Kovacevic: Install a chip, and Penguins are fine

It's the simplest play in the sport.

"Get it up the ice, chip it, go get it," as Sidney Crosby was describing late Saturday afternoon following the Penguins' 4-2 loss to the Rangers in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He was among the last to leave Consol Energy Center's home locker room, and he spoke those 10 words, unmistakably, with the sourest of aftertastes. "I mean, it's not hard. You can just do a little redirect, and the puck's deep in their zone."

Yep. Nothing to overthink.

Especially not when taking on a defense like the one New York was forced to deploy on this day, missing Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi and including ... hang on, let me look up the names again ... Dylan McIlrath and Brady Skjei.

All it takes to capitalize on that, as the captain suggested, is to get the puck up ice, chip it behind those defensemen, make them backpedal, then pressure, pressure, pressure.

You know, just be the Penguins.

"That's who we are," as Ben Lovejoy put it. "We're a forechecking team."

He was speaking in the hypothetical sense, of course. Because they were nothing of the kind, as pretty much all concerned openly acknowledged.



"We turned the puck over, and we did it in some bad spots on the ice," Mike Sullivan said. "We did things that were uncharacteristic of this hockey team."

Translation: They didn't get the puck deep at the blue line.

"I think, in both games, we haven’t done enough of that," Matt Cullen said. "We’re trying to make too many east-west plays. Our success, when we’re at our best, comes when we work with the puck down low. This is something that we’ve talked about. This is a good reminder for us."

"We got too cute," Bryan Rust said. "We can't do that."

The defenseman who was minus-4, not surprisingly, felt the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpPhVetsBTA

Trevor Daley was, indeed, terrible. Olli Maatta was worse. Both of them and the entire defense will be savaged by the fan base for how they performed. And the bulk of that, undoubtedly, will be fair.

But understand this: The Penguins aren't built to defend, and that even includes the defensemen. They're built to skate, to create, to attack.

And when they're the ones getting spun back, you'd better believe that will get exposed.

Take a look at this, but hide the women and children first:



Wow, that really happened. Countless times, too.

Kris Letang circles back, and he's granted acres of ice to get a good look. That's because the Rangers couldn't care less what he does from that position. They've got one very soft forechecker, Jesper Fast, wiggling his stick at center red, and the other four skaters are back forming a clothesline to defend their zone.

So, what to do?

Well, Conor Sheary floats through the middle behind Crosby and ... nah.

Crosby slides in the same direction and, thus, is cut off by Sheary.

And Malkin apparently remembers at the last second that he's a winger and goes charging up the right side ... but who knows why?

There's nothing there. So when Letang just lobs a prayer in the general direction of a couple of black sweaters, the Rangers easily retreat, regroup and head back the other way.

If they had 'The Walking Dead' on the blue line, they'd have defended just as easily.

That's the problem. That's how a team that routinely runs up 40 shots was held to 31. That's how a team commits 10 official giveaways to the opponents' three. And, at the risk of getting an unnecessary rise out of the advanced analytics crowd, it's actually worth mentioning on this occasion that the Rangers had a ridiculous 57-25 advantage in hits.

I get it. Hits don't count. Hits don't matter. And, as Sullivan worded it well when this subject was broached, "The hit statistic isn't reflective of who we are."

He's right. At the same time, when these Penguins, specifically, are getting their defensemen pounded shift after shift -- and they took the brunt of the bruising -- that means they, as a collective, are spending far too much time in their zone.

The Rangers' Coraopolis kid, J.T. Miller, saw it the same way after his three-assist show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwym4s-qw68

There's really nothing else to see here, if you ask me.

Jeff Zatkoff wasn't a hero again, but neither was he the culprit. Two of the Rangers' goals were back-door plays, another was a breakaway (and he stopped two others), and the last was a flagrant Daley giveaway that also skipped awkwardly off the ice to beat him. The goaltending was fine.

Malkin returned, had one assist and no shots, and he was as guilty as anyone of the east-west approach. But singling him out for blame would be seeking out the narrowest of narratives, and that's even exempting the fact that he clearly didn't want to shoot because of his elbow or that he was bound to be out of sorts after missing five weeks.

Letang has yet to achieve his peak in the series, despite playing more than half of both games, and he maddeningly, repeatedly failed to get the puck through to Henrik Lundqvist's crease while Patric Hornqvist was parked there. But Letang also wasn't on the ice for any New York goals, a testament to how well he cleans up.

So, what to do for Game 3?

Here are three wholly unsolicited, probably unappreciated suggestions:

1. BENCH MAATTA

I write that with no joy. Maatta is all that and more as a person, and he's been through hell and back the past two years. But he's not skating at an NHL level right now. He just isn't. Maybe that's because of an undisclosed injury. Maybe that's because he's yet to have a full uninterrupted offseason to get right after his cancer, shoulder and hip issues. But whatever it is, he doesn't belong out there right now, never mind on a top pairing.

My goodness, watch his stride after the puck jumps his stick on Derrick Brassard's breakaway:



Justin Schultz did nothing to merit being scratched. That needs to be rectified.

2. RAMP UP SECOND LINE

That means the real second line. Malkin's new unit, between Sheary and Rust, barely skated together, as Sullivan kept mixing and matching to find spots for Malkin. And that's fine, under the circumstance. But nothing, in light of all the good from recent weeks, should come at the expense of Nick Bonino, Carl Hagelin and Phil Kessel getting all the ice they deserve.

As it was, Sullivan didn't do badly in that regard. Bonino logged 14:29 of five-on-five, Hagelin 13:50 and Kessel 14:15. But this is the playoffs, and if they're your best at setting the pace -- they most certainly were in this game, beyond Kessel scoring both goals -- a little more won't hurt.

3. SPEAK UP, COACH!

To date, Sullivan has been excellent at making sure his messages penetrate. Not this time. It's not enough that, according to one veteran, he began his postgame speech to players by emphasizing getting pucks deep. That needed to happen during the game. And if he did bring it up, he needed a much bigger megaphone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV_TZFxadrw

I don't have doubts about the Penguins moving forward in this series. I probably should, but I don't. If anything, going on the road will present a much friendlier scenario in which to stay disciplined and avoid the kind of stupidity -- or 'dangle-itis,' as one player derisively called it -- that was witnessed Saturday.

The Rangers, and Alain Vigneault in particular, did a smart thing: They knew their defensemen were short-handed, so they untied their fast, skilled forwards from their usual protect-the-goaltender mode, and they tossed the keys to Lundqvist. He came through. He was the best player on either side. And the defense was almost never an issue.

That's what the Penguins need to change.

"We’ve got to find ways to get the puck deep, get some more pressure on their defensemen," Daley said. "They’re getting pressure on our D. It’s time for us to do the same thing to them."