Kovacevic: Try shooting, not spinning

Sidney Crosby doesn’t have a goal through five games.

Patrick Hornqvist doesn’t have a goal through five games.

Focus on either one of those two things, and it’ll completely miss the collective point as to what’s most ailing these Penguins, losers of yet another flat-liner Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena, this by a 3-2 overtime count to the Canucks.

But focus on both those things, and that's getting warm.

"I thought they defended hard," Mike Sullivan would observe of the victors' patient, persistent approach. "But as we said to our players before the game and after the first and second periods, we've got to look to shoot the puck more and create offense off the rebound. You know, sometimes it's hard to make plays with the way teams put back-pressure on the puck. There's a lot of sticks and legs in the high slot, and we're looking for that lateral play at the top of the circles a lot of time, and it doesn't materialize."

It sure didn't on this night.

Less than six minutes remained in regulation, the Penguins were down a goal, and Evgeni Malkin crossed the Vancouver blue line to this effect:

He hoped to skate and create, and he was willing to pull out to the perimeter. That couldn't be more obvious. But it was equally obvious to the Canucks, who essentially put three bodies on him, poked with their sticks like mosquitoes, then turned the play the other way. Carl Hagelin, at the right edge of the blue line, never got to utilize his speed. Phil Kessel, trailing a bit, never had a chance to contribute.

There was just ... nothing.

No shot. No possession. No wearing down the other guys. No gaining of mojo.

Nothing.

Kind of like this entry two minutes later by Crosby:

Derick Brassard burst through the neutral zone with speed but was roadblocked by the Canucks' backtracking center, Tyler Motte, and forced to dish to Crosby at the right edge of the blue line. When Motte quickly whirled back to pressure Crosby -- and give Motte immense credit for a doubly superlative defensive effort, by the way -- Crosby tried in vain to ... backhand a pass laterally to Jake Guentzel 70 feet away?

That wouldn't have worked even if it worked.

I'm not picking on the Penguins' two superstars here. This went on all night, and it was across the board. Rather, I'm supporting Sullivan's stance that the only way to get through an opponent hellbent on filling the middle of the rink defensively, as both the Canadiens and Canucks do, is to let the puck do the lifting.

I'll cover Crosby's goalless drought in a moment, but it might be instructive to first ask this: Has anyone even noticed Hornqvist?

Seriously, this is the one individual on this roster whose character and commitment to going all-out can never be questioned. So it's not like he's slacking. And, in fact, having paid particularly close attention to him in this game, I'd say he's plowing as hard as ever.

Know what's not following him there?

Right. The puck. Which is why, in addition to having no goals, he's got just 14 shots in those five games.

That's why the Penguins wound up with 24 shots against a no-name defense that included Derrick Pouliot. That's why the Penguins carved out all of two high-danger scoring chances in a third period with their figurative backs to the wall. That's why, since that wild but weird opener with the Capitals, their past four games have seen goal totals of 1, 4, 3 and 2, and shot totals of 22, 22, 28 and 24. This despite facing backup goaltenders in the past three and, in the case of Vegas, a team that had played the previous night.

Stuff in sports is sometimes complicated. This isn't. The Penguins do have issues beyond their offense, but that's still where their outcomes almost always will be founded. If they aren't scoring, the rest never gets a chance to settle.

"It's frustrating when you're facing that," Brassard blurted out of the Canucks' countless flips out of the zone. "But as a player, as a line, as a team, you've still got to find a way to get offense. You're not always going to get two-on-ones or three-on-twos."

Allow me to interrupt for a moment because that's a worthwhile observation: Both of the Penguins' goals in this game came on two-on-one breaks. Most of the others in this stretch have come on similar breaks or, in Kessel's case, outright breakaways.

Back to Brassard ...

"Maybe we can force more turnovers. Maybe we can use our defensemen a little more. And we're talking about shooting the puck a little more."

Sounds like the coach needs to keep doing the talking.

"We'd be much better served, especially in this early part of the season where we're trying to find our game, to simplify everything we do," Sullivan said. "And so, we're trying to encourage the players to shoot the puck more. And I think if we do that, it's going to force us to get inside the dots. It's going to force our opponents to have to defend inside the dots."

