Teuvo Teravainen scores for the Hurricanes on Thursday night. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Penguins

Kovacevic: It couldn't be more obvious what's going wrong ... but how to fix it?

By Dejan Kovacevic

Jan 5, 2018 • 4:00 am

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If we're being brutally honest here, it's become stunningly, disappointingly easy to break down these Penguins.

I'll bet I can pull this off, in fact, within the span of a single shift.

Fast-forward to the third period of their latest flop, 4-0 to the Hurricanes on this Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena, to the first of two goals for Carolina's terrific 20-year-old winger, Sebastian Aho:

Whoa ... kid's really flying there, huh?

Right past polite traffic cop Justin Schultz, then tidily backhanded right through the wickets of Matt Murray, who seemingly hasn't made human contact with a puck on an opponent's breakaway since, what, Nashville?

"No excuses," Schultz would say of the Penguins' performance in general, adding this:

"It's hard to say what's going wrong," Murray offered on that same subject. "We won't make excuses. We've just got to be better."

Again, full marks to Aho, who's shown serious wheels since entering the NHL as a teen.

"He's a great player," his linemate, Teuvo Teravainen, was telling me afterward. "That's what great players do."

Fair enough. But that's where it stops. Because Teravainen's spectacular sprint down Centre Avenue was anything but an outlier for this season, this game, or even this minute-long shift.

Precisely 44 seconds earlier, the man who's richly earned the unofficial title of the best player in the world, did the following when faced with 24 square feet of net:

And 11 seconds before Aho's goal, Teravainen chased down Patric Hornqvist from behind to poke away this two-on-one:

Aho sounded plenty appreciative, too:

OK, now stop right there. Try to absorb all three of these sequences, if possible, at once. Just blur them into one big hockey blob.

Finally, ask this: What's the common denominator?

I won't pretend to have any greater insight than anyone else, but here's what I see: There's no second wind.

They'll win one game, like they did in Philadelphia a couple nights ago, maybe even fill the net a bunch. They'll talk about turning the corner, about emphasizing carryover into the next game. And when it's against a Carolina team that's holding the Eastern Conference's final wild card, just a point ahead of them, they'll speak with surprising openness about a matchup in early January coming with bona fide playoff implications.

And then, nothing.

Go back to that blur/blob. Look at Aho and Teravainen. Look at the younger, faster, fresher Canes as a whole. Count up their 33-21 advantage in shots, consider the the foundation of all that was what Mike Sullivan correctly called "in-our-face" defense on their part ... and then look at the other guys.

They're dead to the world.

And to echo Schultz and Murray, that's not an excuse. It's actually a lot scarier than an excuse, because that's now reality.

They've got nothing. Zippo. A night here and there, sure, but barely worth a moment's satisfaction. Since a four-game winning streak that ended a month ago, they're 5-9 without once winning two in a row. Since busting out for 19 goals in that same winning streak, they've topped three goals all of twice in regulation, once against the Coyotes and the other with the fluke in Philly against a thoroughly lost collection of Flyers who look even more eager than usual to hit the links early.

Zippo.

It's not about line changes, though Mike Sullivan again went wild in this regard. It's not about Kris Letang, though he still isn't himself. It's not about the goaltending, though Murray's searching. It's not about the superstars or the supporting cast of forwards or Ian Cole or anything else in isolation.

It's not about any of those because it's about all of those, wrapped in a tangled web of fatigue from which there's no escape in sight.

This can never be repeated enough, so here I go again: The bulk of this group has now logged 255 games since the 2015-16 opener in Dallas in a span of 820 days. That’s an NHL game every 3.2 days … including the offseason!

One more time: That’s not an excuse. It’s an irrefutable fact, and it's defining everything we’re watching.

Crosby again was a relative wraith, held without a single shot over 24 shifts. Jordan Staal was draped all over him, which never helps, but that's seldom stopped or even slowed the captain before, never mind rendering him almost completely moot.

"We just haven't put games together," Crosby would say, speaking of the collective rather than the individual, as he does in good times and bad. "We win one game and then ... our record shows it. If we knew the reason, we'd fix it."

They know. They all know.

When asked later about just the scoring inconsistency, Crosby replied, "I don't think it's the same thing every night. It's just, in general, tough to have that level of compete every night. It doesn't come easy. You've got to earn your chances, go to the net ... you've got to fight to get there. And we haven't done that enough."

Crosby has 17 even-strength points in 42 games. Wrap the brain around that.

They all know.

I raised the concept of the second wind in a one-on-one talk with Hornqvist, who'd acknowledge running out of energy right around the time OPEC does. But even he can't reject that it's there.

"It's tough for us right now, maybe for the last month and a half," Hornqvist told me. "But like you're saying, we have to find that energy somehow. It's just tough right now."

Well, what's the solution?

We're way past talking about trading for that coveted third-line center. Not even Staal would make a dent in this situation.

We're now officially past clamoring for Daniel Sprong. He's here, and he's doing fine, but it's crazy unfair to expect him to be some catalyst.

We're well aware that there's no additional cavalry coming from Wilkes-Barre, especially after Jim Rutherford told me a couple weeks back he sees the roster/cap issues as too complex to do that en masse.

We were also reminded yet again by Sullivan that no strategic changes are forthcoming -- he shot down a question about that after this game by reemphasizing how much the Penguins need to get back to exactly what they'd done the previous two years -- and I'm not sure I disagree, based on the personnel at hand.

So, anyone?

"The only thing we can do is try harder out there and make sure we fight tomorrow," Hornqvist kept on, referring to the game Friday night in Brooklyn against the Islanders. "It's a quick turnaround. We didn't play our best here. We're going against another team that's in front of us. We have to find that energy."

No kidding ...

Good morning.
The #Canes have moved into a playoff spot. #Redvolution pic.twitter.com/4ccXsrN6u2
— Carolina Hurricanes (@NHLCanes) January 3, 2018

... but how?

"Make those small plays. And be happy with that. Don't look for the long pass all the time. Make sure you see the pass you want, make that pass, then go from there instead of always trying to make those home run plays."

Wow, who could have imagined Bill Peters, Carolina's coach, would strut off with a couple of significant victories in a week over the two-time defending Stanley Cup champs and sound precisely this cool when I asked about all the fire his group's showing?

"Well, we're able to play with a rhythm," he came back as if he'd just squeaked one out over the Sabres in late September. "We're rolling all four lines, we believe in all our guys, and we believe in all three pairs on the back end. If we can play with that kind of depth and play with pace, we're a good team."

Must be nice.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY

Penguins vs. Hurricanes, PPG Paints Arena, Jan. 4, 2018, - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

WHAT'S BREWING

• More on this game from Chris Bradford right here. If you missed it, Chris and I did a Facebook Live video with readers before the game. Also before the game, I had the usual good time on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio and host Boomer Gordon, talking about the Penguins' scoring issues:

• Matt Gajtka, who's up in Brooklyn for the Penguins' next game tonight, leads off Friday Insider with good stuff on how the team's first half is being viewed from the outside.

• Do you follow us on social media? If not, we're available on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. We'll make it worth your while, as we've got some initiatives planned on those fronts.

• Small point of order to share: Our site, meaning Dale Lolley, will cover Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis regardless of whether the Steelers make it. And by that I mean the whole week, not just kickoff. It's America's premier sporting event, and we feel like our readers will welcome the firsthand coverage. If the Steelers go, of course, a bunch of us will be there.

VIDEO

Bradford and I following the game: