No good excuse as team humiliated
Penguins performance among worse embarrassments in franchise history
This is the Montreal team that burst the Penguins’ bubble in Toronto: “I think it’ll be Pens in 2. Joking. Sort of,” Montreal Gazette columnist Brendan Kelly wrote before the best-offive qualifying round series after watching the wretched Canadiens during the regular season.
This is the Montreal team that handed the Penguins their most humiliating playoff exit in franchise history. Well, at least since last season:
“We’re playing an experienced team. They’ve won Stanley Cups, they know how to win. We have what we have,” Montreal coach Claude Julien said after the Canadiens beat the Penguins in overtime in Game 1.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this, the Penguins 2-0 losers in Game 4, going down and out with barely a fight.
But it did.
It was supposed to be the biggest mismatch of the qualifying round, a Penguins team that had 86 points in the season against a Montreal club that finished with 40 losses in 71 games and traded assets at the trade deadline. But it wasn’t.
There have been other monumental postseason collapses in Penguins history. The 1975 team blew a 3-0 series lead to the New York Islanders. The great 1993 team, which won an NHL-record 17 consecutive games late in the season, finished with 119 points and was trying to win a third consecutive Cup, lost the final two games to the Islanders, who had 32 fewer points. And, of course, the 2019 team was swept away by the Islanders in the first round, scoring just six goals in the four losses. Those Islanders were promptly swept by the Carolina Hurricanes in the next round.
This collapse felt worse. Here’s what the Penguins had in the final five periods of the series after blowing a 3-1 lead in Game 3 on Wednesday night in a 4-3 loss: No game, no fight, no heart.
Here’s what the Penguins had after the Game 4 loss: Plenty of excuses.
“Listen, it’s three-of-five and anything can happen,” Sidney Crosby said.
What happened was that the Canadiens, the better-prepared team, outplayed the Penguins in just about every way to ruin Crosby’s 33rd birthday Friday.
“The break that we just witnessed was longer than the offseason,” Kris Letang said.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the Canadiens also out for 4½ months because of COVID-19?
“It’s just an indication of how hard it is to win,” Mike Sullivan said.
That doesn’t make you feel much better, right? It certainly doesn’t justify losing to a team as bad as the Canadiens.
The Penguins won their first nine playoff series under Sullivan on their way to hoisting the Cup in 2017 and 2018. Since then, they have lost three consecutive series and are 1-9 in their past 10 postseason games.
This latest collapse would have been predictable if we had been paying close attention. The team lost 8 of 11 games before the coronavirus shutdown and was, to use Sullivan’s word at the time, “disconnected.” It never recovered.
Is it just me, or have the Penguins gone from proud champions to embarrassed losers in the blink of an eye?
It happens.
Teams get old, even teams that have won multiple Cups. Players lose their speed and maybe their hunger to win. It happened to the great Detroit teams of Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Nicklas Lidstrom, the great Los Angeles teams of Anze Kopitar, Marian Gaborik and Drew Doughty and the great Chicago teams of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith (despite what the Blackhawks did to the heavily favored Edmonton Oilers in these playoffs).
It’s not outrageous to think it’s happening to the Penguins, despite protestations from Sullivan:
“I think these guys are still elite players. I believe in this core. I still think there is elite play left.”
It’s easy to find reasons for the three losses to Montreal. The power play was 0 for 7 in Game 1. There was no pushback after the Canadiens scored twice to wipe out that 3-1 lead in Game 3 and Matt Murray gave up the hideous winning goal to Jeff Petry with 5½ minutes left. No one — not Crosby, Evgeni Malkin nor Jake Guentzel — could beat goaltender Carey Price in Game 4. Malkin had just one assist in the series. The third line did next-to-nothing despite significant tinkering by Sullivan. The third defensive pair of Jack Johnson and Justin Schultz was a combined minus-8.
Sullivan also had a rough series for reasons that went beyond the third-line woes. He was no match for Julien, which probably also should have been predictable. Sullivan did no better against Julien’s Canadiens than Dan Bylsma did against Julien’s Boston Bruins in the 2013 Eastern Conference final. Those Penguins scored just two goals in a four-game sweep.
There is one significant difference:
Those Bruins were good enough to make it to the Cup final. These Canadiens will be dispatched quickly in the next round.
Sullivan and his Penguins had no explanation for coming up so small.
Only those lame excuses.