CRANBERRY, Pa. -- You may have heard that the only thing more difficult to do in professional sports than winning a championship is repeating it.
Winning three in a row? Man, as the Penguins found out, it's almost impossible.
Particularly in the NHL which promotes parity with a salary cap that, in theory, levels the playing field. There's good reason why no team since the Islanders of the early 1980s have been able to hoist the so-called "hardest trophy to win" three years in a row.
Think of the Stanley Cup like Jenga. If one piece is off or everything isn't perfectly aligned -- including, seemingly, the stars and the moon -- it can all come falling down on you pretty quickly.
Despite the best-made plans, it did just that on the Penguins in their second-round series against the Capitals that squashed their run at history.
Looking back on 2017-18, where did it go wrong for the Penguins this season? Here's five ways:
1. Injuries.
It's commendable that the Penguins didn't want to use injuries as an excuse in the immediate aftermath of Monday night's loss in overtime to Washington, but they can't be dismissed either.
Almost everything else is a moot point if a team isn't healthy or somewhere close to it, and the Penguins clearly were not down the stretch. All teams are "nicked up" or have "bumps and bruises," as Mike Sullivan said, but the injuries his team sustained were to four of their top seven forwards.
Those injuries may not have been enough to keep Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, Derick Brassard and Carl Hagelin out of the lineup, but they did impinge upon their effectiveness. In a game decided in split-seconds and millimeters it all added up.
We'll know the extent of those injuries Wednesday morning when the Penguins hold their season-ending media availability, but here's a recap:
• Malkin suffered a lower body injury, presumably to his right knee, in Game 5 in the first round against Philadelphia and didn't return until Game 3 of the Washington series. The Russian had been a bona fide Hart Trophy candidate, finishing fourth in points (98) and fifth in goals (42), but had just a goal and two assists in his final four games, good by anyone else's standards but his own.
• Kessel took a nasty spill on Feb. 23 at Carolina and briefly left the game. There was a question whether he'd play the following night at Florida but he kept his consecutive games played streak intact and continued to play the rest of the season, running his streak to 692. The game against the Hurricanes was his last three-point game until the penultimate game of the season when he scored two goals at Columbus to help the Penguins earn home ice advantage in the first round. Kessel had eight goals and 15 assists over the final 20 games with three of the goals coming in the final two games. More troubling, after averaging 3.18 shots per game in the regular season, he had just 18 shots in 12 playoff games.
• Following a slow start after his trade to Pittsburgh, Brassard was just starting to find his groove, recording points in six straight games before he suffered a groin injury March 27 at Detroit and was shut down the rest of the regular season. Brassard returned for the start of the playoffs, but then had just a goal and three assists in 12 playoff games. By Game 3 of the Washington series, the player who had once earned the nickname "Big Game Brass" was centering the fourth line and playing just 10-12 minutes.
• Hagelin suffered facial injuries in Game 6 against Philadelphia, costing him a few teeth and stitches to his mouth. He missed the first three games of the second round then had zero points in the final three games while wearing a full-face shield that appeared to encumber his vision.
2. Inconsistency.
After a throbbing Cup hangover and a brutal early season schedule that saw them play five sets of back-to-backs in the first month alone, the Penguins limped out of the gate with a 19-18-3 record over the course of the first three months.
A few weeks before Christmas in Las Vegas, Jim Rutherford feared that his team could miss the playoffs and threatened to shake up his slumbering team. He didn't and, to their credit, they responded by going 9-3-0 in January and 8-3-1 in February. With a playoff berth all but in hand, they cooled off a little over the final six weeks, going 10-5-2.
When engaged, the Penguins could play like the best team in the NHL one night, and then get blown out the next by teams like the Islanders and the Red Wings.
They never seemed to have played to their identity with any sort of consistency and developed so many bad habits over the course of the season -- like odd-man breaks, a dependence on the power play, a poor road record -- that, ultimately, they never could overcome them.
The ability to "flip a switch" or "elevate" is great, but it's a backhanded compliment that suggests that effort wasn't always there.
