Stars Humble Penguins, 7-1

Seventeen games into what’s shaping up as a lost season (or season of losses), I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that our Penguins are a bad hockey team.

Yeah, I know. Talk about a Captain Obvious observation, huh?

There were signs to that effect prior to last night’s 7-1 capitulation to the Stars, on home ice no less. But this latest fiasco poured a fresh layer of Quikrete on the proceedings. Indeed, we were down by a touchdown before the game was 20 minutes old.

Didn’t matter who was stationed in goal. Promising rookie Joel Blomqvist and gritty vet Alex Nedeljkovic both got strafed behind our comically bad, Keystone Kops-ish team defense. Had Ned not made a number of dazzling saves during the final 40 minutes, the Stars may well have scored a second touchdown.

It brought back memories (nightmares) of the ill-fated 1983-84 “Boys of Winter,” when we lost by scores of 13-4 and 11-3.

The tandem of Kris Letang (minus-4) and Matt Grzelcyk (minus-3) was particularly inept. Sadly, the wheels seem to have fallen off Tanger’s wagon almost overnight. He no longer possesses the speed to cover for his lapses in judgment, let alone his partner’s.

Speaking of Grzelcyk. Somehow, GM Kyle Dubas managed to target and sign a pint-sized defenseman who isn’t a very good skater. That’s not easy to do.

The Letang-Grzelcyk duo is hardly our only worry, but rather the tip of a huge iceberg of issues that are threatening to sink the Good Ship Penguin. Chief among them, the fact that we’re an old, slow team that isn’t capable of playing the up-tempo, forechecking game coach Mike Sullivan prefers.

The disconnect, and apparent unwillingness/inability to switch to a more structured style, has led to a nearly unending stream of odd-man breaks and chaos in our own end. In the process, hanging our poor goalies out to dry like the proverbial linen on wash day.

It reminds me very much of the early 2000s, when J-S Aubin, Sébastien Caron and 19-year-old Marc–André Fleury took turns serving as sacrificial lambs between the pipes.

I doubt if another coach would do much better with this bunch. However, if we have any designs at all on making the playoffs this season it sure wouldn’t hurt to give someone else a try. Perhaps assistant Mike Vellucci, as Other Rick has suggested, on an interim basis. If FSG is that enamored of Sully, then create a position for him in the front office and kick him upstairs.

They won’t, of course.

I feel especially bad for Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin (Letang, too) for having to endure this mess. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’m sure they didn’t anticipate the team being this poor when they signed their extensions. Sid hasn’t experienced anything like this since his rookie season some 20 years ago. Geno never…at least not since defecting from his native Russia.

There is, however, a faint glimmer of hope poking through the shroud of gloom. You don’t get anywhere by being mediocre, as our Pens have been the past two seasons and likely would’ve been even at their very best this season.

If you’re going to be bad, be really bad and at least get rewarded in the draft.

I think Dubas gets it and purposefully assembled this bunch to fail.

After last night’s debacle, we’re right on track.