Penalty-kill regulars see bright spots
the optics don’t look as good with our penalty kill, but we do think we’re getting better and improving in a lot of areas.”
The same could be said for the Penguins’ 4-3 overtime win against the New Jersey Devils Thursday. The penalty kill was solid for at least four minutes of New Jersey’s 5:01 of powerplay time. But one Taylor Hall shot from the right circle beat Matt Murray, and, all of a sudden, it’s a bad night for the penalty kill.
“I think we had three kills,” Tom Kuhnhackl said. “I don’t think they had anything for 5:50, and then it’s just that seeingeye shot from the point that somehow goes through everyone, finds its way to the net. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
Of course, there’s no partial credit for penalty kills — a seeing-eye longrange goal counts just as much as one that comes after a minute of dominant possession time. So, in that regard, the Penguins know there are areas they need to tighten up as the postseason approaches next week.
“We’ve just got to make sure we stick to our details,” Kuhnhackl said. “Win faceoffs, get clears all the way down the ice. We’ve got to block shots. Those are the main priorities on the penalty kill.”
Those little things tend to matter in the playoffs, too.
A strong regular-season penalty kill isn’t a sure-fire indicator of postseason success — no league leader in penalty-kill percentage has won the Stanley Cup in the past 10 years — but there does seem to be a floor to success.
Of the past 10 Stanley Cup champs, nine have had a regular-season kill rate of at least 82 percent. The lone exception, though, was the 2016-17 Penguins, who killed penalties at a 79.8 percent clip in the regular season.
This Penguins team has an identical 79.8 percent kill rate going into the Thursday game against the Blue Jackets in Columbus thanks in large part to a dismal 66.7 success rate in the month of March. Before that, the Penguins had mostly hovered around 8082 percent.
With only two games left, they likely won’t get back there before the end of the regular season, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have confidence in the unit going into the playoffs.
“I think the two biggest things we talk about is blocking some more shots and then communicating a little better,” Riley Sheahan said. “I think if we can all just be on the same page and be kind of one unit, it’ll help us a little more.
“We’ve had some good stretches and some good kills, even the last couple of games, some good efforts. It was just a ‘let our foot off the gas’ sort of thing and it ends up in the back of our net.”
Sheahan wasn’t the only regular penalty-killer that pointed out a need for more blocked shots.
Given that deficiency, plus the timing of the Penguins’ penalty-killing swoon, it’s fair to question how much the unit is hurting from the departure of defenseman Ian Cole at the trade deadline. But Cole isn’t coming back, so the Penguins need to start killing penalties — all two minutes of them — with the players they have.
“Obviously, they’re going to get chances, they have one extra guy out there,” Kuhnhackl said.
“That’s the whole point. But it comes down to the little details of blocking shots, being in the shooting lanes, all those things.”
And, yes, sometimes it comes down to just hoping the puck doesn’t find its way in on those few chances the opponent gets.
“There’s nights where we have awful kills and they don’t get anything and then there’s nights where we have great kills and they score with one shot,” Kuhnhackl said.
“We’ve just got to stick with the details, take the positives from every game, have trust in each other and, if we do that, we’ll be fine for when the playoffs start.”