Back in the days of metal typesetting, newspapers and printers were loath to revise content unless they absolutely had to.
Well, our Penguins would’ve been a typesetter’s dream. The basic storylines never change. Indeed, the Pens’ 6-3 matinee loss to the Jets in Winnipeg was pretty much a case of the same old, same old.
- Pens take lead;
- Pens blow lead;
- Pens kill themselves with mistakes;
- Pens d-zone coverage is a shambles;
- Pens goalie is left to fend for himself.
The fact that these same tendencies keep repeating over and over and over again truly makes me wonder what the coaching staff is stressing to these guys. I’m sure there’s a lot of read-and-react inherent in Mike Sullivan’s system. But we keep reading and reacting the wrong way.
Heck, even in those rare instances when we make the right play, things go wrong. Just prior to the Jets’ second goal, Ryan Graves uncharacteristically flattened Mark Scheifele near the net before turning his back on the big forward. Scheifele promptly clambered to his skates, pounced on a loose puck and beat Alex Nedeljkovic from point-blank range.
“I think it starts with just the right mindset,” Sullivan noted in his post-game comments. “We’re quick to try and jump on offense (but) we don’t have the puck. And we end up putting ourselves and our teammates in a tough spot.”
It certainly sounds like the right take. Whether Sully and his staff can fix what’s broke remains to be seen. Especially given the dearth of practice time.
Yesterday he settled for shuffling the lineup…with mixed results. On the plus side, he moved Drew O’Connor to Sidney Crosby’s line and bumped Anthony Beauvillier to the third line with Lars Eller and Cody Glass.
Eller was terrific, scoring two goals (Kevin Hayes notched the other). Lars and his linemates each finished with pluses, the only Pens to do so.
Sully’s other moves didn’t seem to take as well. Jesse Puljujärvi joined Evgeni Malkin and Rickard Rakell on the second line, with negligible results. Valtteri Puustinen was inserted in place of healthy scratch/scapegoat Michael Bunting. While it was nice to see Puusti get a chance to play, it pushed Noel Acciari to center where he’s less effective.
If your team’s struggling to play with structure, I’d think you’d opt for continuity rather than sweeping changes, but what do I know.
Nedeljkovic got his first start of the season in goal and made 31 saves, many of the sparkling variety. But there’s only so much a goalie can do. Hockey’s a team sport.
Right now, we’re not a very good team.
Hey all,
A quickie follow-up. I was listening to Phil Bourque’s post-game comments on the radio yesterday. I like listening to Bourquie because he calls it like he sees it.
He basically came out and said the Penguins’ defensemen don’t know how to play defense. As a group, they don’t play physically, don’t know how to tie opponents’ sticks up and box out.
Pretty much what we’re seeing.
I have no clue how we fix this unless we switch to a defense-first system with wingers coming back, etc. Hard to imagine us doing that.
It’s beginning to look like it’s going to be a long (and unsuccessful) season.
Rick