.
Looking ahead to the postseason, Cup-winning teams don’t beat themselves. The Pens contribute to their own demise all-too-often.
The Goals
MacKinnon (2), Compher, Manson, Helm and rumored black-and-gold trade target Artturi Lehkonen scored for the Avs. Bryan Rust (23), Evan Rodrigues (18), Jake Guentzel (33) and Mike Matheson countered for the locals.
Rust actually scored the first Avs’ goal as well, credited to MacKinnon. Devon Toews returned the favor on Rodrigues’ goal, which came following a breakaway attempt and goal-mouth scramble. E-Rod snapped an 11-game goal drought. Rust established a new career high with 57 points. Matheson’s tally, his 11th on the season and fourth in 13 games, set a new career best as well.
Puckpourri
Pettersson, who assisted on Rust’s tally, replaced Mark Friedman. After several weeks of experimenting, coach Mike Sullivan returned to his traditional defensive pairs: Brian Dumoulin–Kris Letang, Pettersson-John Marino and Matheson-Chad Ruhwedel. He kept his line combinations from Saturday’s loss intact. Which leads me to…
A Bone to Pick
At a critical juncture of the season, Sullivan’s mothballed the fourth line. In a carryover from Saturday, Anthony Angello saw just 7:01 of ice time, Danton Heinen even less (6:57). Brian Boyle, arguably our most effective depth scorer during the past month (three goals and seven points over the past 13 games) saw 9:30 of ice time.
Sully’s got a veteran team (old legs), yet he’s shortening his bench? That makes about as much sense as a screen door in a submarine.
Ironically, despite their scant usage Boyle and Heinen each picked up an assist.
Mind you, Boyle had only recently shown excellent chemistry with Teddy Blueger and Radim Zohorna on what was proving to be a very effective fourth line. Yet Sullivan broke up the unit and parked Big Z (second among our forwards in plus-minus) in the press box.
This isn’t the first time Sullivan’s pulled apart an effective line. Indeed, he has an annoying habit of churning through combinations until he finds guys he doesn’t trust or want to play, especially where the fourth line’s concerned.
If you’re not going to use a guy, what’s the sense in dressing him? With depth scoring at a premium, put someone in there you will play.
Grrrrrrr.
Where We’re At
With the loss, the Pens (41-20-10, 92 points) fall six points behind front-running Carolina and four in back of the Rangers, our next opponent. It was a foregone conclusion the Blueshirts would be our first-round foe. However, with both the Hurricanes and Pens stumbling and the Rangers streaking, we just might meet the ‘Canes instead. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Hey Rick..
We have lost 6 of our last 8 games the Hockey Writers say….
New York is a little faster team. We played well but our defense/transition was exposed again.
They are just a better team…. We need a different plan to beat them. Maybe that trap you talked about ???
I know one thing…..We will not out skate them and we definitely are not going to out muscle them.
Good night
Jim
Very well written Rick. I could not agree with you more. We are a good team.A good team that has passed it’s prime as they say and there within is the real problem.The Capitals are going thru the same problem only we have a few better players than they do as of today. If Malkin goes back to Russia, Letang signs with Montreal and another team offers Rust a long term, big dollar contract in the off season, we will be worse off than they are now. That is a possibility..
If you look at the league standings today, we have fallen to 8th place in the league with 92 points in 71 games. The next 3 teams below us have played only 69 games.If they win those 2 games, we drop to 11 th place in the league.
A good team yes, but not a great team as you say.
Moving forward the Pen’s play 8 of their final 11 games against teams that can beat us unless we bring our A game.
Not saying all 8 will beat us but I will go out on a limb and say we WILL LOSE 5-6 of the 11 remaining games.
If that be the case we could drop to 13th in the league when the season ends.
Not to far off from where we all said at the start of the season this would be a tough one for our beloved Pen’s.
I also want to close Rick with saying I agree with what Mike has said….The Pen’s are to predictable in their approach to the
game of hockey.This one style fits all is crazy….
As one HNIC writer said…The Rangers are faster,younger and bigger than the Pen’s and we want to beat them with
speed ????? Carolina as well….
Great analysis Rick.
Cheers
Jim
This is for Jim and Mike.
Great comments both and I think you guys hit on something dead on. Mike Sullivan only seems to be able to coach one style…his attacking, forechecking game.
Two people…one of our announcers and a writer from another blog…mentioned that the Avs made an adjustment in the second period and went to a more trapping style. One of them said it was the same adjustment Barry Trotz made against us last year in the playoffs. Again, it appears that Sullivan didn’t respond to it or if he did, not effectively.
