Penguins Grades: Future Never More Clear, and Players Know It

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The future met the past. The game was the future stars against the decades-long faces of the game. Failure on a second-period two-man advantage deflated the Pittsburgh Penguins and emboldened the Anaheim Ducks. Anaheim wore down and eventually pulled away from the Penguins, easily surviving a late challenge for a 5-2 win at the Honda Center. In speaking with some of the Penguins’ stars after the game, they acknowledged not just the lopsided game, but the harsh reality, too. The Penguins are the old team, unable to play the high-flying game they once did, the one that Anaheim happily played Sunday. Anaheim’s young stars were at times breathtaking. Cutter Gauthier had a hat trick, and the puck followed him. Beckett Sennecke had a myriad of glorious chances, including a breakaway, though just one assist. Leo Carlsson had a breakaway, and his speed created a couple of unabated chances. Team USA defenseman Jackson Lacombe played nearly 31 minutes and was all over the ice, earning three assists. Penguins fans may have recognized Anaheim’s effort as one they routinely watched from 2006 through 2010. As for the game Sunday, the power play swaps over the first five minutes of the second period were the fulcrum that decisively tipped the scale for Anaheim. The Penguins had 1:37 of a two-man advantage and then 2:23 of 5-on-4 time. But they did not score. Their failure clearly deflated the team. Despite a couple of third-period power-play goals, the players knew the reality. “Yeah, those were 6v4. They weren’t (really) power plays,” Kris Letang said to PHN in the postgame. “I don’t think we were very happy with the power play.” The pace of the first period was a track meet. Anaheim offered the Penguins a back-and-forth battle, and the Penguins happily accepted, to their own detriment. While the Penguins had more shots on goal (12-7), Anaheim had a breakaway, a couple of three-on-ones, maybe even a two-on-one. “We still have those parts (of our game) that we have to clean up. I mean, you go back to the start of the game. Some of (our) rushes (we) were going all in on offense at times, and then it’s coming back, three on one, two on one,” said coach Dan Muse. “It’s just some of the odd man’s early on there too. There are some times it happened today, and it happened (Saturday) too, where maybe we’re in the D zone longer than we’d like to be, but like we’re not keeping most of it to the outside.” While the stat sheet will show the game was decided by power play success, Anaheim was 2-for-4 (one second away from a 3-for-4 performance), the real story of the game was again the Penguins not playing well with the puck. Giveaways and poor decisions opened Anaheim’s charge. In short, while the stats showed a very competitive game, the Penguins were hanging on and often underwater. Their inability to play a clean game continues to fuel the opponent’s offense and overtax their goalies. Their inability to generate as much as they yield keeps them behind. Very simply, the Penguins didn’t have nearly the reciprocal odd-man rushes Sunday and generally don’t create the glorious chances they cede. The cold reality is that they’re not a fast enough team to create those breaks often. They’re not physical enough to kill plays on the wall. And they’re not disciplined enough to play a simple game with their strength and force opponents to defend the hard areas. A talent game is in their DNA, but they are no longer an upper-echelon talented team, and that was made abundantly clear by playing a young team that is now many of those things they used to be. Xs and Os The Penguins found Anaheim’s speed game enticing. When opponents offer, the Penguins rarely say no. Rather than grind Anaheim’s superior talent, youth, and speed, the Penguins wanted to dance. The results were too predictable. Make no mistake, in the first period, the Penguins’ top line with Sidney Crosby , Evgeni Malkin , and Rickard Rakell was brilliant. They had 11 shot attempts and allowed none. They had seven scoring chances compared to zero against, but they could not sustain that domination. The top line had just one more scoring chance over the last 40 minutes. The other lines produced little. Tactically, the Penguins again preferred the rush game, though they did occasionally attempt to set up the forecheck with a chip-and-chase game. The players needed to invert that. More chips and less rush against the faster team. In speaking with players after the game, some knew it, too. “When you have that much mad rush, and play back and forth, it’s like flipping a coin, you know,” Letang said. “It’s 50/50. Some nights you get on top of it. But I think we’re better off just trying to get the puck down and getting a forecheck and play down low in the zone.” Letang was absolutely correct. One of the old lions who excelled for nearly two decades advocating for a grinding game, one that the Penguins seem unable to embrace. Anaheim generally packed the house, getting four and five players around their net to block shots and keep the Penguins to the outside. Then Anaheim gobbled those blocked shots or loose pucks and attacked with numbers. Sometimes, it looked like a jailbreak, or, my apologies, the Flying V. “You know, I think we’ve got to work the end plays (against) a little bit quicker, but then there are still times where they’re just getting inside of us, and they’re getting some really good opportunities around the net,” Muse said. “So we’ll continue to work. We have to take steps. I think there’s been, if you look over the last two games, especially (Saturday), I thought it was a little bit more sound structurally, but I still think some of these big (chances), we’ve got to work to clean it up.” After 18 games, the Penguins’ ability to clean up the chances is increasingly in doubt. Report Card Team: C Asking show ponies to become work horses, pulling sleds in the mud. The Penguins had offensive chances, but they didn’t have extended pressure, except for a few extended moments created by rousing shifts by the top line. Rakell-Crosby-Malkin: A In the first period, the line had an 11-0 shot attempt advantage, a 4-0 shot share, and a staggering 7-0 scoring chance advantage. They didn’t cede much over the last 40 minutes and they played well, except for Crosby’s defensive gaffe in Gauthier’s first goal in the second period that allowed Gauthier unfettered access with speed on Silovs. Power Play: D They were given chances. On the 5v3, Erik Karlsson’s wrist shot was headed toward an empty net, but Jackson LaCombe blocked it with his skate. At 5v4, it was generally an exercise in futility. In their first four minutes, they had just two shots on goal. Too little net-front presence and some labored zone entries kept them off balance. Kris Letang: B- For the second consecutive game, Letang was tagged with four giveaways, but he also made several defensive stops, including breaking up a three-on-one. Like the rest of the team, his game lacks consistency, but there were some good things, too. Hendrix Lapierre: Absent The Penguins’ third line had just two shot attempts. It wasn’t until later in the game that Lapierre began to find some puck time and push the play, but the line was not good enough despite not being buried with defensive zone starts. The Field: C The Penguins were not terrible Sunday. They weren’t a total mess, but nor were they good. From one shift to the next, they are a different team. From one period to the next, their style and their game vary. Related Headlines Penguins Outclassed, Fight Back Not Enough Koivunen Injured, McGroarty Gets Recall Penguins Notebook: Trade Talk, Malkin Climbs, & Murashov Sends Message Read more at Pittsburgh Hockey Now