There were decisions to be made going into Game 3 last night for how the Penguins would respond to playing on the road, trailing 2-0 in their series with the Philadelphia Flyers.
“There should be frustration,” Dan Muse said after Game 2. “We just lost two games at home. How are you going to respond? I would hope every single guy in that room, our staff, nobody is happy right now. Nobody should be. Tomorrow we have to make a decision. Are we going to stay with it? Stay with what we’re going to do?
Get to our game, which we haven’t done in two games? Or are we going to let frustration continue to boil over into the next one? That’s a choice we, together, all of us, including myself, are going to have to make over the next 24 hours.”
Well, Bryan Rust went with frustration, losing his marbles after being elbowed in the head by Travis Konecny in the second period.
It’s too easy to chastise a person for responding when it’s not like YOU are going to get hacked, slashed or elbowed in the head but Rust’s response undoubtedly hurt the Penguins. That’s fair and right to acknowledge, but then again this moment turned the complexion of the game, and not just because it took the hapless refs over 10 minutes to sort out all the penalties. The Penguins were winning the game at that time, and Rust ended up drawing an extra penalty out of the melee. The Flyers scored on that power play and went on to quickly grab two more goals in the following minutes, turning a 1-0 hole into a 3-1 lead that quickly pushed Pittsburgh to the brink of playoff elimination just days after Game 1.
“I got elbowed, so I just kind of locked him, took him to the ground,” Rust said after the game. “He tried to kick me. We threw a couple punches back and forth. Not sure why I got an extra two.”
The answer to that question, Bryan Rust, is that you gave up control of the situation by going crazy after the whistle and escalating the situation to that point. Again, easy to say way after the fact when I’m not the one getting elbowed in the head. Still a fact that you can’t throw gasoline on a fire and wonder why you’re the one who ends up getting burned. Rust opened himself up for something bad to happen by letting his frustration spill all the way over. Should he eat extracurricular, post-whistle little shots all game long? Hard to say or declare that, no one wants to be a pushover and take abuse. The fine line is finding a way to not go all the way crazy, dropping a glove and making a huge ruckus out of a standard scrum, especially in a game where your team is leading for the first time and doing alright. It’s not quite Daniel Carcillo letting Max Talbot fire up his team levels of ‘09 lore when the shoe was on the other foot for a momentum swing, but it’s pretty close.
“The game turned into a bit of a WWE match in the second period. They fed off that, and they were able to capitalize,” Rust said. “We know what they’re about. We know what to expect. We’ve just got to do a better job of managing those emotions.”
The Penguins always say things like this after the fact, and yet they are the ones who never, ever do a better job of “managing those emotions”. It was Rust in the spotlight for last night, but it could be practically any player on any night. Why even pay it lip service at this point? Might as well just say you’re not going to take the Flyers shit and deal with the consequences of whatever the results are going to be after the dust settles from the latest circus. At least then they’d be showing some honesty.
The only player right now who might be immune to a meltdown is Erik Karlsson. Ever the one to say it like it is, Karlsson’s words hit the mark. They don’t ring hollow since he hasn’t been the one to fall into the very obvious trap.
“An unfortunate penalty and a power-play goal against, it hurts,” Karlsson said. “Three games in you can say that they’re winning those battles. They’re getting the calls with them. That’s the way it is sometimes.
“It’s up to us in here to realize that, hold our composure, and understand that fighting is not always an element that means that you’re tough. You can do other things as well. We haven’t done a good enough job of that, in making sure that type of energy also benefits us. That’s obviously something that we’ve learned the hard way now.”
The only word to quibble with above is “learned”. The Penguins never truly learn this lesson no matter how many times it gets taught, they just have to deal with the results.
