After a very fun and unexpected regular season the Pittsburgh Penguins find themselves up against it less than a week after their first round series against the Philadelphia Flyers began. Pittsburgh has lost the first three games of the series and are on the brink of elimination.
This series has been a perfect storm of variables coming together leading to the Flyers winning handily. The Penguins headed into the playoffs resting players and not playing well. They have lost every game since resting their star players against Washington. They lost the last three games of the regular season and now the three games in the playoffs. Sometimes rest can cause a team to lose their flow and their attention to detail and it would be hard to say it hasn’t happened, here.
Also, Rick Tocchet (and his assistant Todd Reirden) might know the Penguins even more than his own team. He knows what the fatal flaws are. They are immature and if you keep poking them they will implode and waste all of their thoughts, time, and attention on the extra-curricular stuff. The hockey becomes secondary. This has absolutely happened and the Penguins have been rudderless the entire series.
The Penguins have decided as a group to be amateurs about everything so far instead of hte professionals a veteran team should be. I’m left being disgusted at their immaturity and inability to just buckle down, play hard, and persevere. It has been a pathetic showing. It is really disappointing because I don’t even think the Flyers are playing great. They are there to be had. They are playing a generic defensive style and leaning into the Penguins being emotionally stunted. This bet by Philadelphia has played out perfectly for them. If the Penguins would stick to hockey there’s a path for the series to be 3-0 the other way. That’s not the timeline we are in.
As a result, there’s a chance way greater than zero that Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang will play their last ever playoff game against the Flyers on Saturday night.
Officials not up to the task
I find the officiating in this series to be a perfect encapsulation on how terrible the league is at calling their game. They force the players to play through multiple infractions pretty much every shift of the game. They create an environment where unless a player reacts a certain way things won’t get called. Then the player has to live within this fake standard the officials have created where if they don’t sell the call they won’t get it and then risk going over the imaginary line that is subjective with each official. It is a ridiculous existence for the players and one created by the mouth breathers who run player safety and run the officiating.
Don’t worry, I’m getting to the Garnet Hathaway high stick on Sidney Crosby right now. This situation is so infuriating and turned the game on its side.
Make no mistake, Hathaway intentionally clipped Crosby in the face. He thought he was being clever and it absolutely wasn’t. It was transparent what he was doing. I’ve been taking faceoffs for 37 years, now. At no point do you flick your wrist upward towards a player’s face like that. If you think that upward flick of his stick was an accident I regret to inform you that you have a room temperature IQ.
Why Sidney Crosby, or any player, has to deal with a situation like that on a stoppage of play waiting on a faceoff is patently absurd. If he doesn’t react to the stick, it doesn’t get called, period.
Again, this is what the officiating standard is screaming at the players every game. You have to react to get a call. Then your reaction is micromanaged. This straight up should have been a Pittsburgh power play and the embellishment call was spineless from the officials. It’s everything that is wrong with the mentality of how the league is called. Guy waiting for a faceoff minding his own business takes an intentional high stick, doesn’t punch or retaliate, but ends up with the same punishment. Genius stuff.
Furthermore, Matvei Michkov should not have been called later in the game for embellishment, either. It’s absurd. Evgeni Malkin crosschecked him. That’s the penalty. Michkov shouldn’t have to sell it to get a call. That is officiating incompetence
Is it really too much to ask for the original infractions to be called on a consistent basis so the players don’t feel like they have to put a little extra on their reactions? This league is so damn stupid.
Later in the game both Bryan Rust and Travis Konecny deserved to be penalized. Konecny threw an elbow which led to Rust tackling him and being the aggressor. If the play ended here I could hear an argument for Rust picking up the extra minor penalty. However, Konecny definitely kicked his skate towards Rust which is one of those big no no’s in the sport. It is a match penalty and a five minute major.
So that went by the wayside.
Aside from that, Konecny made a big show of dropping his gloves for a fight that did not happen. That is an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The real issue I have is Pittsburgh finding themselves shorthanded on this sequence. The game was tied immediately after this was all sorted out.
So two things can be true at once: The Penguins are playing like petulant babies who think they are entitled to time and space despite not working hard for it. Also, they found themselves on the wrong end of some pretty important calls in Game 3 that had a big impact on the game. A real bad combo for a team trying to dig out of an 0-2 combo.
Tough series for the bench boss
Dan Muse did an admirable job in the regular season in turning the Penguins from a listless, boring, and bad team into one that was fun, successful, and worth watching.
The playoffs haven’t been as kind to him. A lot of criticism levied at his predecessor was about not being flexible and making changes on the fly. Right now, Muse is repeating those mistakes. His lineup choices have not maximized positive outcomes for the team.
He has left the pairing of Kris Letang and Samuel Girard together despite them being very bad. Every shift they play you feel relieved if high-danger chances aren’t flying towards the Penguins net. This is a failed pairing with a large enough sample to not use it.
Connor Clifton stinks. He is fake tough. Sure, he likes to run around and throw hits, but it isn’t effective. His hits aren’t thought out. They aren’t made with the intention of getting the puck. As a result he runs around and the puck stays in the zone. Last night, he was delivering multiple crosschecks (didn’t get to the magic number 6 for a penatly!) in front to a Flyer. However, during all those crosschecks it never occurred to him to tie up the opponent’s stick. The Flyer was able to redirect the puck and it should have gone in off the post.
Don’t worry the Flyers scored immediately thereafter anyways. Why he gets a jersey every night is puzzling. At the very least bury him and Girard on a bottom pairing and put Ryan Shea with Kris Letang. With the current setup they only have one functional defense pairing. By making some adjustments you might be able to scrape together another pairing that isn’t anxiety inducing.
As for the forwards, Muse hasn’t found a way to get Egor Chinakhov going. He was one of the more dynamic players in the regular season using his blazing speed and shot to generate. He has the exact skillset to try and forge through the Flyers trapping style. Instead, he’s an afterthought as we watch the fourth line jump over the boards over and over again while the team is trailing in the third period.
At the end of the game Chinakhov should be one of the players who always goes over the boards in a 6v5 situation. There is no need for Anthony Mantha or Kris Letang playing over him.
Maybe I’m crazy, but hasn’t Evgeni Malkin been playing wing the majority of the season? Is there a reason we can’t get some damn 5v5 shifts with both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin together? Does the team not need some goals? When the Oilers desperately need goals, guess who they put together? It’s crazy, but they go with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Tommy Novak has been invisible as far as plays that help the Penguins this series. He’s been noticeably soft on the puck and isn’t playing the hard kind of hockey necessary to break the Flyers tactics. If Novak is going to play like this then why can’t Ben Kindel be elevated into a top six scoring role? The Penguins need goals and Kindel can do things in time and space. I don’t think Kindel is a magic answer. He is getting thrown around a little bit this series. However, he goes hard and isn’t shying away. I’ll take that over whatever Novak has been doing.
So here we are. The Penguins have to win four games in a row in a series where they haven’t come close to winning a single game. The writing is on the wall and this season will likely end soon. When it does, there will be a lot of decisions for Kyle Dubas to make. Some of which, may have been made even easier after the way this series has played out.
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