It's time for the Pittsburgh Penguins to decide who they want to be after losing their sixth in a row.
When the Pittsburgh Penguins returned home to face the Anaheim Ducks on Dec. 9 to start five-straight games inside PPG Paints Arena, they were coming off a really successful three-game roadtrip.
They blew out the Philadelphia Flyers 5-1 on Dec. 1, held on for dear life to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 on Dec. 4, and earned a point against the Dallas Stars on Dec. 7. They would've swept the trip if they had survived a 6-on-5 at the end of the third period against the Stars. In the end, they lost that game in a shootout.
Still, they earned five out of six points on that trip and were 14-7-6 going into this five-game homestand with a legit opportunity to make more progress in the standings. Instead, they lost all five games, allowed 25 goals, and earned only three out of 10 points, dropping them to 14-9-9 overall. They're still very much alive in the playoff race, but they picked a brutal time to have their worst stretch of the season to date.
It looked like it was going to get off to a great start last Tuesday. They had a power play and an offensive zone faceoff with 17 seconds left against the Ducks in the third period. All they had to do was keep the puck away from the Ducks to secure two points. Instead, they let Beckett Sennecke go through the offensive zone unimpeded to tie the game with .1 seconds left before losing in a shootout.
It felt like that tying goal, which was a bad bounce off Erik Karlsson's glove (even though it never should've gotten to that point), cursed the rest of the homestand because the Penguins never recovered. They blew a 5-1 lead to the San Jose Sharks and a 3-0 lead to the Utah Mammoth over the weekend before losing 6-4 to the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday. They also lost to the Montreal Canadiens 4-2 last Thursday.
Even when the Penguins would play well in these games, something bad would happen and then snowball into something worse, especially in the games against the Sharks and Mammoth. They had multi-goal leads against both teams in the third period and looked scared. They were sitting back and letting the opposing players do whatever they want instead of taking the fight to them. It's what happens when a team has no confidence.
Now that this has occurred, it's on everyone to correct it. It's on the players to commit to playing a full 60 minutes instead of cowering in the face of adversity.
The top line of Rakell-Crosby-Rust, in particular, needs to be a lot better than it has been. Despite producing six points in his last six games, Crosby has been looking a step behind and hasn't been playing well in his own zone. For as productive as Rust has been (four goals and seven points in his last four games), he also hasn't been playing well in his own zone, ditto for Rakell.
Takeaways: Penguins Drop Sixth Straight On Milestone Night For Oilers' Draisaitl
The biggest story going into the Tuesday matchup between the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins">Pittsburgh Penguins</a> and <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/edmonton-oilers/">Edmonton Oilers</a> was the goaltending battle, which featured two netminders in Tristan Jarry and Stuart Skinner who were <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins/players/we-re-ripping-off-the-band-aid-right-away-skinner-jarry-to-square-off-against-former-teams">swapped in a trade between the teams on Friday</a>.
Defensively, Kris Letang needs to be a lot better on the second pair. He's been really fighting it this season and has been caught out of position too many times. He's been playing with Ryan Shea for the bulk of this season, but as I wrote last week, it might be time to see if a new partner (like Brett Kulak) can help get more out of him, otherwise the coaching staff might have to start cutting his minutes. He's still averaging 21:33 per game, which is almost two full minutes less than his 23:31 per game last year. Still, he's not affecting the game as much as he once did.
We've seen what the Penguins can look like when they're firing on all cylinders. If you go back to October, when they'd take a lead into the third period, they'd shut things down. Heck, even against the Flyers earlier this month, they took a 3-1 lead into the third period and locked everything down. They even added two more insurance goals to win 5-1. The blueprint is there, but it's on everyone to find it on a more consistent basis.
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