Penguins’ poor run raises questions
In early January, no team in the NHL was scarier than the Penguins.
They headed west and rolled through three playoff teams, including two that finished the pandemic-shortened season among the Western Conference’s top three. Center Evgeni Malkin was on fire, goaltender Tristan Jarry was bulletproof and captain Sidney Crosby was on the trip, just about ready to rock following a three-month injury absence.
They didn’t have their A-game on Jan. 10 in Colorado and allowed the Avalanche to tie the game with 31 seconds left. But coach Mike Sullivan’s squad won anyway. “I just think that’s an indication of the type of team we’re becoming,” he said at the time.
No team was more resilient then. They were that horror movie villain who kept popping up, kept coming back.
But slowly, the Penguins were unmasked. They lost eight of 11 games prior to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down the sports world, and a stunning collapse became complete Friday when they fell, 2-0, to a Montreal Canadiens team that in a normal season wouldn’t have come close to making the playoffs. Montreal, the 24th seed in the league’s expanded 24team postseason, took the best-offive qualifying-round series, 3-1.
The Penguins during the series got just eight pucks past former league MVP Carey Price. They’ve scored three goals or fewer in each of their last 14 playoff games. The last time they got four or more was an 8-5 win over the Philadelphia Flyers that closed out their first-round series victory during the 2018 playoffs. The New York Islanders gave up just six goals to them in last year’s embarrassing four-game sweep.
What the heck happened to this veteran team? And how could this happen again?
Maybe it’s as simple as this: The Penguins weren’t as good as we thought, not as special as everyone within a proud organization with
multiple Stanley Cups believed in January.
Perhaps they were winning too frequently in unsustainable ways, propped up by crazy comebacks and a few weeks of gangbuster goaltending from Jarry, a first-time All-Star earlier this year.
Looking back, it all seemed to start unraveling Jan. 21, when they noshowed in the game before the All-Star break, a 3-0 loss in Philadelphia. The Penguins got away from the little things — making smart decisions at the blue lines, hounding opponents to get back the puck, five guys skating as one all over the ice.
General manager Jim Rutherford gave up a first -round draft pick and a top prospect to get veteran Jason Zucker. Three more forwards arrived at the trade deadline in February. But the downward spiral continued.
Sullivan had four months to find fixes, but even more stuff got busted against the Canadiens, a team with less talent but more hunger, structure and speed.
Crosby and All-Star defenseman Kris Letang, despite all the warning signs we saw in February and March, pointed to the fourmonth pandemic pause as the cause of this early exit.
“We did some pretty good things with the amount of injuries we had throughout the year. This is the situation we were faced with. I would have loved a better outcome,” Crosby, the captain, said. “But … it’s hard to really draw off the whole season when there’s a four-month break and you start all over again.”
Now Sullivan and Rutherford — who are both expected to return — will get four months to make difficult decisions about the direction of the franchise.
“I believe in this core,” Sullivan said, adding: “At some point, everybody’s window closes. … But I strongly believe this group has a lot of elite hockey [left].”
But it is fairly obvious the Penguins can’t bring back basically the same group of players next season and expect a different result. Significant roster moves need to be made if they are to squeeze one more Stanley Cup out of Crosby and Malkin. It may mean the departure of a few more fan favorites from the 2016 and 2017 championship runs.
Will the Penguins move on from goaltender Matt Murray three years after they chose him over the largely beloved Marc-Andre Fleury? Could Letang be dangled in a trade to allow them to shake up the core? Will Rutherford, with little salary cap space, think even bigger?
The GM fumed last April after that first-round loss to the Islanders, but an early playoff exit wasn’t a surprise to him. That team never quite came together.
This one did. Then, seemingly overnight and without explanation, it fell apart.