Tossing lines and pairings in a blender wasn’t enough for Dan Muse to stop Pittsburgh Penguins from conceding a fourth straight loss in Monday night game against the Utah Mammoth.
Muse started out in Salt Lake City by making adjustments to almost every part of the lineup, including putting Declan Carlile and Kaeden Korczak together on the second pairing.
That particular defensive combination did not find immediate success. The
Carlile-Korczak duo was left exposed on Utah’s second and fourth goals in the 5-4 loss.
Carlile scored his first goal as a Penguin to get the team within one goal of tying the game with five minutes left in regulation, but the Pens were unable to complete the comeback.
Carlile and Korczak weren’t the only defensemen left exposed Monday. The Penguins were outshot 11-5 when a new top pairing of Spencer Stastney and Erik Karlsson was on the ice.
Pittsburgh was overall outshot 29-19 while struggling to limit opponents’ chances from the slot. Ten of the Mammoth’s scoring chances came from directly in front of the net, per MoneyPuck.
“They were getting sustained shifts in our zone, and we weren’t able to get much of a forecheck, so that’s a tough combination,” Sidney Crosby told reporters after the game. “You’re not gonna wear teams down, and they’re going to have lots of juice to play offense.”
Head coach Dan Muse indicated after the game he didn’t feel blame for the loss could be pinned on starting netminder Arturs Silovs.
“You look at the chances that are given up, there’s not a lot on our goalies that they can do on a number of these,” Muse said after the loss.
Muse said his solution to the Penguins’ defensive woes would involve “making sure that we’re all on the same page in regard to the structure.”
When asked if he had liked any of the new lines the Penguins had tried out during the game, Muse said he and his staff would be discussing the topic.
Tuesday’s initial offensive lines featured Crosby skating alongside Egor Chinakhov, Rickard Rakell down on the third line with Andrei Kuzmenko and Nick Robertson replacing Elmer Soderblom on the fourth.
That lineup looked different by the end of the game, at which point Bryan Rust had exited with a lower-body injury. Chinakhov, who has not yet found much success alongside Crosby, scored later in the loss with Kuzmenko and Ben Kindel on the ice.
Muse had no update on Rust’s status after the defeat, which marked the end of a winless four-game roadtrip during which the Penguins were outscored 21-11. The Pens are now off to a 3-6-1 start one year after reaching this point in the season with a 7-2-1 record.
Pittsburgh will be back in action Thursday for a home game against the Florida Panthers. Should Rust remain sidelined for that matchup, Soderblom or Hendrix Lapierre could potentially draw back into the lineup. Whether Girard is able to play by then could determine Ilya Solovyov’s status if Muse keeps the rest of his blueliners in the lineup.