3. Chemistry off.
The Feb. 23 trade that brought Brassard to Pittsburgh sent Ian Cole to Ottawa (and ultimately Columbus) and Ryan Reaves to Vegas. Both players were popular characters in a tight-knit dressing room who also played valuable roles that the Penguins never adequately filled.
In no way is that a knock on Brassard or the deal itself. In hindsight, almost any GM would make the same deal again, considering that Brassard is still under contract -- with Vegas paying 40 percent of his $5 million cap hit -- for next season. Both Cole and Reaves were unrestricted free agents whose long-term futures in Pittsburgh were doubtful at best, but the organization clearly underestimated their losses.
Cole was the Penguins' best penalty killing defenseman and brought a blend of size and physicality to the back end that no other player on the roster could, Jamie Oleksiak included. The Penguins' penalty kill, which hovered in the top 10 before the trade deadline, finished 17th at 80.0 percent. To be fair, though, it showed improvement in the playoffs, ranking fifth at 83.3.
The Penguins thought so much of Reaves and the protection that he provided that they dealt a first-round pick to St. Louis to acquire him last summer. Reaves played that enforcer role admirably, though it's questionable if or how much Reaves would have played in the postseason. Clearly, he would have played in the Washington series and one has to wonder if the liberties that Tom Wilson took against Brian Dumoulin and Zach-Aston Reese would have been deterred if even the threat of Reaves playing would have prevented it. We'll never know.
This much is indisputable — the Penguins were playing their best hockey in the weeks before the trade deadline and could never get back to it.
4. Defense.
Defense and goaltending have usually flown under the radar in Pittsburgh, where the Penguins' identity has always been tied to its bevy of stars on offense. That said, the team's ability to defend had been good enough to win them the last two championships.
That wasn't the case this year, particularly for their No. 1 goalie and defenseman.
In his first full season as the clear No. 1 goalie Matt Murray was good, but hardly great. A lot of that was due to injury and some of it to unfortunate circumstance.
Murray missed three significant stretches of the season due to a knee injury in late November, the death of his father in early January and then a concussion in late February. He finished with a 2.92 goals-against average and .907 save percentage, the worst numbers of his three-year career. He is still yet to make 50 or more starts in a regular season.
The Penguins' play mirrored that of Murray, who never seemed to get back to his pre-concussion form down the stretch. He had his moments -- like Game 1 in Washington -- but he's at his best when he makes the timely save. He didn't do that nearly enough against the Capitals.
Coming off neck surgery that limited his off-season training, Kris Letang never reached the Norris Trophy-level that he was playing to at the time of his injury in February 2017. Though his offensive production was similar to years past, his decision-making with the puck -- and without it -- was wildly inconsistent. That was evident in the third period of the fatal Game 5 against the Capitals when he was at fault for the tying and go-ahead goals that swung the series.
Murray and Letang had less help as this year's team was nowhere as deep as it was in seasons past. Marc-Andre Fleury had been a mentor for Murray, bringing out the best in the young goalie in a friendly competition. Defensively, the Penguins parted ways with veteran defensemen from last year’s title team, like Trevor Daley, who brought speed, and Ron Hainsey, who was a steadying hand on the back end.
5. Capitals.
The Penguins' postseason dominance over the Capitals was never going to last forever.
The last three playoff series lasted six, seven and six games, with the two six-game series being decided in overtime.
All three could have gone either way. There's very little disparity between the two, but the Capitals were clearly the better team in this series. Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the other guy.
Washington is a great team which has come upon its three straight division Metropolitan Division championships honestly. Alex Ovechkin is a generational talent and the best pure goal-scorer the game has seen in decades. Braden Holtby is a Vezina Trophy-winning goalie and despite his stumbles in March, has rebounded to show himself to be one of the best in the game again.
Not sure if they have what it takes to win the Cup, but if you're looking for a compelling Final, you couldn't ask for much better than Washington vs. Vegas.
Even if Evgeny Kuznetsov doesn't score that breakaway goal and the Penguins found a way to win Game 6 on Monday night, it's highly questionable whether they would have beaten Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference Final. Obviously, the Penguins would have liked to have found out.