To borrow from an old SNL skit, Sullivan’s answer for everything seems to be “more cowbell.” In other words, try to ramp up what we’re already doing. Instead of making an adjustment to his system, this puts the onus on the players to physically perform up to a level they may not be able to attain, depending on the opponent.
As you so aptly mentioned, Jim, what happens when we come up against a team like the Rangers that’s bigger, faster and perhaps better?
We get completely neutralized, that’s what happens.
I keep going back to the opening round in 1992. We were getting our lunch handed to us by the Capitals, who were beating us at our own game. So Scotty Bowman adjusts (at the behest of his players) and switches to a trapping system known as the 1-4 delay. Without that adjustment, we don’t beat the Capitals and we don’t go on to win our second Cup.
Rick
Rick,
Well said.
I am not trying to be funny with this comment, but if Scotty Bowman was our Coach, I would feel a heck of a lot better about this team. Bowman was a real Coach. He did not always get it right but what he did do, was he learned from his mistakes and made adjustments quickly along the way. That is what real Coaches do !!
Plus ALL his players in Montreal,Detroit and Pittsburgh, had great respect for him. I watched one Saturday nite when Scotty Bowman benched Guy LaFleur for 2 periods. In Montreal !
It was the right decision to do and most of the fans loved him for it.
I am a great fan of Scotty Bowman. A true hockey legend.
Jim
Bowman was almost single-handedly responsible for the loss to the Islanders in 1992-93.
Game 7 was one of the most bizarre coaching jobs of all time. Martin Straka scored a pair of SHG in Game 6 and gave the Islanders fits on breakouts with his disruptive forechecking speed; benched in Game 7 for Bowman pet and non-entity Jeff Daniels. Also, insisted on playing fossil Mike Ramsey on defense who was repeatedly exploited by the Islanders and gave gap to them all game long to build up speed and back us off our blue line. There were other things that were off the record stuff about Bowman that would blow the minds of people who insist on mythologizing this strident and inflexible steward of that disastrous series. The Stevens’ injury was the darkest moment but the series should not have been a jump ball but for Bowman. It still rankles me, nearly 30 years later. Sorry, but I just cannot endure rhapsodies about the great Scotty Bowman.
Hey John,
I appreciate your feedback.I did not realize what Bowman did in 1992-93 as I live far away from Pittsburgh in Atlantic Canada. Thank you.
For me Scotty Bowman won 5 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadians in 1973,76.77.78. and 79. Then he went on to Coach Pittsburgh when their Coach was ill and in 1992,he took over as Head coach and he won his 6th Stanley Cup championship.
Following that he goes on to Detroit and in 1997 and 1998 he wins 2 more Stanley Cups as a Coach.Then he wins his NHL record ninth Stanley Cup championship as a Coach in 2002 as the Red Wings won again.
No Coach has ever done that in NHL history to win with 9 Stanley Cups with 3 different teams .
The legendary Toe Blake of the Montreal Canadians won 8 Cups as a Head Coach in a different era.
So that is the reason I admire Scotty Bowman because he simply has the NHL record and he accomplished something no other Head Coach to date has ever done..
Cheers
Jim
Yes but Bowman also had great material and when we got him he apparently had lost it. He was not immune to old boy biases that undermine any ceding of intellectual superiority. In the late stages of that game, Bowman made yeoman errors that left a high profile Penguin to express the disbelief felt up and down the bench. It was expressed to me and a writer from the player’s native republic but he did not want it public and when he told us, that writer had to later translate to me what had been said. It was simply stunning is all I can say, but it was a case of him just napping on the job, causing the players to have to exhort him in the heat of battle of the screwup which was costly. That was just a symptom of a general strategic failure. I will now stop typing because my heart rate is jumping. I have nothing personally against Bowman: he was always courteous and available to us. But I make no hyperbolic statement when I assert he cost the Penguins a chance at the third straight Cup.
Hey John,
Long before that ill-fated playoffs, I too was angered with the trading of Bob Errey for Mike Ramsey. Bob Errey was by no means the best LW in Penguins history but he was a very important part o that team. Mike Ramsey wasn’t all that old, Chronologically (32), but for him it wasn’t the years but the mileage and he was never really blessed with speed. In the end that Errey for Ramsey trade did to that team what the Cole and Reaves and a host of futures for Bressard and a career minor leaguer did to the 2017-2018 Pens.
Furthermore, I do remember all of the other controversies surrounding the team in 92-93 as well, coaches locked out of practices etc.
