A pair of Pittsburgh Penguins have been the focus of a lot of criticism, and Mike Sullivan defended his players.

The Pittsburgh Penguins capped off an important two-week stretch with three consecutive losses, continuing to sink their shot at a postseason berth.

Obviously hockey is a team game and the Penguins win and lose games as a group, but there are two players that continue to be anchors no matter the situation.

Jeff Carter and Brian Dumoulin have been the whipping boy for fans all season long, but the players have made it hard to not single them out over this stretch.

Against the Montreal Canadiens, Carter had a historically bad game, hitting a minus-four in under nine minutes of ice time.

Since the start of March, Carter has recorded just three assists and is a minus-six in nine games.

During the Penguins current three-game losing streak, Dumoulin has been a minus-six.

Yes, +/- isn’t a perfect stat to tell whether a player is good or bad, but in this instance, it’s an indicator that Carter and Dumoulin have been a big reason for goals against.

Why hasn’t anything been done about it? Why does head coach Mike Sullivan continue to throw them over the boards?

The short answer is, he doesn’t have any other options; but Sullivan went to bat for his veterans and defended his decision making.

"You know, you guys like to pick on certain guys, and you go to them all the time,” Sullivan said. “We respectfully disagree with you in a lot of circumstances. When goals are scored, we look at a lot of the details on the how's and the why's. The reality is, it's more than one person.”

Sullivan followed this statement with more depth and details as to why he continues to utilize Carter and Dumoulin despite their struggles.

“Carts, going into tonight's game, is sixth in the league in faceoff percentage. Sixth overall. In the whole league. He wins a lot of faceoffs. We win the faceoff, we don't gain the blue line, there are a number of circumstances that are involved there. It's not just any one guy. So what I would say to you guys, is I think it's easy for you guys to pick on one or two guys, and what I will tell you is that I respectfully disagree with all of you. Are we making some mistakes? Sure. But when you get put in those situations as often as those guys do, there was a stretch of 20 games leading up to the last little while here where they were doing a pretty admirable job in that same circumstance. So, I understand your question. But I think the answer to the question is a little bit deeper than just scratching the surface like you guys do. It's never any one guy's fault when those types of things happen. It's a team game out there. There's six guys on the ice. It's all of those guys' responsibility to execute, and we didn't do it in certain situations."

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Sure, when a team gives up a goal it usually isn’t just one players fault, but there is a common patter with these two players in particular.

It’s also not like Sullivan to bash his players and call them out for bad play, he’s just not that kind of coach, but he is still the one making the decision to keep playing them.

The Penguins’ season is starting to hang in the balance and it’s on the whole team, and coaching staff, to turn it around quickly.

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