Good morning, dear readers. You all made it to Wednesday, right?
The panic button was pushed early by some of you after the Penguins’ 4-1 home loss to the Islanders Tuesday.
Yikes.
A recap of social-media postings and emails:
–Marc-Andre Fleury stinks.
–Coach Dan Bylsma stinks.
–Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin don’t stink, but they aren’t good anymore.
–Players don’t care.
–The power play is embarrassing.
–THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING.
Actually, it can, and is, and not much of what was opined in the immediate minutes after the latest loss is true.
–Blaming the loss on Fleury is, as is usually the case, uninformed. He was not pulled because of poor play. He was pulled because Dan Bylsma had to try something.
Now, fair is the premise that Fleury should have prevented the opening goal. Maybe the third.
Those saves would not have mattered against the Islanders.
The Penguins played poorly.
All of the Penguins, as Brooks Orpik correctly noted.
–Bylsma has not forgotten how to coach, either.
He knows the biggest problem his club faces is one that cannot be easily fixed. It is a problem of timing, the kind the Penguins did not develop in a training camp that was short and absent exhibition games.
Indeed, every NHL club faces this problem.
Few clubs, though, are built to blend skill and aggressiveness such as the Penguins. Few needed a camp more because so much of Bylsma’s system requires timing – and the timing is off, from stars such as Crosby, who to be fair is basically skating off the rust of two lost years, to role players such as Chris Kunitz, Matt Cooke and Craig Adams.
Consider two seasons back, when Jordan Staal missed 41 games while recovering from injuries. He later reasoned that his game never felt right that campaign and it was because he really missed what training camp would have provided:
Nearly three weeks of leg-punishing hard practices, and practice games to work on his flow.
Crosby is a lot like Staal that way. Kunitz and Cooke are really like Staal that way.
–Malkin and Crosby will be OK.
Really.
They have to be.
Otherwise, nothing else for the Penguins matters.
Neither superstar has strung together two typical (by their lofty standards) games.
Neither is historically a fast starter, as fellow Penguins beat scribe Josh Yohe points out in our video recap: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid19384256001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAHBuCSQ~,m5He7DD2iNxbyz6ucUpaHH1bI1w9eCNa&bclid=2741216001&bctid=2127840303001
(GREAT story here by Josh on the topic of USA Hockey and Pittsburgh Hockey: http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/3385780-74/hockey-pittsburgh-penguins#axzz2JNKNP3mA)
–The players care.
They really care.
No, really: http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/3378900-74/penguins-islanders-period#axzz2JNKNP3mA
They might care too much.
The poor decisions they are making with the puck are far more because of trying to do too much than a lazy approach.
Also, given the noise fans at Consol Energy Center aren’t making, it would be unwise of the paying customers to throw stones inside the stadium with a glass atrium.
–The power play is embarrassing.
Columnist Joe Starkey will address that Thursday; at least that is the guess of this blog author.
It is the same old problem: Too many cooks in the kitchen.
There was a time when even the most talented of those cooks listened to an executive chef. Takes a special kind of chef to command that respect.
Do chefs like that even exist anymore?
Answer here: http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/3336350-74/gonchar-penguins-malkin#axzz2JNKNP3mA
–This is happening.
Still, the Penguins have 6 of 12 possible points while not playing their best, or anywhere close.
Life could be worse: http://flyers.nhl.com/?navid=nav-teamnav-phi
Those opening weekend wins at the Flyers and Rangers are bigger now than then for the Penguins. Those four points provided them some cushion.
–And, finally, there was another club on the ice Tuesday.
A club that is proving quite troublesome for the Penguins dating to late last season.
Arthur Staple of Newsday covers that club quite well: http://www.newsday.com/sports/hockey/islanders/evgeni-nabokov-outstanding-as-islanders-dominate-penguins-1.4532202
Kind of scary when this space is devoted to reason, don’t you think?
Take a breath, all. The sun did rise.
Cheers,
Rossi
It’s hard to develop much timing when you’re out with different linemates seemingly every shift. Last night was one of the worst-coached games I’ve seen from a Penguins team in a long time. That doesn’t absolve the players, but Bylsma needs to both find consistency with his lines and be able to adapt his strategy, aspects with which he continues to have trouble.
Too early to panic, but they need to be better.
What gets me is people act like the problems the Penguins are having now is some all of a sudden little hickup, or anomaly that can be alleviated by a Crosby hat-trick or a couple PP goals. The truth is this kind of of play is becoming more and more what this team really is and there isn’t one specific problem to point to, but there sure seem to be a lot of fixes.
The “too early to panic” BS from the overly-optimistic zealots was maybe true 3 years ago, but know it’s annoying quite frankly and unless people truly suffer from short term memory loss, needs to stopped. Too early to panic was 2010′s playoff exit, too late was not making a big change after last season’s. Remember folks; this is the same team (actually, a more watered down, less gritty, less physical version) that’s failed to meet expectations in an embarrassing fashion last season and even though they still have the talent to step up and look unbeatable for periods, they always devolve into what we have right now and the cognitive dissonance of fans and players alike who are afraid of uncomfortable truths makes it worse and simply saying they need to be better doesn’t cut it either. That’s like saying to beat the other team you have to score more points. Holy friggin duh.
The Penguins now play a casual, skill before effort and desire hockey that regardless of the system implemented will never result in another championship. I believe some used to call it pond hockey. There’s a serious problem with the mindset of this team that maybe only missing the playoffs altogether can correct. As it stands; they get by on the skill they have enough to fool fans, critics and themselves that everything is ok, but when up against it, or another team takes them to task, they have no answer. This isn’t about needing a player or two, this is about needing a major emotional wakeup call, that apparently even getting bounced early from the playoffs three years in a row can’t accomplish. Maybe they need to be a laughing stock again for a couple seasons to find the primal motivation needed to actually want to win again. You know, actually try to prove something to some one like they once did and succeeded at. Oh sure they still want to win, but they don’t really “want” it and the proof’s in the effort and the results.
When I compare this team to the teams that went to the finals and the effort,enthusiasm and willingness to battle that was present then compared to now, or last season…or the season before that, this team is not close to playing a game that will translate to a solid playoff run. I usually find a key indicator of something being very wrong is comments like: “We have too much skill to be playing like this.” Sorry, but statements like that has failure written all over it.
Don’t worry though, I’m sure they’ll go through a period of impressive wins and have everyone thinking cup again as the skill players will make up for their obvious, glaring deficiencies that go overlooked by the casual fan, but those of us who watch the game and not the stats sheet will see the sheep in wolf’s clothing that other teams will exploit when it matters most. Sadly, it will require another early playoff ouster, or missing the playoffs altogether to get the teams attention, or bounce Bylsma, but like the Penguins of the mid to late 90’s proved, sometimes the problems run deeper than the the stat sheet or final score can tell you.
I think what disturbs me the most is; they have to turn people away from a scrimmage, have 9500 people waiting for season tickets, sell well over capacity and yet the players feel they need to play for no one but themselves. The boos only reinforce that fans still care but maybe they need to hear crickets again? Then again; with free pizza and the world-class coddling of the fans by ownership, I’m sure we won’t see that happening anytime soon. It’s sad when a team like the Islanders looks more like the Pens of 2008-2009 than this Pens team does.
And another thing: If the Pens put out half as much effort into their game as delusional fans and sports writers put into making excuses for it, we might be looking at a real dynasty now instead of the one that was supposed to, but never happened.