The power play of the Pittsburgh Penguins hasn't looked any good lately, yet Mike Sullivan is rolling with his group.

PITTSBURGH - The Pittsburgh Penguins blew yet another third period lead to the New York Islanders and allowed them to maintain their position in the Eastern Conference wild card race.

While a meltdown of this sorts is a full-team issue, the Penguins have had an abhorrent power play for quite some time now.

Sure, there was a stretch of scoring in power play goals in 10 straight games, but the power play has been a problem for a majority of the season.

In the collapse against the Islanders, the Penguins went 0/3 with a man advantage and just a single goal would have been useful.

Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield took three two-minute minors through the first half of the game and the Penguins failed to look like a reliable group on any of the chances.

After going 0/3 against the Islanders, the Penguins power play percentage on the season sunk to 20.8%.

It’s hard to believe this is the same power play that deploys players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Jake Guentzel on the first unit.

Despite the declining number and rotten look of the group, head coach Mike Sullivan says he has no plans of making changes to the group.

“We’re not going to consider changes,” Sullivan said. “We like that group. Their expected goals has been top three in the league. That suggests the process is there.”

The process may be there and the analytics may look good, but the eye test and overall output don’t.

Power plays have the ability to swing momentum in games and the Penguins missed a prime opportunity to push themselves over the top against the Islanders.

Josh Archibald scored to give the Penguins a 3-1 lead at 10:49 in the second period; Mayfield took his third penalty 59 seconds later.

A goal within the next two minutes for the Penguins would likely sink the Islanders who were already frazzled by the Archibald goal.

Instead, the Penguins failed to convert once again turning the man advantage in to a passing show.

“We like the group,” Sullivan said. “They have their ups and their downs. We just got to stay with it. We got to stick with these guys.”

In fairness to Sullivan, the power play can be lethal; there are elite level goal scorers on that first unit.

And we’ve seen it chug along nicely before, it just hasn’t been there for a while now and something’s got to give.

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