The Pittsburgh Penguins have gotten off to a rocky start and expect much more of themselves moving forward.

The Pittsburgh Penguins haven’t gotten off the blocks the way they would have liked to kick off the 2023-24 NHL season.

Through almost two weeks, the Penguins opened their season against five teams who missed the postseason last year; of course, the Penguins did, too, but they have high expectations for themselves.

Despite those lofty goals, they only one a pair of those games, and it seemed like some early frustration has begun to settle in.

Clear evidence of that frustration was represented by head coach Mike Sullivan on a couple of occasions.

During a timeout after giving up a pair of goals to the St. Louis Blues in their most recent loss, Sullivan laid into his players for the entire 30 seconds.

Not much changed in the Penguins performance after their scolding; they didn’t allow another goal for quite a bit, but they were unable to create their own offensive opportunities.

Following the contest, Sullivan was still steaming for his post-game press conference.

Sullivan gave much shorter answers than usual and his frustration was clear.

When asked about bad decision making, Sullivan said ‘there was an awful lot of it,’ before stating the team ‘got what they deserved.’

The Penguins led the game in shots, but it never seemed it as the Blues carried the pace of play for the entire game.

“We had our chances,” Sullivan said. “Give St. Louis credit, they defended hard. They took advantage of the opportunities we gave them. We gave them way too many chances off the rush.”

The competition is getting tougher for the Penguins moving forward; their next two games are against teams with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations in the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche.

If the Penguins want any chances of winning, they’ll need to quickly make the appropriate changes and not let their early frustrations get in the way.

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