Time to deal with all that went wrong
For the first time in 1,110 days, the Stanley Cup playoffs will continue without the Penguins.
Their 2-1 overtime loss Monday night against Washington ensured there will be no three-peat.
“I think we had a great chance to do it again with the team we have, the way we were playing,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “I don’t think we got dominated by that team. But we have to tip our hat to that group. They capitalized on the chances they got. In a few years, we’ve done some great things, but we expect more.”
This Penguins team was flawed from the start but seemed to come into the playoffs with a legitimate chance to make another serious run at a Stanley Cup.
Where, then, did it go wrong? Here are a few places to start when discerning why this year turned out to be different: 1. Lack of scoring depth When Bryan Rust was asked after the defeat whether or not the Penguins got enough secondary scoring in this postseason, his response was a terse, “What’s it look like?” The answer, obviously, was no.
The Penguins got just 12 goals from forwards other than Jake Guentzel, Sidney Crosby and Patric Hornqvist this postseason. That accounted for 28.6 percent of their overall scoring. Last year, for comparison, their bottom-nine scored 60 percent of the Penguins’ postseason goals (46 out of 77). Without true scoring threats all the way down the lineup, the Penguins couldn’t take advantage of matchups as well as in years past and became, contrary to what Mike Sullivan often preaches, a much easier team to play against.
2. Key players had a postseason to forget
Specifically, Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin. Both appeared to be playing at much less than 100 percent, and neither made his presence felt in the series against the Capitals. Kessel had just one goal in the postseason, coming in a 5-0 blowout Game 4 win against the Philadelphia Flyers. He had four assists against the Capitals, all on the power play. Malkin never looked the same after returning from the lowerbody injury that kept him out of Games 1 and 2 of the Washington series. He had one goal, on the power play, in Game 4. Like Kessel, he was a minus-4 in the Game 5 loss.
3. Derick Brassard never really clicked
Brassard actually seemed to be fitting in a bit better over the final few games, but he was doing it on the fourth line with Conor Sheary and Tom Kuhnhackl. That’s not the role the Penguins envisioned when they pulled what felt like a coup before the trade deadline.
Brassard was supposed to be a matchup nightmare as the team’s third-line center but never really caught on in that role. Despite ample time together, he and Kessel didn’t seem to have much chemistry, and it’s possible the adjustment from Ottawa’s defense-first system to the Penguins’ up-tempo attack was a bit tougher than anticipated.
The Penguins have Brassard under contract for one more season at a very affordable $3 million. It’s certainly possible an offseason and training camp with the team will do wonders to help Brassard fit better, but he wasn’t the immediate differencemaker the Penguins hoped he would be at the trade deadline.
4. Defensive issues kept cropping up
This team was always a bit leakier defensively that its predecessors. Odd-man rushes were an issue in October and came up again in a big way against Washington. In 2016 and 2017, the Penguins gave up 2.28 and 2.29 goals per postseason game, respectively. This year, that number was 2.83.
They gave up four goals or more three times in each series and allowed a number of key scores on defensive breakdowns.
5. Matt Murray wasn’t great in the playoffs
Murray had some moments in this playoff run, and even against the Capitals, where he looked every bit like the goalie that backstopped the Penguins to backto-back Stanley Cups. He kept the Penguins in it for most of Game 1 and was excellent in Game 6 after a questionable opening goal from Alex Chiasson. But there were too many of those shaky goals this time around.
In the two Stanley Cup runs, Murray had a combined even-strength save percentage of .935. This postseason, it was .914.
He was probably good enough to give the Penguins a chance to win but wasn’t good enough to mask other deficiencies.