As a Penguin fan, I hated the Bowman era in Pittsburgh. However, as a hockey fan, I can’t argue with his success. Scotty was a poor fit for Mario’s Penguins but he made serious difference everywhere else that he coached.
Hey Coach,
Once again thank you to you as well for giving me a clearer picture of the real Scotty Bowman. Because there was no social media in 1992-93 this information, while known to you locally, NEVER made it out to the tightly controlled NHL media outlets. I was well aware of his idiosyncrasies and his Iron fist approach to handling difficult players but many NHL Coaches of the 60’s,70’s and even 80’s were the same way.Thanks again.
Coaching today has evolved so much and the players respond differently. I have to laugh when the Hockey writers today say the Coach is being to tough on his team when he gives them an early morning 2 hour hard practice after the team loses a game to an easy opponent due to simple lack of effort.
Apparently that is being tough on your team.
Times have changed.
Cheers
Jim
Hey Jim,
Don’t get me wrong, I still have tons and tons of respect for Bowman. As I said, you can’t argue with his record. I just hated his era in Pgh.
You may have hit the nail on the head. In today’s sports, the way the media hypes these athletes into prima donnas reminiscent of the ancient Roman gladiatorial games, I don’t envy coaches. Even the owners have forgotten the concept of team in team sports as they themselves, in order to boost profits, pander to the hype, to generate greater fan mania.
The older I get though the more I wonder about those Bowman years in Pgh and how much of the problem was Bowman and how much were the players at fault. I understand that Mario and crew were not blessed with good coaching for quite awhile, until Badger Bob got there. Bob berry and Gene Ubriaco are hardly legendary coaches and the worst was Pierre Creamer, who wasn’t even situation ally aware and Mario had to wake him up to the end of game scenario. However, It takes 2 to tango.
I say that with the Humphrey Bogart movie “the Cain Mutiny” in mind. I don’t know if you are familiar with it, but Fred McMurray’s character doesn’t like Bogart’s and works to undermine his authority through several misadventures until he has Bogart doubting himself and van Johnson’s character believing McMurray’s character is right. van Johnson mutinies and gets Court Martial ed. Jose Ferrer defends him. In the final scene, van Johnson and McMurray are celebrating Johnson’s acquittal when a drunk and guilt ridden Ferrer shows up and schools van Johnson on his naivety in thinking that Bogart was all that bad and for listening to pampered McMurray, telling him that the only reason he defended him in the trial is that he knew that van Johnson was the wrong person on trial and that he regretted ruining Bogart’s career. He then confronts McMurray and calls him out for the pampered little coward that he was.
I can’t help wonder if those prima donna Penguins had met Bowman half way, would there have been an Errey trade in the first place or how things would have worked out. Maybe, it still wouldn’t have. Maybe Bowman was a completely horrible fit in Pgh, at least in that point in time. But maybe it would have.
I don’t dispute he was effective in other incarnations as a head coach, but I could not agree more with you that he was ill suited to coach that early 90s edition Penguins team. Conversely, Johnson was the perfect fit for Mario’s Penguins. Such a tragic loss. He not only knew how to motivate them and accentuate their strengths, he had the perfect temperament for that team. I remember a story about Johnson using little pieces of paper he had on hand to illustrate some strategy in the middle of a hotel lobby in Providence RI. He was demonstrating something for people. Someone threw a little rolled up piece of paper into his little construct and he deadpanned: “You should t have done that: someone could have gotten seriously hurt”. This is my paraphrase of what occurred but people really just broke up laughing. The man was filled with not only intelligence but with light.
Rick
I’m not into bashing Coaches but the biggest problem I have with Sullivan is he never changes our game
plan regardless of the opponent. Example: A few years back when the Islanders knocked us out in the
first round they had a team that struggled to score goals so instead of not pinching the entire game we
gave them odd man break after odd man break turning them into a team with the ability to score when
getting opportunity after opportunity. I’m not sure if this was a major issue last night but we never change
the way we play and in my opinion we’re not good enough to get away with that anymore. We now have
a team who’s best players are in there mid to late thirties – Crosby (34), Malkin (35), Carter (37), Boyle (37),
Dumo (30), and Rust turning (30) next month.
I listened to Bob Errey last night and he made an interesting comment – he said pass the puck out of our
end instead of trying to carry it and hang on to so long – he then said the pass is much quicker than
the person – this is a term we use in Basketball “The pass is quicker than the dribble” it really got me
thinking our Defenseman hang onto the puck to long – Letang, Marino, Matheson, Dumoulin, etc….etc….
I often catch myself yelling at the TV to pass the puck when you can see a turnover is waiting to happen.
