Pens entertaining but not playoff worthy
PITTSBURGH – The Penguins showed what an exhilarating hockey team they are to watch in their last two games.
They also showed why this isn’t a playoff worthy team.
The Pens do have fight in them and deserve credit for battling back from being almost out of the playoff picture to where they actually controlled their own destiny after a 6-5 overtime win over Detroit at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday.
Then the Boston Bruins came into town and knocked Pittsburgh from that perch with a 6-4 win on Saturday.
That leaves the Pens with 86 points and trailing both the Capitals and the Red Wings by one point in the battle for the second wild-card spot. All three have two games remaining.
The odds are against Pittsburgh now.
Detroit has the easiest path with home and away games against lowly Montreal, the last-place team in the Atlantic Division, tonight and Tuesday night.
Washington also has back-to-back games as they host Boston tonight and go to Philadelphia on Tuesday. The Flyers are also at 87 points and ahead of Pittsburgh but have only that one game left on their slate.
The Penguins’ two games are tonight at home against Nashville and at the New York Islanders on Wednesday. That means they’ll know going into the finale if they still have a shot at making the playoffs.
Even if they do, well, any longtime Penguins fan knows how many times the Islanders have ripped their hearts out over the years in games such as this, and it was just a year ago when Pittsburgh controlled its own destiny and dropped its final two games against two of the NHL’s worst teams, at home to the Blackhawks and at Columbus.
The Penguins play highly entertaining games, though, there’s no argument about that. One minute they have the fans at PPG Paints Arena at a deafening roar and the next minute they cause the place to fall into almost a dead silence with an agonizing moment.
Thursday’s roller-coaster affair with the Red Wings was a perfect example.
Drew O’Connor scored just 2:40 into the game to give Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead.
Lucas Raymond’s backhander tied it for Detroit just 59 seconds later.
Kris Letang blasted in a slap shot with 4:01 left in the period. Pens up 2-1.
Raymond scored with just 14 seconds left in the period to tie it and kill any momentum Pittsburgh was hoping to take into intermission.
Bryan Rust scored and then set up a goal by Sidney Crosby in the second period and the Pens found themselves up 4-2.
Then, this time with 36 seconds left in the period, former Penguin Jeff Petry drilled a shot past Alex Nedeljkovic to yet again stem Pittsburgh’s momentum going into the locker room.
Jeff Carter seemed to put the Penguins in great position to win with a stellar individual effort, knocking the puck free and putting in a shorthanded goal for a 5-3 advantage early in the third period.
Alas, these Penguins can never make it easy.
Raymond fed Dylan Clark for a goal to make it 5-4 with 7:04 remaining and less than two minutes later the Penguins inexplicably allowed Raymond – who already had two goals and an assist – to break in free on Nedeljkovic and put home the tying goal and complete his hat trick.
Crosby did feed Erik Karlsson for a game-winning slap shot in overtime but that one precious point the Red Wings salvaged out of the Penguins’ blowing a late two-goal lead may be the difference in the playoff race.
The Bruins showed how superior they were to the Penguins on Saturday as Nedeljkovic was finally chased from the net in his 11th consecutive start in goal.
After a scoreless first period, Jake DeBrusk and Pavel Zacha scored 14 seconds apart to give Boston a 2-0 lead, and, after a goal by Rust, Keven Shattenkirk made it 3-1 Bruins. At this point coach Mike Sullivan pulled the overworked Nedeljkovic in favor of the much-maligned Tristan Jarry.
This was Jarry’s chance to step up, make a game-changing save and perhaps reclaim his starting job. That wasn’t to be on a crucial power play later in the period.
The Penguins had a chance to get back in the game but, as they’ve done consistently all season, they gave up a shorthanded goal, this one to Brad Marchand, on the first shot Jarry faced.
That’s not surprising. The Pens’ ineptitude on the power play has been a theme all season.
Going into Sunday, Pittsburgh’s 37 power play goals ranked 30th in the league, behind only Columbus and Philadelphia, and its 14.5% success rate on the power play was second worst to only the Flyers.
Even worse, only the Canadiens have given up as many shorthanded goals – 12 – as the Pens this season, and their power play goal differential of plus-25 is the worst in the league by far.
Still down 4-1, Pittsburgh didn’t cave in and made it 4-3 with goals by Michael Bunting late in the second period and O’Connor early in the third.
Morgan Geekie then scored for the Bruins to all but put the game away, and a Boston empty netter followed by a meaningless Penguins goal by Evgeni Malkin with 1:21 left set the final score.
There’s much blame to go around for these Pens, but certainly not for the great Crosby, who was recently voted the best all-around player in the league by his peers, or the unheralded Nedeljkovic, who did his best to pull Pittsburgh back into playoff contention.
There aren’t enough other positive components to this team, though.
If the Penguins somehow do claw their way into the playoffs, keep in mind they haven’t won a playoff series since 2018, having dropped five in a row.
This team, which does make games thrilling to watch, certainly doesn’t seem to have the make-up of one ready to snap that streak, let alone make a deep playoff run.