Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
Tired legs. Mismatched defensive pairings that inspired little confidence and performed to low expectations. And a hungry opponent.
The Pittsburgh Penguins never found their energy, never found much of their game, and even their top-rated penalty kill allowed three goals. The Penguins did not find themselves, but found a face full of the Carolina Hurricanes forecheck in a gutting 5-1 loss at PPG Paints Arena.
Fortunately for the Penguins, their closest pursuers, the New York Islanders and Columbus Blue Jackets, face faceoff Sunday night. Both cannot win, so at least one team will remain behind the Penguins.
For the Penguins winger Egor Chinakhov broke the Carolina shutout with 5:04 remaining in the game, but there was little celebration from the Penguins’ bench. They were thumped. Thoroughly and completely.
The checklist of problems was not small. It started with the residuals from the punishing and emotional win over the Winnipeg Jets Saturday.
“I think obviously we battled hard yesterday, had a tough game, and I just don’t think that the energy was there today,” said defenseman Erik Karlsson. “At the same time, we’ve got to figure out a way to manage (the game) without feeling our best. And today we didn’t do much.”
However, Karlsson and goalie Stuart Skinner noted, at this time of the season, teams are often tasked with playing despite suboptimal energy levels. In other words, teams have to gut it out.
Coach Dan Muse took one for his team in the postgame presser Sunday. The communicator coach lumped himself in with the poor efforts Sunday. And perhaps some of that is true–Muse put defensemen Kris Letang and Sam Girard together despite an ever taller mountain of evidence that they should not play together, ever.
The Penguins’ breakouts never adjusted to Carolina’s consistent attack.
“They make it hard. They’re on top of you. They’re constantly working above pucks, you know? They don’t quit. So they make it hard. They make it ugly,” said coach Dan Muse. “We’ve seen it enough now. (On the first shift), they get behind us, we take a penalty, and they score on it. It’s a tough way to start the game. But even there, that happens, what do we do next? And I feel like with our group (this year), we’ve responded more in those moments than not.
“Today, we didn’t, and then we just kind of let it continue to build in the wrong way.”
And defenseman Erik Karlsson couldn’t resist a little tongue-in-cheek postgame compliment/insult toward his division rival.
Did Carolina do anything differently that caused issues Sunday?
“They never do anything differently,” he deadpanned before flashing that trademark smirk to let you in on the joke.
Penguins Analysis
Ryan Shea should not be the linchpin of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ defense. With the utmost respect to the scrappy, dependable blueliner who has carved an NHL career from his opportunity with the Penguins, his loss should not cripple the entire unit.
But it certainly did. And maybe it will continue to do so.
Muse had little choice but to reinsert Ryan Graves into the lineup after Ilya Solovyov and Connor Clifton struggled mightily in the two recent games against Carolina, and while not fleet afoot, Graves is a bit quicker than Solovyov.
Sunday, the Penguins’ defensemen started terribly, stabilized to bad, and rested at ineffective. Beginning with the foibles of the shuffled defense pairings, Carolina could largely pin the Penguins in their own zone. At best, the Penguins impotently could not generate any speed out of their own zone or into the Carolina zone.
“(Lack of energy) may have been the root of it, for whatever reason,” said Bryan Rust. “Yeah, I don’t think we had the best legs today, and as a result, maybe we were playing the game a little bit slow, which caused us to turn the puck over, a lot. And anytime you do that, especially against a team like that, it’s going to be a recipe for an unhappy night.”
None. And less than none.
With no speed up the ice, the Penguins forwards faced gale-force winds getting into the Carolina zone and trying to play around the net. The Penguins were only rarely able to get behind the defense. Even when the forwards took the puck deep, they faced four, if not five, defenders protecting the low zone.
The incongruity of Kris Letang and Sam Girard skating together matched the shallow ineffectiveness of Graves and Connor Clifton. The fallout put the Penguins on their heels for the entirety of the game, Erik Karlsson and Parker Wotherspoon sent to rescue the team from the defensive zone.
The turnovers and mistakes stemming from the blue line were catastrophic. On the first shift, Ryan Graves was walked and took a tripping penalty, which resulted in Carolina’s first goal.
In fairness, Graves and Connor Clifton overcame early struggles to submit a serviceable game and were far from a problem.
Girard and Letang were both guilty of much. On one sequence which led to a high-danger scoring chance in the second period, Letang’s turnover on a failed breakout was immediately followed by Girard diving to the ice and sliding past the puck carrier, resulting in a glorious Carolina scoring chance.
There was just too much of that Sunday.
Not even the Penguins’ top-ranked penalty kill could help them as the PK allowed three goals on three chances.
Tactically, there was little to analyze. The Penguins’ emergency breakout routes required extra forwards returning deep into the zone, which allowed Carolina to stay on top of them.
The same is true for the forwards coming back to help and skating the pucks to safety.
There were no stretch passes and painfully few center-up passes, which were the key to breaking through Carolina’s all-in forecheck in recent games.
There was, in fact, a lot of floaters and chips off the glass to no one.
If things go south this season, trading Brett Kulak for Sam Girard and a future No. 2 will be viewed as the iceberg which sent icy water gushing into the Penguins’ hull. Even with Shea, the Penguins’ defense has struggled over the last couple of weeks.
Losing Shea should not cripple the lineup, but indeed it did, and when viewing the defense pairs, predictably so.
The collection of sixth and seventh defensemen, which comprised four of the Penguins’ blue-line spots, was simply not good enough. Perhaps it is not good enough, which should be the bigger concern for Muse and general manager Kyle Dubas to figure something out quickly.
Penguins Report Card
Team: F
At no point in the 60-minute slog were they the better team. Not in any phase, not in any zone, not for any length of time.
Blue Line: Not Good Enough
Too many times, the Penguins’ defensemen had the puck on their sticks, only to moments later put it on a Carolina stick. Whether it was being gobbled by the forecheck, bad outlets, desperation chips, or otherwise errant passes, it was not a good day.
Tommy Novak, Evgeni Malkin, Egor Chinakhov (2nd Line): F
Invisible. Through 50 minutes, the line had one shot on goal at even strength, despite a majority of their starts in the offensive zone.
Muse eventually broke up the second line, putting Chinakhov with Sidney Crosby for some shifts. It worked as Bryan Rust set up Chinakhov’s later third-period goal, but the game was long past competitive when the Penguins scored.
Justin Brazeau: Struggling
Brazeau had no shots on goal and just one miss in the first 50 minutes. The Penguins need a lot more from their big winger. He did little for puck possession or offensive pressure.
He had a pretty rebound chance between his skates late in the game.
Categorized:Penguins Analysis
