Assistance can’t come soon enough
Those are the questions. Forget about the goalies. The Penguins can win with either guy, but they cannot win if Carter Rowney and Scott Wilson are skating on the second line.
For a while, the narrative was that all the injuries were a blessing in disguise, galvanizing the Penguins by way of some much-needed adversity.
Yeah, well, a four-game losing streak that includes two embarrassing home losses has brought home the reality that a club can only absorb so many significant injuries.
Nobody’s JV team is going to win a Stanley Cup.
The Penguins are plenty deep, just not deep enough to overcome the loss of two of the best players on the planet in Evgeni Malkin and Letang, four of their top seven defensemen, a top-line winger (Jake Guentzel) and a critical role player (Carl Hagelin). Did I miss anyone? On this night, the Blackhawks had most of the stars. Guys like Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, Marian Hossa and the breathtaking talent that is Artemi Panarin. The Penguins seemed out of sorts, serving up odd-man breaks all over the place.
Kane made two stunning passes — a no-look beauty from behind the net and a one-touch special — to set up two of the Blackhawks’ four first-period goals.
Nobody would have been surprised to see Murray open the second period, but Sullivan stayed with Fleury, who in all likelihood will be back on the bench Friday against the Rangers. Fleury hasn’t made consecutive starts since Murray returned from injury Jan. 12. He probably needed to have his personal game of the year to make that happen Friday. He didn’t. So Murray, it would appear, remains very much the No. 1 guy. But it really won’t matter if the Penguins don’t get healthy. And that doesn’t just mean getting key players back. It means getting them back to near full strength.
Did this day, even with a bad loss, turn the Penguins in that direction? Did it give them hope?
Why yes. Yes it did.