Penguins fall to Avalanche
28, and out-attempted them, 69-49. But Colorado defenseman Mark Barberio was the first player to find the back of the net, scoring at 6:17 of the third to break a scoreless deadlock and send the Avalanche on their way to a win.
“In the third, we were the better team,” winger Patric Hornqvist said. “They found a way to get the first one. After that, we chased the game. We had some good looks, but we couldn’t find a way to score tonight.”
Even though Cole admitted some frustration after the game, that was something he and his teammates tried to keep out of their heads on the bench as the Penguins were pushing in the third period. Even as the shot count rose and rose without them finding a goal.
“Sully’s said it before, and I think it rings true, that frustration is a useless emotion,”Cole said. “If things aren’t going our way or the goals aren’t going in for whatever reason, getting frustrated certainly doesn’t help the issue. You can’t frustrate the puck into the net and get mad about it.”
Actually, the Penguins might’ve tried frustrating the puck into the net Monday night. Because nothing else seemed to work.
They had some good looks, but overall their offensive production Monday night was probably a bit more about quantity than quality. Specifically, Sullivan said he thought his team could’ve created some more traffic in front of Bernier, who stopped 39 of the 40 shots he faced.
“We talked about that in between periods, we talked about it behind the bench,” Sullivan said. “Just trying to get in the goalie’s sight lines, trying to make it difficult for him to see the puck. Even if he made a positional save, he couldn’t control the rebound, maybe we could create some offense off of it.”
The power play also was held in check for just the second time in the past 10 games, going scoreless on three opportunities.
“The power play wasn’t quite as sharp as it’s been, but that’s going to happen over the course of 80-plus games,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got to find ways to have success five-on-five. We just couldn’t find the back of the net tonight.”
Despite the loss, Sullivan said there were some positives such as the fact that they had an undeniably strong start — after the debacle Saturday night against Toronto — holding the Avalanche without a shot for the first 4:53 of the game.
And the amount of zone time the Penguins controlled was impressive and will lead to wins most nights, but once again …
“We still have to create more from all that zone time we have,” Hornqvist said.
And that might be the biggest takeaway from this game and the homestand as a whole. There are certainly encouraging signs, but losses like this — and against the Rangers, and against the Maple Leafs — get tougher and tougher to shake off as the season progresses and the standings beginto sort themselves out.
“I think we certainly need to evaluate what’s going on and why we’re losing games, especially here at home where we’ve traditionally been very good,” Cole said.
“We need to figure this out, we need to figure it out in a hurry. People were preaching patience early on, but now it’s getting to the point when, if we didn’t feel an urgency to figure it out then, we certainly should now.”
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG.