Penguins Fizzle in 4-1 Loss to Flyers

There’s an old football adage attributable to one-time Steelers owner Bert Bell. “On any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team.” Unfortunately that saying proved out in reverse for our Penguins yesterday afternoon at Wells Fargo Center.

With a golden opportunity to secure two points and control our postseason destiny, we fumbled the ball…or the puck as the case may be…en route to a disquieting 4-1 loss to the Flyers.

The last-place Flyers. The Flyers who only recently lost six games in a row and 11 of 13. The Flyers who hadn’t won at home in over a month.

Those Flyers.

Yes, I know. The Pens were playing the second of back-to-back games and their third game in four days. And I’m not unsympathetic. Circumstances compelled me to work out Friday evening, and again on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Cardio, too. By game-time yesterday I was running on fumes. Perhaps being an older team, our Pens were, too.

Yet you’d hope they’d find a way, especially with so much at stake. Teams of destiny do.

Yesterday our boys didn’t. They looked decidedly stale and lifeless. No jump. No sizzle. Precious little puck support in the offensive zone, to the extent that we made journeyman goalie Martin Jones look like a Vezina Trophy candidate. It was almost as if our guys viewed the slot as a foreign country that required a special passport to visit.

Our “effort” (or lack of) brings to mind another quote, this one by former Pens coach Bob Berry. Frustrated with his team’s up-and-down play, he railed, “Win one 8-1, lose one 7-2. Easy come, easy go. That’s the attitude. Good show, bad show…doesn’t matter.”

Or as present Pens skipper Mike Sullivan angrily and emphatically stated, “We just weren’t good enough. We didn’t play well enough to win.”

While I hardly think any team captained by Sidney Crosby doesn’t care, the Pens lack consistency from game to game. It’s almost like watching a sine wave on an oscilloscope display. Up and down. Up and down.

The playoffs are a grind. Coast and pick your spots as the Pens are wont to do?

We’ll be scheduling early tee times.

Puckpourri

The Pens held the edge in shot attempts (71-65) and scoring chances (37-27). Philly had the advantage in shots on goal (43-38) and high-danger chances (16-11), not to mention hits (24-12) and passion.

Crosby scored with 3:33 remaining to spoil Jones’s shutout bid. Noah Cates (two goals), Morgan Frost and Travis Konecny (an empty-netter) scored for the orange-and-black.

A convoluted bright spot? Cates and Frost are former Ron Hextall draft picks. Fueling hope that GMRH knows what he’s doing when it comes to young talent.

Louis Domingue stopped 39 of 42 shots in his second start for the Pens, good for a .929 save percentage. Although he could hardly be faulted on the two Cates goals, which came on deflections from the doorstep, the big goalie expressed dissatisfaction with his play.

“I got outplayed by (Jones),” Domingue said. “He was better than me.”

Wish there was a little more of that to go around, rather than an overall laconic tone in the black-and-gold dressing room.

There’s no sugar-coating. This is a loss we may come to regret…deeply. While the Pens (45-24-11, 101 points) maintain a fingertip grip on third place in the Metro, the Capitals (one point behind) have a game in hand.

And there’s bad news out of the Atlantic. The Bruins beat Montreal and now have 103 points. If we slip behind the Capitals, we may fall to the second wild card. Which means we face the Panthers, recent winners of 13 in a row, in the first round.

Know of any good golf courses in south Florida?

Boyle for the Masterton

The Pens have nominated Brian Boyle for the Masterton Trophy, and rightfully so. After sitting out the entire 2020-21 campaign, the big guy signed a PTO with us in August. He not only carved out a spot on the roster, he’s thrived.

Boyle’s notched 10 goals and 19 points in 65 games while literally anchoring the fourth line and our pk. The 37-year-old’s provided invaluable leadership and physical play (92 hits) to boot.

If the Hingham, Massachusetts native wins, he’ll be the first player since the award’s inception in 1968 to be honored twice. Brian previously won the award in 2018 after overcoming myeloid leukemia.

Two Penguins have won the award…Lowell MacDonald (1973) and Mario Lemieux (1993). In addition, former Pens Charlie Simmer, Gary Roberts, John Cullen, Phil Kessel, Steve Sullivan, Dominic Moore and Jaromir Jagr were honored while playing for other teams.