After playing one of their best games of the season against the Washington Capitals on Friday, the Pittsburgh Penguins put forth their very worst effort of the season on Monday.
The Penguins surrendered six goals in the first period – which, according to Penguins’ historian Bob Grove, is the most ever given up by the Penguins in the opening period of a home game – and dropped a lopsided game to the Dallas Stars, 7-1.
Rookie goaltender Joel Blomqvist gave up two goals he’d definitely like to have back early in the first period, and he was pulled after a Mason Marchment breakaway goal on a bad bounce – and a blown defensive assignment – in favor of Alex Nedeljkovic, who surrendered three more goals before the period was over.
All around, it’s safe to say that the Penguins’ effort tonight was poor. When asked what went wrong, head coach Mike Sullivan was frank.
“I don’t know if I have a good answer for you,” Sullivan said following the game. “They get a couple of flukey goals early in the first period, and we get down early, that many goals… I thought the rest of the period, we didn’t play the game the right way. We were careless with the puck, we gave them some easy looks, so they turned it into an insurmountable challenge. I don’t know if I have a valid answer at this point.”
Nedeljkovic stressed that the team has to have a short memory, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some lessons to be learned from this one.
“Tomorrow is a new day,” he said. “You wake up, move on from it. We’ll watch video. It’s not going to be fun for anybody.”
With the team playing four games in six days this week, they’ll have no choice but to wake up and move on from it. And captain Sidney Crosby told me that having a busy schedule after a loss like this sometimes helps the team regroup:
The #LetsGoPens play four games in six days this week. I asked Sidney Crosby if a busy schedule helps after a game like tonight’s:
“Yeah. I mean, you just want to get out there again and play better, feel better. It’s not ever fun losing, but especially that way. It’s one…
— Kelsey Surmacz (@kelsey_surmacz4) November 12, 2024
There was next to nothing positive from this game, so buckle up. Here are some thoughts and observations from this disaster of a showing from the Penguins:
– I’m actually going to start with literally the only bright-ish spot of the night. And that was the Penguins’ second line.
They were the only starting line that out-attempted the Stars in shots (5-3). They were hard on the puck for most of the night, and the effort from that line was showing.
In my opinion? Evgeni Malkin has been the only veteran to give 100 percent effort no matter the circumstances this season. That’s not ideal. But he wasn’t nearly as bad as others were tonight, and neither were Michael Bunting or Bryan Rust.
Crosby, Malkin, and Rickard Rakell reunited for brief stretches throughout the game and out-attempted Dallas, 6-2. It’s going to a be a common theme for the Penguins when they’re failing to generate any offense, but I would imagine that it’s not going to be a mainstay anymore.
– Although they struggled early, the fourth line wasn’t bad as the game went on, either. Still really liking the energy that Lizotte is bringing to that line. He made a nice play to create a scoring chance for himself in the third, doing the ol’ Bryan Rust to power his way to the net.
That line was good in the third period. They were, at least, still playing with some life.
– Actually, one more silver lining. Nice to see Anthony Beauvillier get on the board again. He has four goals this season, and he is currently on pace for 20 goals, which would be the second-highest total of his career and best since 2017-18, his sophomore season.
That’s a good thing for Beauvillier and for the Penguins. He’s definitely a player they’ll be hoping to flip for assets before the trade deadline.
– Alright. Let’s get to the bad stuff.
The first period was the worst period of Penguins hockey I have witnessed in a long, long time. As in, dating back to the X-Generation days. Maybe even before that.
It’s hard to say much else about it. They just looked completely disinterested in playing a hockey game. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
That first period is, simply put, something that cannot be repeated this season, regardless of where the Penguins sit in the standings. It was an embarrassment that was met with a chorus of boos and then with a cheer when the opening frame finally came to an end.
Just ugly, ugly stuff.
– Blomqvist had the first objectively bad start of his career. The entire start only lasted 10 minutes and 16 seconds, and two of the three goals should have been easy saves, despite the defensive breakdowns preceding all of them except the second.
It’s early in his career, but giving up these kinds of goals early has been a kind of small pattern with him. He gave up a softer goal early against Washington before hunkering down and turning in a great performance. He did the same thing in a win against Detroit early this season.
I still think Blomqvist is the best goaltender on the roster, and these early goals are something that could be chalked up to inexperience. That being said, don’t be surprised to see Tristan Jarry get the net on Wednesday against the Red Wings. There’s not really any reason to avoid giving Jarry a start after neither goaltender was particularly good on Monday.
– I’m going to have a piece on this tomorrow. But, my goodness, Kris Letang is struggling.
If the eye test is bad, the data is even worse. Letang was on the ice for five of the first six Dallas goals in the first period, and he was consequential, in varying degrees, on every single one of them aside from the power play goal.
He and Grzelcyk – who was a minus-3 at the end of it – were a disaster in general. In fact, Ryan Graves was the only other Penguins’ defenseman who finished as a minus in this game, and he was a minus-1.
Letang appears to be seeing some serious regression this season. And it’s a serious problem for the Penguins.
– Crosby was noticeably frustrated tonight, as was Malkin. Crosby took a roughing penalty late in the first period, and Tyler Seguin scored on that power play for Dallas to make it 6-0. He also took a slashing penalty midway through the third period before Malkin was sent to the box a few minutes later for holding.
Phil Bourque said this on the radio side as well, but these were penalties out of pure frustration for the two-headed monster. You know it’s a bad night when that starts happening, and it’s probably not a great sign that things are going swimmingly in general.
– On that note: I’m not sure anything is going to change with this team unless there is a coaching change.
Related: Penguins: Dubas’ History Of Firing Head Coaches
An effort like this isn’t just on the coach. It’s very much on the veterans, team leadership, and everyone in general for failing to play as a unit. A coach can only do so much to get their players to commit to playing defense and to get their goaltenders to make easy saves.
But these efforts – and this team’s fragility – are a flashing red warning sign of locker room dysfunction.
If things like line changes are slow, why are players taking their time getting back to the bench and hopping over the boards? If there are inexcusable, inexplicable defensive zone breakdowns on a nightly basis, how does that get fixed? If the team continuously implodes after every mistake and every blown lead, who is accountable?
Those things I just listed are things that happen to every single team in hockey. But there is not a team in hockey that does these things with recurring frequency, over and over again, and with seemingly no lessons learned and no accountability – that is, no team but the Penguins.
At some point, something’s gotta give. Whether this team gets itself back in it or tanks completely, it needs to show some kind of heartbeat.
Right now, this team does not have one. That’s not something that can be changed with player personnel being swapped in and out of the lineup. It has to start with the coach.
