When we looked ahead to this past week on Monday, I said it would have been a good week if the Penguins could collect at least five or six points in the four games that were ahead. After all, things were looking
good. The Penguins had just completed a wildly successful three-game road trip through Philadelphia, Tampa Bay and Dallas where they went 2-0-1 against three good teams, and found themselves near the top of the league and Eastern Conference standings.
The games they had on the horizon were tough, but winnable, and all of them at home.
The Penguins actually put themselves in good positions to win most of those games.
But that 3-2 overtime loss in Dallas, where they lost a late lead and lost another game in a shootout, should have been a warning for what was about to come in the games ahead.
Actually, the Tampa Bay game, where they blew a 3-0 lead, and then nearly blew another late lead, should have been the real warning.
Because they kept doing things exactly like that.
It was a maddening week.
Let’s break down all of the insanity.
- The week began with the Penguins holding a 3-2 lead against the Anaheim Ducks, in a game the Penguins mostly carried, with 17 seconds to play, a power play, and an offensive zone face-off. That should be a regulation win 100 times out of 100 in that situation. The Penguins even won possession of the puck off of the face-off and dumped the puck back into the Anaheim zone with under 10 seconds to play. They still somehow allowed a game-tying goal with 0.1 seconds left. Then they lost in a shootout.
- On Thursday their game was delayed for 30 minutes because of an accident on I-279 in the city that prevented players from getting to the arena on time. While they showed up in body, they were not there in mind and were just absolutely rocked for most of the night by the Montreal Canadiens.
- On Friday, the Penguins and Edmonton Oilers swapped starting goalies with Tristan Jarry going west, following weeks of rumors, for Stuart Skinner and Brett Kulak. Jarry already made his debut with Edmonton and got a win. Skinner and Kulak are still dealing with the immigration process and have yet to join the Penguins.
- On Saturday the Penguins seemed to be in a position to wash the bad taste from the previous three games out of their mouths and had a 5-1 lead against a bad San Jose Sharks team — a Sharks team that lost one of its best players in Will Smith to injury — with 14 minutes to play. They allowed the Sharks to pull off their first four-goal, third period comeback in franchise history, tying the game and then ultimately winning it in overtime, 6-5.
- Just 24 hours later the Penguins went into the third period with a 3-0 lead against a Utah Mammoth team — that had to help push a car out of the snow before the game! — and seemed to be in a position to redeem themselves. The Penguins were not playing well, but Sergei Murashov was shining and they had a chance to show they could, in fact, hold a big lead late in a game. And then Utah scored four goals in seven minutes to take the lead. The Penguins were able to show at least an ounce of pride and tie the game late, sending it to overtime, where they lost 44 seconds in.
They were in a position to get those six points.
Any team in the NHL, when given those situations, should have earned the six points. Probably 100 times out of 100. Certainly at least 99 times out of 100.
The Penguins managed to get only three points.
If that is not enough, the Penguins are only 2-1-2 this season when entering the third period with a three-goal lead. That is three losses in those situations.
The rest of the NHL this season is 73-0 when faced with that situation.
They are 1-9 in games that go beyond regulation, which, while still a major problem that is leaving potential points on the table, is not anywhere near as big of a problem as the fact they seem to be in their own heads and incapable of holding what should be an insurmountable lead.
I have no idea what to make of this.
Are the Penguins an overachieving bad team?
Are they a fragile, mentally broken good team?
Losses at this point would be easier to accept if they were just getting dominated from the opening face-off and losing regular, normal games. But that is not happening. The opposite is happening. While the roster is still obviously flawed in some big areas (the defense is not good; the goaltending is inconsistent and has been for years) they are still playing really well for long stretches of time.
They dominated Philadelphia.
They beat Tampa Bay, one of the best teams in the league, in their building, in regulation.
They outplayed Dallas, arguably the second-best team in the league, for most of Sunday’s game.
They controlled the play against a good Anaheim team for 59 minutes 59.9 seconds.
They were dominating San Jose for 40 minutes.
They dominated Toronto, in Toronto, for 40 minutes and had a 3-0 lead earlier this season.
Truly bad teams do not really do that. The Penguins are not uncompetitive. They are not lacking in talent. They can create and produce offense as well as any team in the league and have some of the best special teams in the league. That is worth something.
Even with these blown leads and this stretch of games, they are STILL on a 100-point pace for the season and still very much in the playoff race. By points percentage they are still 11th in the NHL and sixth in the Eastern Conference. A lot of that is due to the broken nature of the NHL standings that do not properly weigh regulation wins versus overtime and shootout defeats. But that is another topic for another day.
Go back to September training camp and tell somebody that in Mid-December the Penguins would be on that pace and in this spot in the standings you would probably say, “hey, maybe they are not so bad.” But there is no way you could have anticipated it looking like THIS.
It is truly one of the most baffling things I have ever seen in sports. Even if you want to conclude that the Penguins are not a very good team and are not as good as their 10-game start to the season, teams simply do not lose games like this, this often, and this frequently. Bad teams just lose games. They get beat from the start. Not even lottery teams give away games like this.
What is really a kick in the head with these recent game is they have come after the returns of forwards Rickard Rakell and Justin Brazeau. But those returns coincided with the absences of Evgeni Malkin and Blake Lizotte. The injury situation just keeps balancing out in the worst possible way.
What do you even do at this point?
The other concerning thing is that it is not really the young guys or the new guys that are causing a lot of this. It is the veterans. Look at the players that were on the ice for the ending of the Anaheim game. Sidney Crosby. Bryan Rust. Kris Letang.
Look at the players on the ice in overtime on Sunday.
Or the players that were on the ice for much of the San Jose meltdown.
It was the guys that should know better and be better and be leading by example. I have made the argument — and still believe it — that it is good for rebuilding teams to having good players that still give a damn around their younger players. Right now those players are the ones doing a lot of the damage in terms of their failure to hold leads and their inability to win in overtime. If these guys want to make the playoffs again in Pittsburgh a lot of this has to fall on them to start being better in these situations.
The Penguins have four games this week, including one more game this home stand against Jarry and the Oilers. With the way the week is going he probably shuts them out and scores an empty-net goal.
They then go on the road for two games against the Ottawa Senators and Montreal before returning home for another game against the Canadiens as part of a home-and-home.
The Oilers have not played up to expectations this season, but they still have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. We saw what Montreal is capable of this past week with their young talent. Ottawa has been struggling lately.
I am not even going to try and think of what a reasonable week should look like because nothing about this team is reasonable.
Whatever their record ends up being this week we are really going to learn something about this team and where its mindset is. If they can regroup and find a way to win some games, that is a great sign. If they go in the tank and just lose games from the start, that is probably a bad sign. If they keep losing third period, multi-goal leads you might have to really start considering drastic changes. This can not continue.
