If Saturday night’s cave-in at Calgary wasn’t enough to convince Penguins POHO/GM Kyle Dubas to cash in his chips and sell at the upcoming deadline, then last night’s 6-1 humiliation at the hands of the Oilers surely did.
Playing the second of back-to-backs (the Oilers were too), the Pens managed to hang around for a little while. We limited our hosts to an 11-8 advantage in first-period shots on goal and a 1-0 lead on a rebound goal by Zach Hyman.
We nearly tied the score on a pair of rapid-fire chances by Rickard Rakell and Sidney Crosby early in the second period, but Oilers netminder Calvin Pickard shut ‘em down. The home team immediately countered on a 3-on-1 break, culminating in a goal by Corey Perry.
The Oilers made it 3-0 on a second tally by Hyman at 5:55 off a brilliant bit of passing. Pens goalie Alex Nedeljkovic didn’t have a prayer.
Our best chance to claw back into the game occurred with 2:55 left in the period when Jansen Harkins was awarded a penalty shot. The hustling but stone-handed winger predictably missed the net wide left, conjuring up memories of former black-and-golders Rico Fata and Konstantin Koltsov.
The Oil proceeded to pound two pucks past Nedeljkovic in the final 73 seconds of the period. Connor McDavid capped the Oilers’ offensive gusher at 6:03 of the final frame to run the score to 6-0.
At 12:23 of the period, long after the home team had lost interest, Evgeni Malkin struck from the side of the net following some greasy work down low by Reilly Smith and Rakell to foil Pickard’s shutout bid.
Not much of a game summary, I know.
Then again, it wasn’t much of a game.
Puckpourri
The Oilers dominated according to Natural Stat Trick, with significant advantages in shot attempts (65-47), shots on goal (37-23), scoring chances (35-23) and high-danger chances (15-7).
The beatdown was reminiscent of what the Pens routinely used to do to other teams. How the mighty have fallen.
The Oilers exposed our defense…and just about every other weakness. Pierre-Olivier Joseph, better of late, was a minus-three (as was Sid). Kris Letang and Chad Ruhwedel, minus-two each.
You had to feel sorry for Nedeljkovic, who was making his first start since February 20. Ned did what he could to stem the tidal wave of rushes and odd-man breaks headed his way, but it was like trying to stop a tsunami.
As the game degenerated, Mike Sullivan put his top two lines in a blender. The kids, Drew O’Connor and Valtteri Puustinen, skated with Sid. Smith and Rakell flanked Geno, who snapped a 13-game goalless drought with his third-period marker.
Since signing with Edmonton, Perry has four goals in 15 games…better than a 20-goal pace. Perhaps the 38-year-old would’ve been too long-in-the-tooth to be a good fit for us, but he’s the type of net-front nuisance we’ve lacked since Patric Hornqvist departed.
Dubas allowed Hyman (42 goals) to walk via free agency when he was GM at Toronto. Just sayin.’
Cody Ceci (remember him?) scored the fifth Oilers goal. I thought he did a really nice job for us back in 2020-21 before signing with Edmonton.
On Deck
The Pens (27-24-8, 62 points) limp home from the 1-3 road trip to face the cellar-dwelling Blue Jackets (20-30-10, 50 points) on Tuesday night. No game is a gimme at this stage.
We’re nine points behind the third-place Flyers in the Metro and 10 points out of the second wild-card spot. Arbitrarily assuming 95 points is the cutoff to make the playoffs, we’d need to go something like 16-6-1 over our final 23 games to have a shot. That ain’t happenin.’
For reference, we’re 9-10-4 over our previous 23 games.
At this stage, all eyes on Dubas and the trade deadline.
Rick
Sullivan has to go “Period”. I saw the box score from the Blue Jackets game vs the Vegas
Knights and Nylander had a Hat Trick. I still believe Sullivan’s system has a lot to do with
our lack of production. I know I’ll get push back because we’ve always been a good offensive
team but our core players were younger and had the ability to create and score on their own.
Those days are gone. Also, we lose a large majority of board battles – it’s not that we don’t
battle but physically we get over-powered. We don’t only need youth we need size.
Keeping my fingers crossed Dubas addresses our needs.
It’s funny you compare Harkins to Fata and Koltsov because this team reminds me of the 2003 Penguins. An aging legendary player surrounded by a generally struggling team. It’s never easy to watch the end of an era. I only hope this rebuild will be as successful as that one ultimately was.
Hey Nick,
Very insightful observation, comparing us with that early 2000s team. Funny, I was thinking about it being the end of an era just this morning and how sad it is to see a once great champion fade.
It happens to every championship team. It happened to the Kings, although they’ve recovered somewhat. It’s happened to the Blackhawks. It’ll eventually happen to the Lightning. And, although we’ve hung on longer than most, it’s happening to us.
No team stays on top forever.
Rick