Bad teams find a way to lose.
It’s a truism as old as sports itself.
Right now, as presently constructed, the Penguins are bad hockey team. A jumble of mismatched and ill-fitting parts.
Indeed, they keep finding new and inventive ways to lose. Like yielding a game-tying goal, on clean a breakaway no less, just 71 seconds after they’d fought so hard to take a 2-1 lead. And failing to convert on a gift-wrapped 5-on-3 power play in the closing minutes, then taking a penalty of their own to hand the Golden Knights an opportunity to steal the two points. Which they promptly did on a power-play goal by Tomas Hertl with just 35 ticks left on the clock.
The sequence on the previously noted game-tying goal was particularly egregious, not to mention pure Penguin. Egor Chinakhov initiated the play by storming past Jeremy Lauzon along the wall and then winning a puck battle in the corner. A nice, hustling play.
That’s when things went awry. Straining to recover, Lauzon got a stick on Chinakhov’s attempted pass to Ben Kindel at the right dot. The puck hopped past Kindel and a flailing attempt by Kris Letang, positioned just a few feet behind the kid at the top of the circle, to put stick on rubber. As if it had eyes, the puck skittered toward the Pens’ zone and onto the waiting stick of Trevor Connolly, who scooped it up and raced in unimpeded to beat Arturs Silovs.
If you overlaid “Yakety Sax,” the theme song to the old Benny Hill Show, onto the video replay of the sequence you’d have a comedic masterpiece. Except no one on the Pens’ bench was laughing.
The sad thing is, our guys played really well at times. They pretty much dominated Vegas in the third period, piling up an impressive 23-10 edge in shot attempts and an 11-4 advantage in shots on goal.
Tommy Novak knotted the score at 1-1 just 69 seconds into the frame. Red-hot Rickard Rakell gave us the lead off a nifty net-front feed from Novak at 9:58.
The Pens seemed poised to pull off a victory.
Then…Yakety Sax.
PUCKPOURRI
The power play stunk last night, misfiring on six opportunities. In addition to the lack of net-front presence, there’s a total inability to finish.
Speaking of, I don’t care much for the way coach Dan Muse is using Chinakhov. Or misusing him as the case may be. Last night our skipper deployed Egor at the point on the second power play, which sees about as much ice time as an EBUG.
Chinakhov’s got the most wicked shot and release on the team, yet he’s not being put in a position to score.
Nor do I care for him skating next to Kindel. Chinakhov needs someone who can get him the puck in open space. To my eye Kindel, promising though he may be, is more of a chip ‘n’ chaser than distributor. Kind of like trying to mix oil and water.
I might be tempted to try Chinny with Ville Koivunen (better vision and passing) instead.
While it’s great to see top-liners like Rakell and Novak scoring, we’re getting zippo production from the supporting cast. We seem to have way too many passengers on the good ship Penguin (Blake Lizotte not among them) and too few take-charge guys.
How long a rope will Andrei Kuzmenko (one assist in 11 games, minus-7) be given? Ditto Declan Carlile (minus-10)? Might we see recently recalled Jake Livanavage sooner than later?
We now have two regulation wins in 15 games, tied for second fewest in the league. We have the third-worst regulation points percentage (.300).
See previous reference to “bad team.”
UP NEXT
The Pens (5-8-2) host the Bruins (11-4-1) on Thursday night. Make that the very physical Bruins. Should be fun.
Then it’s off to the left coast. Did I mention we’re 1-6-1 on the road?
