Penguins’ flaws familiar
We saw it Thursday in Ottawa early. Coaches and players had a meeting at first intermission, then the Penguins improved drastically during a second-period kill.
No such luck against Chicago.
Gustav Forsling and Artem Anisimov scored power-play goals — Forsling off a faceoff, Anisimov potting a rebound — and Sullivan said the unit lacked any semblance of urgency.
“It’s attention to detail,” Sullivan said. “It’s working together. But for me, it starts with a level of urgency that we don’t have right now.”
How do you get said urgency?
Well, trading for Nick Bonino, Matt Cullen and Ron Hainsey is probably out of the question, and it’s a little tough to think that a player plucked from Wilkes-Barre/ Scranton is going to cure the Penguins’ ills on the kill.
Reality and Sullivan both say the solution starts with assessing the film, figuring out what they’re doing wrong and correcting it, with a few players functioning with a healthy fear of a trade or decreased role.
Another solution might be the simplest: Don’t put the other team on the power play in the first place.
The Penguins were shorthanded five times against the Blackhawks, pushing their season total to 88. Only Nashville (92) has been worse.
“We can’t take that many penalties,” Brian Dumoulin said.
“We’re better than that,” Maatta added.
“The more penalties you take, the more stress it puts on your penalty killers,” goalie Matt Murray said. “You take the guys who don’t kill out of the rhythm of the game as well. We have to clean that up, for sure.”
The other thing the Penguins might bemoan after this one, which prevented them from earning points in four consecutive games for the first time this season, was scoring only one goal, a shortie from Matt Hunwick, back after 15 games.
You can almost live with the meager offensive output given how much the Penguins generated. They had 36 shots on goal and 59 attempts and nearly scored at 11:33 of the third period, having Jake Guentzel’s goal taken off the board after Chicago challenged.
Sullivan spoke about controlling the controllables — effort, determination, making life difficult on goalies, that sort of stuff. The Penguins did that. They simply couldn’t beat Crawford. Even Phil Kessel, the Penguins’ most consistent player, was denied with 17.4 seconds left with seemingly the perfect opportunityto score.
That’ll come around, the Penguins figure. Look at their roster and pedigree. They’re more the team that put up 3.2 goals per game over their past five than they are the snake-bitten outfit that averaged just 1.6 in the eight before that.
But if they don’t stay out of the box and quit taking so many penalties … well, they’re going to have to do an awful lot of scoring to make up for it. And Sullivan might not have hair left.
“You’ve got to get better as the season goes on,” Sidney Crosby said. “Sometimes it takes longer than you’d like.”