The Penguins continued to perform their version of “The Hockey .500 Two-Step” last night with a 4-2 loss to Detroit at Little Caesars Arena.
You know the dance. Win one to go a game above .500. Lose one to fall back to .500.
Aside from the fact that we were blitzed out of our skates at the outset by the quick-starting Red Wings, the Pens didn’t play a bad game. However, we didn’t generate a ton of shots (55 attempted, 25 on net) or scoring chances (23) and couldn’t get a leg up on our foe.
The good news? Drew O’Connor snapped a confidence-sapping 32-game drought with a pair of goals!
His first came on a slapper from the right circle at 18:29 of the first period, courtesy of an absolutely gorgeous play and pass from Cody Glass. DOC’s second tally came early in the third period on the power play. On his knees and digging with the vigor of Mike Lange’s coal miner, Drew poked the puck past Red Wings goalie Alex Lyon.
Both goals “drew” the Pens even on the scoreboard. In both instances, we couldn’t hold, through no fault of goalie Alex Nedeljkovic. The record will show that Ned, getting a rare second-straight start, yielded three goals on 24 shots for an Ugly Betty save percentage of .875. However, Ned made a number of key stops, including a sparkling blocker-pad save on J.T. Compher from point-blank range and deserved a better fate.
Okay, now for the bad news, or at least the disquieting. With Kris Letang out with a lower-body injury and Erik Karlsson missing some shifts after taking a puck to the face, our defense was challenged to say the least.
Held together by chewing gum and baling wire even in the best of times, we had left shots Pierre-Olivier Joseph and Ryan Graves playing the unfamiliar starboard (right) side. While I won’t go as far as to fault them, the Marcus Pettersson-Joseph pairing was on the ice for the first three Red Wings goals.
Our PK, so good of late, yielded a pair of power-play goals on three opportunities.
Unfortunately for our do-si-doing Pens, the load doesn’t get any lighter. We visit the defending Cup champion Panthers on Friday night and the always nettlesome Hurricanes on Sunday evening.
This ‘n’ ‘At
Glass flashed his sixth-overall pedigree on our first goal. He won a puck battle along the wall, pulled the biscuit around a Wings defender and slipped a beautiful pass to O’Connor. Positively Sid-esque.
Cody has some stellar underlying numbers, the best on the team. If he could just produce more consistently?
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Speaking of forwards taken in the first round, Jesse Puljujärvi cleared waivers yesterday. He’ll likely be assigned to the Baby Pens.
Yet another former first-rounder, Anthony Beauvillier had a glorious shot at a wide-open net blunted on a sliding save by Wings defenseman Moritz Seider. Bryan Rust stoved a couple of posts on his patented wraparound attempts. Oh for longer arms.
In keeping with the first-rounder theme, Philip Tomasino has four points (2+2) on the power play and three points (2+1) in other situations in 15 games with the black-and-gold.
With a lone goal in his past seven games, Blake Lizotte’s surprising production has pretty much dried up since being wedged between a rock and a hard place (Noel Acciari and Matt Nieto) on the fourth line. Can you say Ice Bucket Challenge?
While nobody expected Blake to score 30 goals, his latent offensive skills are going to waste in his current assignment.
Not sure what the answer is.
I do sense some Mike Sullivan line juggling on the horizon.
Three of O’Connor’s five goals on the season have come against the Red Wings.
Oh, and POJ is a minus-six in five games since returning to the ‘Burgh.
Hey Rick,
Our Pens were 10-12-4 at the end of November. In December they went 7-5-1. Eight of those games were played against teams out of the playoffs as of this morning. Hmmm. Well below impressive. This is team is poorly Coach and thanks to that poor coaching utilizes less than the most effective players at most positions at any given time.Anyone expecting better than average hockey is on something (Remember in this 3 point game era, 500 hockey is really around 550.
Of course you also realize that this team only has 11 regulation Ws, right? If this incarnation of Pens was playing under the same rules as Mario’s team played they would be 11-17-11 right now and 12th in the conference in terms of W%. Rather than muse about the win one lose one pace, it could be worse. 3 of those 7 wins this month were OT wins. Our record in December could have been 4-4-5 under the old rules – hardly impressive.
This team is lucky to be where it is right now.