Penguins Bedeviled in 5-2 Loss

Our Penguins tried to atone for Friday night’s ghastly giveaway loss to the Islanders. Sort of. They played a reasonably strong first period against a fast, young New Jersey squad yesterday afternoon at PPG Paints Arena. Even took the early lead just 3:33 in thanks to a power-play marker off the rush by Evgeni Malkin.

Although they gave up the game-tying goal just 80 seconds later…endemic of the team’s myriad issues…they continued to give a pretty fair account of themselves through the remainder of the opening frame. At least by present black-and-gold standards.

Whether due to tired legs from playing the night before or the fact that they were facing a superior opponent (or a combination thereof), the Pens simply faded like a sick daisy over the final 40 minutes, resulting in a 5-2 loss. Disheartening as it was disappointing.

I won’t delve too much into the gory details. Dougie Hamilton struck from point-blank range on the power play at 3:47 of the second period, followed in fairly short order by a shorty from rising star Nico Hischier. Speedy Jesper Bratt extended the Devils’ lead to 4-1 at 8:39 of the third period before Malkin notched his second goal of the game six minutes later to give the Pens a pulse.  Only to be flatlined again on an empty-netter from Hischier at 17:56, capping a four-point night for the Devils’ young captain.

To borrow from an old Jackson 5 tune, an automatic, systematic drubbing.

Rather than watch on TV, I once again opted to listen to the game on radio. Specifically, I wanted to get color man Phil Bourque’s take. Whereas his TV counterparts, Steve Mears and Bob Errey, tend to sugarcoat, the “Ol’ Two-Niner” tells it like it is. He didn’t paint an especially pretty picture.

Among his observations? Perhaps due to a fear of taking penalties, our defense won’t (or doesn’t know how to) clear bodies away from the net (cue Other Rick’s Ruth Buzzi comparison), basically leaving our goalies to fend for themselves. The above photo pretty much says it all.

At one point, a Devils forward snapped the puck into our net after the whistle. An offense that Bourque noted would draw instant and harsh retribution from every other team in the league. Instead, Jeff Petry gave the offender a mild bump.

That’s Penguins hockey, folks. Perfectly in line with allowing your stars to get mugged on a regular basis.

Speaking of, aside from Sidney Crosby and the top-six forwards, there are way (waaaaay) too many passengers. Think of Steve Miller’s “big ol’ jet airliner” with the captain and co-pilot (Sid and Geno) flying the plane with help from the flight crew (Jake Guentzel, Rickard Rakell, Jason Zucker, Bryan Rust and occasionally Kris Letang). The rest of the team are comfortably ensconced in their seats.

Bourque lamented the utter lack of bottom-six production (“they need to score sometime”) and, in particular, the play of Jeff Carter. Propriety and decorum prevented the color announcer from going into the grisly details, but I’ll finish the thought for him.

Carter’s play, to be kind, has simply fallen off a cliff. Since January 10, a span of 16 games, he has one excuse-me goal and is a minus-7. As long as he’s anchoring (a wholly apt description) the third line, we have no chance.

I understand showing respect and loyalty to such an accomplished veteran…but only to a point. If we keep running Carter out there, we might as well kiss our playoff hopes goodbye. At age 38, he simply can’t get ‘er done anymore.

The fact that Mike Sullivan continues to pencil him into such a crucial spot in the lineup, game after game? It speaks to a coach who isn’t the least bit worried about job security but perhaps should be. But we’ve seen this before from Sully. The obstinance, coupled with a disturbing inability to identify issues and/or make necessary adjustments.

As always, it’s business as usual. “Just play.”

Except the boys aren’t playin’. For the most part, they’re passengers on that big ol’ jet airliner.

Puckpourri

The Devils held the high ground in shot attempts (64-61), shots on goal (43-31), scoring chances (38-30) and high-danger chances (21-11). Hard to believe the Pens actually had the advantage in shot attempts (26-20) and shots on goal (13-12) after 20 minutes.

Thanks to his two goals, Malkin became the fourth member of the Pens’ 20-goal club, joining Crosby (25), Guentzel (23) and Rakell (21). The fearsome foursome have tallied 90 goals…over half of the team’s 177 non-shootout goals!

Dustin Tokarski filled in for Casey DeSmith and performed admirably given the circumstances, stopping 38 of 42 shots. Meanwhile, Tristan Jarry’s status remains clear as mud. He’s participating in practice and Sullivan seems to indicate that he’s close to returning. Yet Jarry’s seeing outside specialists and there are rumblings of a chronic hip injury. Shades of Crosby at the height of his concussion woes.

Following a strong game against the Islanders, Drew O’Connor was promoted to the third line while Brock McGinn, goalless and pointless in 22 games, was dropped to the fourth line. It didn’t help…the third line was the only unit underwater possession-wise at 5v5.

Zucker drilled Devils defenseman Brendan Smith into the end boards with a huge first-period hit. Something we don’t see nearly enough of from this bunch.

On Tap

The Pens (27-19-9, 63 points) host the Islanders (28-24-7, 63 points) in a return match Monday night. Despite our bungling, we continue to maintain a tenuous hold on the top Eastern Conference wild card slot.

We haven’t beaten a Metro team since a 3-2 triumph over the Rangers on December 20. We’re 0-5-3 against our division rivals since.