Penguins in a Duck Blind, Fall 5-1 to Feathered Foe

During the ill-fated 1986-87 season, Penguins coach Bob Berry, exasperated by his team’s maddening inconsistency, famously labelled them “circus performers.”

Up one game, down the next.

If Berry had been peering into a crystal ball he couldn’t have come up with a more apt description of our current vintage of flightless waterfowl. Three nights after authoring arguably their finest performance of the season in a 5-1 stomping of the Kings, we put forth one of our sloppiest and most languid.

The result? An ugly 5-1 bookend loss in the battle of the birds.

Aside from a jack-rabbit start, about the only thing that went right for the black-and-gold came while working on a power-play five minutes into the second period. Cycling to perfection, Rickard Rakell swung into the left circle and fed Bryan Rust to the left of the Ducks’ net. Rusty in turn slipped a beautiful pass through John Gibson’s crease to Michael Bunting, who banged home a back-door goal to trim the Ducks’ lead to 2-1.

However, Rust would pay dearly late in the period when he was mashed into the boards by hit-machine Radko Gudas. The plucky Pens winger exited with a lower-body injury and would not return.

Still technically within striking distance, we yielded a pair of goals within the first seven minutes of the final period to drain the drama out of the proceedings. Alex Killorn struck for the obligatory empty-netter against at the 18-minute mark to close out the affair.

Puckpourri

With the possible exception of Kevin Hayes, who was strong and assertive, nobody sporting the skating Penguins crest played an especially good game. Accordingly, all but two skaters, Anthony Beauvillier and Kris Letang, escaped a minus. Excluding team plus/minus leader Blake Lizotte, who sat out with an illness. The immortal Matt Nieto dressed in his place.

Unable to hold the line behind his faltering teammates, Alex Nedeljkovic yielded four goals on 33 shots, an .879 save percentage.

Manning his off (right) side, Pierre-Olivier Joseph was on the ice for the first three goals against and finished a minus-three. In a classic case of metrics diverging from reality, POJ has a decent Corsi (51.54) and xGF% (50.43) since rejoining the Pens. However, the lanky defender’s been on the ice for 11 5v5 goals against and only two for.

Woof.

On the sunny side, Bunting now has 14 goals on the season, including a team-best nine on the power play. Not that I especially want to part with Bunts, but I can see us moving the 29-year-old spitfire at the trade deadline for, say, a second-round pick and a prospect or two.

Speaking of, there are all kinds of rumors swirling around our Pens these days, some connecting us to the prospect-rich Sabres. Blackhawks forward Taylor Hall was also mentioned. While I don’t find the former Hart Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick particularly appealing, I can see us swinging a Hayes-type deal that includes draft picks and/or a prospect coming our way. Which, connecting the dots, would pave the way to move Bunting.

Enough speculation. On to what I know.

The Pens (20-22-8, 48 points) are a whopping five points out of a wild card spot, with six teams to leap-frog in order to secure a playoff berth.

In the time-honored words of La Cosa Nostra?

Fuhgeddaboudit.