Not sure where I’m going with this, I guess what I’m trying to convey is we’re an extremely predictable
team and that bothers me. GO PENS
Hey Mike,
100% agree. I have read several places that our Pens look slow lately. Maybe they are a little slower, now in April. Maybe they have worn down a bit. But when the other team knows where we are going all the time, they can look a whole lot faster than they really are and make us look far more slow. If Sully would just change things once in a while and cause opponents at least a half of a second hesitation, while trying to read the play, that could be all a Crosby, Malkin, or Rust need to really exploit their opponent.
The Other Rick
Totally agree – being in sports my entire life I was always told don’t be one dimensional and keep your
opponent off balance “element of surprise” Coaches are to good these days eliminating what you do
best. I just think we’re predictable and possibly have out grown Sully’s system. By that I mean Malkin
and Crosby are in their mid-thirties so we need to adjust accordingly. I go back to what I said about
Sullivan in an earlier post – Your Ego is not your Amigo!! GO PENS
Hey Mike,
Spot on, Crosby and Malkin are no longer the young guns they once were, they team needs to adjust to what they bring to the table now, not what they used to be capable of.
I like that;
“Your Ego
is not your Amigo!
Fearing the worst but hoping for the best,
Go Pens!
OI don’t dispute he was effective in other incarnations as a head coach, but I could not agree more with you that he was ill suited to coach that early 90s edition Penguins team. Conversely, Johnson was the perfect fit for Mario’s Penguins. Such a tragic loss. He not only knew how to motivate them and accentuate their strengths, he had the perfect temperament for that team. I remember a story about Johnson using little pieces of paper he had on hand to illustrate some strategy in the middle of a hotel lobby in Providence RI. He was demonstrating something for people. Someone threw a little rolled up piece of paper into his little construct and he deadpanned: “You should t have done that: someone could have gotten seriously hurt”. This is my paraphrase of what occurred but people really just broke up laughing. The man was filled with not only intelligence but with light.
Thanks John for your insight into what happened with Bowman and the Pen’s . I fully understand your position and if i was in your situation I would feel the same way about Bowman. As both you and Coach have both pointed out, although he may won a Cup in 92 …. he was NOT the proper fit for the Pens team .
I honestly never knew that because in my country, at that time Hockey was a religion and Bowman, being born in Quebec, and English was given lots of praise in the English media across Canada. This was never mentioned to any degree on the CBC. Thanks.
Cheers
Jim
Jim,
I don’t think it’s a prevalent view that Bowman was a detriment to the Penguins. The conventional wisdom in the mainstream media did not call out the sort of “inside hockey” granular stuff – like failing to send a third forward over the boards – that mostly went not only unreported but largely unnoticed. The media loves its memes, and one of the laziest is the “Great Bench Boss”. It’s like the “Great Goalie” meme; not that there are ‘t great coaches and great goalies, but often an unexamined game or series falls back into the comfort of these default storylines even if they only superficially apply, because there’s little dispassionate analysis, particularly in the pre analytics hockey world. Newspapers are the worst: editors always want the writer to write the same story the rival paper is. You are pretty much handcuffed to go out on a limb to expose the game within the game and so forth. So no, I don’t think the notion that Bowman made critical mistakes in that run at a third straight Cup is a thing even in Pittsburgh. But it was considered beyond dispute among the coterie of Penguin hockey intellectuals I associated with in that era; I could pull out my old VHS tapes (lol) and show you exactly where and why I came to those conclusions – even without the off the record exasperated confirmation of a prominent player from that team. I think your Canada is a bit more hockey savvy than us here in the US, though not immune to similar biases; Mario certainly was subjected to a lot of bigoted reactionary stuff that was supposed to pass for analysis: the “he floats around center ice like he’s hailing a taxi cab” stuff that was a sleight of hand allusion to his being French Canadian; ditto the “Europeans are soft” meme. Here, in baseball for example, there’s the thinly-disguised narrative about Latino and black players: often they are cast as having “all that talent” but somehow never credited with cerebral abilities or a good work ethic. Well Mario was so overwhelming that he just made such critics look foolish and even they had to fall in line, but we still hear that Gretzky “taught Lemieux how to be a winner”. Hmmmm… wonder how he managed to be so prolific prior to that Canada Cup, which no doubt contributed to his growth as a player, working alongside the co-greatest player ever. Bowman has rightly earned praise for stewarding. Champuonships, but what happens is the script never changes even if the facts do, and they did change dramatically. As for me, I’ve never been accused of brevity, so I beg your pardon for your indulgence and for the courteous dialogue!