Power Outage: Penguins Fizzle in 3-1 Loss to Lightning

With just under a minute remaining in last night’s flat-line loss at Tampa Bay, Jake Guentzel crossed the blue line with Sidney Crosby and dumped the puck behind the Lightning net. As Andrei Vasilevskiy went to play the puck Sid swooped in and picked his pocket before nudging the rubber to Guentzel. Jake dropped to knee and fired off a sharp-angle shot, then tumbled to the ice. The puck bounced off Bolts forward Nick Paul and past Vasilveskiy.

A play that was remarkable and unremarkable all the same, because it represented a black-and-gold rarity.

An ugly goal.

To digress, there are two ways to score in today’s NHL. Ugly and on the power play. Our guys do neither.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed. But our once-vaunted offense has dried up quicker than a puddle in Death Valley. In the 11 games since our 5-3 win over Columbus on November 14, a victory fueled by a Crosby hat trick, our Penguins have tallied a total of 23 goals…a smidge over two per game. Part of the reason we’re a thoroughly lackluster 3-5-3 during that span despite receiving stellar goaltending from Tristan Jarry and tandem-mate Alex Nedeljkovic.

We’re currently 20^th in goal scoring…and fading fast.

As for last night’s 3-1 loss to the Lightning at Amalie Arena? It was one of those “meh” efforts where our guys were there, but not really. Collectively, there was precious little juice. The power play continued to be a black hole, sucking out what little life we had while bungling its way through four opportunities, including a 5-on-3 near the end of the game.

Again, it was the same old, same old. During the increasingly rare occasions when we managed to get set up, there was little cohesiveness and absolutely no net-front presence.

TV color analyst Mike Rupp noted that our forwards all too often peel away from the net, perhaps in hopes of gaining time and space to make the perfect play. The kind that occur about as often these days as a solar eclipse.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way we play the game. It’s imperative that our guys find it within themselves to get bodies and pucks to the net. A tall task, I know, for a group that’s not built to play that way. However, until then, we’ll continue to limp along the fringes of the playoff picture…or worse.

Like Jake’s goal, things could get ugly.

Puckpourri

The Pens had the edge in shot attempts (69-53) and scoring chances (35-32), the Lightning shots on goal (27-25) and high-danger chances (13-9). Our power play is 0-for-34 and counting…

Speaking of, we should study video of the Lightning power play, one of the league’s best, and try to copy it. I’m serious. Have everyone pick a man (e.g. Sid=Brayden Point, etc.) and emulate them. Maybe pretending to be someone else will help our boys relax and break through. We couldn’t do any worse.

All too often, Erik Karlsson seems to be on one page and everyone else another. As crazy as it sounds, is it time to pull EK65 off the top unit?

Opposing teams are blocking a ton of shots. With 27 last night, the Bolts were no exception. An indication of, among other things, our predictability.

In an effort to spark a little hidden vigorish, Mike Sullivan juggled the top two lines. Bryan Rust dropped to the second line with Evgeni Malkin and Drew O’Connor while “Stone Cold” Reilly Smith moved to Sid’s unit, to no avail. After Rust departed late in the second period with an unspecified injury (yikes), Sully reunited the Two-Headed Monster of yore. Along with Guentzel, the trio produced some dazzling metrics (Corsi 77.78, xGF% 76.65) and our lone goal.

Speaking of our coach, is it time to consider a change? Ironically, I think Sullivan’s done a better job of adjusting this season while being open to using different types of players (John Ludvig for example), although he’s strayed from the 1-2-2 that seemed to suit the team well. However, whatever message he’s sending simply isn’t getting through or being implemented on ice.

My sense if we make a switch? It might shock the team into a modest winning streak, although I think we’d eventually fall back into our bad old ways. But if we’re to at least try to salvage the season we might have no alternative but to replace Sully. It just seems he and his system have reached their expiration date.

I’ll close this section with an observation made by Horse, one of PenguinPoop’s original writers.

“Love this group for the thrills that they have provided,” he wrote. “Right now it doesn’t look like they have any more to give.”

I concur. We should’ve built some momentum off our rousing come-from-behind victory over the Lightning last week. The fact that we didn’t (or couldn’t) doesn’t bode well.

Cause for Celebrini?

PP collaborator Caleb DiNatale sees a silver lining in our downturn. Namely a chance to grab a lottery pick in the upcoming draft and possibly nab the next, next one, Boston University forward Macklin Celebrini.

For the record, Caleb notes that we’re a funky patchwork of aging stars and fringe NHLers.

On Deck

The Pens (11-11-3) take their road show to Sunrise, Florida, for a Friday night matchup with the Panthers (15-8-2). Fresh off a two-goal, four-point game against Dallas, old friend Evan Rodrigues has six goals and 20 points on the season.

What in all that’s holy was former GM Ron Hextall thinking when he let E-Rod walk?

Oh, and Mikael Granlund has a pair of goals and 13 points in 19 games for the improving Sharks, including nine points in his past six games.

And so it goes…