NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Jake Guentzel's a cute kid, and I offer that in the most sincere spirit. When he scores, you either want to give him a hug or a pack of Jujubes.
And the fact that he's now got 13 goals in these Stanley Cup playoffs is above-and-beyond commendable, rookie or otherwise. He's blown a path to the crease, he's crushed the chances he's had, and he's forcing hockey historians to rewrite records every other shift.
But cute won't win the Cup.
Mark it down: Although the Penguins continue to hold firmly onto this Final even after getting flattened by the Predators, 5-1, in Game 3 Saturday night at a throbbing Bridgestone Arena, that won't be the case if they can't get the power play and its many wondrous pieces skating, scoring and all that other stuff they typically do.
On this night, it went 0 for 3 with one shot. For the series, it's now 0 for 13 with four shots.
Four!
"Uh ... I have no idea," Evgeni Malkin replied at his stall when asked to explain that, but only after a lengthy, uncomfortable pause with the bill of his ballcap pulled down over his brow. "It's like ... it's the first time in my career we can't score on so many chances. We're not shooting pucks. They pressure us."
Another pause.
"We need to change something. If we score a couple of goals on the power play, it's so much easier to play. But it's not working. We need maybe to change the players. I don't know. It's tough to say right now. But I know we have a bad power play."
That's fair even in the smallest of sample sizes. The Final is unforgiving. Doesn't matter much how you fared against Columbus, Washington, even Ottawa. Every game is everything.
So it's immaterial now that the Penguins' power play had been their main instrument of crime before this round. They'd pounded out 14 of their 58 goals with the extra man, producing them at a 25 percent pace. In the process, they made opponents pay in the worst way for taking penalties, in addition to pushing them right out of the playoffs.
Through three of these games, the power play has one goal on a five-on-three that was an unmitigated disaster until Malkin eventually ripped an unscreened slap shot through Pekka Rinne's glove. It was the first goal of Game 1.
Since then, they've achieved next to nothing, and it's defined everything.
Look, let's take a brief detour here: I'm not doubting the Penguins' chances of repeating as champions. Again, they're holding the cards that count. The Predators still have to take three of the final four games, with half of those at PPG Paints Arena. They've also got to overcome a significant shortfall in elite talent, since almost all of those guys are on the Pittsburgh side.
But the Western Conference's best team didn't arrive here by accident, and no sane hockey observer would have foreseen a sweep.
I'm also not doubting, and I never did, that Rinne couldn't conceivably be as bad as he was in Games 1 and 2, not to mention the first eight games of his career against the Penguins.
He was due a colossal correction, and he got it.
I'm not doubting Matt Murray at the other end, either, though I'm sure many will after Nashville's first four goals beat him to that occasionally soft glove side. I didn't doubt Murray when I recommended that Sullivan should consider Marc-Andre Fleury for Game 7 of the Eastern final. Not at all. Rather, I expressed that maybe Fleury would offer an extra edge in a do-or-die setting on home ice.
Be sure that Sullivan will stand beside his chosen goaltender. Be sure that he'll be right.
And my goodness, I'm definitely not doubting the will or the skill of the various power-play participants, even after Malkin and Sidney Crosby were both held without a shot in the same playoff game for the first time in their careers. I mean, we're talking here about those two plus Patric Hornqvist, Phil Kessel and Justin Schultz, for crying out loud. That's elite -- no, extraordinary -- all the way around the horn.
But that's also exactly why this facet, above all, is concerning right now. Because it hasn't been part of this Final at all.
I blame the Flyers for this. And I'm almost being serious.
See, there's one franchise that's set the standard for putting out the Penguins' power play for years now, and it's their archrival at the wrong end of the commonwealth. Regardless of the man behind, they've always been aggressive, right in the Penguins' faces, particularly when the puck's gone back to the point. Some teams, like the Capitals, wait until a back is turned and then pursue. Others, like the Blue Jackets and Senators, just pack it in. They shrivel up inside the hash marks, hope their goaltender has a good view, then sweep away the rebound.
The Predators do none of that. They attack. All the time.
And yes, that applied back when Peter Laviolette was the coach in Philadelphia, as well, so it might not be a coincidence.
"I thought we did a good job there," Laviolette said of his team's first two kills. "That was important for us."
That's one serious underselling of the impact. Guentzel slammed a rebound behind Rinne just 2:46 after the opening draw. It was "everything we wanted from our start," as Sullivan would later say. And the situation appeared to brighten further still when P.K. Subban was sent off for holding at 4:50, followed by a too-many-men minor on Nashville at 12:44 for the first period's only two power plays.
Pffffffffffffffffffffft.
The first one saw a couple of authoritative setups and some smooth movement, even a quality chance when Kessel tried in vain to slide a puck across the crease to Crosby.
"The first power play, we moved the puck so well," Malkin said. "But still no shots."
"The first power play was really good," Sullivan essentially repeated later. "We had some really good looks. We almost scored."
And then ...
"I thought the second power play was not as good. I thought it gave Nashville a bit of a boost."
That was the killer. I believe that. Put home one goal there, just one, and it's all different. Now, the pressure shifts to the Predators. The atmosphere and the noise that they'd repeatedly credit for their energy afterward, that would pipe down. And Rinne ... I couldn't imagine what'd be swimming through his head.
Instead ...
"We gave them life right there on those two chances we had," Olli Maatta would say, including his turn on the second unit. "The game wasn’t won or lost there, but it wasn’t good enough. And we have to be ready to do better in the next game.”
They can begin that preparation with a how-not-to video study, one that could be compiled from countless reels but I'll try to condense to a handful.
1. Work down low. Again.
Every time the power play's found a pitfall, in these playoffs and back through the regular season, the solution has been similar: Stop messing around at the points, work it down low, and make sure Crosby's down there for that to matter.
This is a sore spot among some of these guys, truth be told. Malkin's on the left point, but even he feels -- strongly, I might add -- that the power play needs to work low when it's being pressured. He isn't alone. I spoke with several people inside the organization afterward, and their stances were universally the same.
Crosby isn't crazy about that, at least not consistently, and he ends up drifting into positions where he really can't help much, kind of a no-man's land that's not really the half-wall and not at all down low.
Like this:
"It's just going to be consistent zone time," Crosby said. "It could be that one play and we have to make sure we're patient and we execute until we get it."
That goes double for the point men. Schultz, who declined to dig deeper than "just a lack of execution" when pressed on the power play's problems, is paramount in this regard. The Predators are coming right at him, anticipating mistakes, and he's hardly proving them wrong.
This begins as a two-on-two battle in the Nashville left corner for a loose puck. Then Hornqvist arrives, as he should. Then Mattias Ekholm arrives, crosschecks Hornqvist and comes away with possession, turns and actually skates out of the zone without a hint of pressure.
Say what one will of Ekholm's ill-gotten gains, as he's pretty nasty with the stick all the time. But these are being lost again and again, largely because the Predators are flat-out hungrier for the puck when short-handed.
"They're aggressive all over the ice. We don't have much time or space out there," Hornqvist said. "We still have to find a way. We still have to fight for everything we get."
