The Penguins turned what appeared to be a certain if somewhat shaky victory into a 2-1 defeat by yielding two very late goals to the Predators at Avicii Arena in Stockholm today, including the game-winner by Steven Stamkos 44 seconds into overtime.
Our guys generally gave a good account of themselves up until the moment Evgeni Malkin got creative and banked the puck in off the back of Preds goalie Juuse Saros at 13:49 of the second period to stake us to a 1-0 lead.
After that, it pretty much all the other gold-clad team, as the Preds attacked in wave after wave.
Still, it appeared as if the Pens would eke out a narrow victory until 70 seconds remained, when Sidney Crosby lost a faceoff to Stamkos to the right of our net. Native son Filip Forsberg pounced on the loose biscuit and beat Arturs Silovs, airtight till then, from point-blank range to knot the score at 1-1. Setting the stage for Stamkos to blow past Malkin in the neutral zone (with Sid waaay behind the play) and beat Silovs, bar-down, with a sizzling OT winner.
Puckpourri
Even if the Pens had hung on for a victory, it wouldn’t have necessarily been well-deserved. Indeed, we almost seemed to lose interest, not to mention any kind of offensive momentum, after taking the lead.
I certainly won’t cast stones at Silovs, who made 28 saves and nearly pulled out the “w” for us.
I will cast stones at our brain trust, specifically Kyle Dubas and coach Dan Muse for some questionable personnel decisions of late.
From what I gleaned from our play earlier in the season, the Pens’ skipper wants to play a fast, north-south game. While I hate to be the one to break the news to him, forwards Kevin Hayes and Joona Koppanen in particular can’t support that style of play.
Against the Preds, the former had a ghastly expected goals for percentage of 5.22 and the latter 15.67. They weren’t the only forwards to have poor games in terms of driving play (Ville Koivunen, Philip Tomasino and the normally active duo of Connor Dewar and Blake Lizotte, take a bow), but they sure didn’t help the cause.
Slip Slidin’ Away
Following our impressive 6-2 start, we’ve gone a sub-pedestrian 3-3-4 in our past 10, with three of the defeats coming in come-from-in-front fashion.
Injuries to key players Rickard Rakell, Justin Brazeau, heck even Noel Acciari, Filip Hållander, Caleb Jones and Tristan Jarry certainly haven’t helped matters.
Too, it’s possible the magic dust we enjoyed through the early going, especially our the victory over the Panthers when we were outshot, 37-17, is starting to wear off. Same goes for our piping-hot power-play and elite finishing, which were due to cool down.
As the old saying goes, what goes up must eventually come down.
It’ll be interesting to see how the team responds on Sunday.
It is funny how people never learn. For 8 seasons or more this team toiled under the mentality of retread veterans, wasting many, many of Crosby – Malkin – Letang seasons. Then there was a glint of hope. Sullivan was fired and Muse was hired. Muse said all the right things. He even fulfilled some of his promise to play kids. But then injuries started happening and Muse fell into the Sullivan trap. Almost every personnel decision being made right now seems to be straight from the Sullivan play book – with the same results, mounting loses. Despite all of the wins with the kids, we are now subjected to status quo. I now have to believe that Dubas was not just deferring to Sullivan’s foolery but part and parcel in it.
Players like Kevin Hayes, Tomasino, Heinen, and Koppanen are adding absolutely nothing to this team. And Koppanen may not have much NHL experience under his belt but he is at the end of his prime. None of these players are likely to all of a sudden “get it”. They are who they are; has-beens or journeymen AHLers. There is nothing to see here with these guys.
Novak may be getting on the score sheet is that they are playing him off and on with a rejuvenated Geno.
It is a little late to tag in Avery Hayes for the big club, but Broz and Poulin are playing far better and are still young enough to have upside – however, I a, not holding my breath. The only player not brought in by Dubas who is being given a chance is Jarry. And Jarry was signed by Dubas to a stupid contract and has no doubt been given way too many chances and has failed each time.