He paused.

"We're learning a hard lesson here."

Ideally, yeah.

• Crosby's registered a dozen shots through five games. End any drought investigation right there.

Now, he did take three shots in each of the games against the Canadiens and Canucks, and two of the three in this one were outstanding self-created opportunities. In the previous two games, he totaled one shot. So this one's a positive.

Also, he's the best player in the world. Another positive.

What will it take to bust out?

"I thought he had some Grade A chances tonight, and he's had a few in the past couple of games," Sullivan said. "The puck's just not going in the net for him right now, but he's just too good a player to keep off the scoresheet. I think it's a matter of time."

Maybe a matter of working more down low, as well. Look again at that lateral turnover above.

Sullivan described sitting in his office with Crosby after practice Monday, dissecting and discussing video aimed at sustaining the attack.

"He's such a student of the game and, sometimes, it gives you another vantage point," the coach said of the captain. "It's a great learning opportunity to watch yourself in those situations. And one of the things that came out of the conversation was just hanging onto pucks a little more. You know, Sid is such a physically fit guy that he can wear players down by hanging onto pucks. When they get tired, he doesn't. He tends to have another gear. A lot of times, that gives him a huge competitive advantage. The longer he hangs onto pucks, the longer his line hangs onto pucks, that's a huge advantage for us."

It was clear that message got through. When Crosby was asked what his line needed to do, he replied, "We've got to hold onto pucks. That's how you generate down low. We've got to do a better job of holding onto pucks and winning battles."

• The Penguins opened up abysmally yet again, to the point of being embarrassing. At both ends and in goal. Which is how the Canucks built a 2-1 lead and, ultimately, their victory.

The breakdown on the second Vancouver goal, by old friend Brandon Sutter, was particularly gruesome:

The Canucks' Tim Schaller badly outmuscles, then outhustles Brian Dumoulin out of the corner, at which point Dumoulin makes the rookie-level mistake of following Schaller behind the net, at which point Jack Johnson ... wow, what was he thinking there in abandoning the post that his partner had already mistakenly abandoned?

And that's to say nothing of Casey DeSmith attempting a cartwheel in the crease once the puck inexplicably makes it all the way across to Sutter.

So bad.

I asked Johnson what it'll take for not only him but also the entire group to stop having these starts.

"The fortunate thing is, the things that guys in this room can do offensively, you can't teach. So that'll come," he told me. "The defense is a matter of will. And want. So that's the good news. That's something that can be easily fixed."

Johnson and the defense did get better, and it's plausible that new combinations in the first game without Justin Schultz didn't help early. But still, it's happening far too often.

• There is no chance DeSmith starts tomorrow in Toronto. None. Matt Murray's "our No. 1," as Sullivan told us all at the morning skate, and he's got to back that against the fast, skilled Maple Leafs rather than hoping for a gimmicky outcome, as he apparently had been with DeSmith in this one.

• Early candidate for bizarre quote of the year, from DeSmith: "We played great. Probably our best game of the season so far."

• I wrote at the skate about Brock Boeser's shot, with the help of draft mate Daniel Sprong's input in which Sprong described it as not necessarily overpowering but as having "amazing accuracy." Well, Boeser's winning shot in overtime had neither:

He needed to drag the puck back because of his release style, as Sprong had described in detail, he had no screen as Guentzel was back as a defenseman pretty much getting out of the way, he didn't exactly rip it, and it ended up slipping under DeSmith's blocker arm.

"I'd like to have that one back," DeSmith said.

This isn't to be an idiot and blame the goaltender for the loss. I watched the game, too. But it's fair to question Sullivan's decision, as I was doing right as he announced it in the morning. Murray will now face John Tavares, Auston Matthews and company ice cold rather than having had a chance to tackle a far lesser challenge than the Canucks minus wonder-rookie Elias Pettersson.

Really, what was the point?

• Don't blame Crosby on that overtime goal. Yeah, he changed on the fly, and the Canucks broke the other way, but ...

1. Boeser initially entered the Pittsburgh zone one-on-two and, even when joined, really didn't have great passing options.

2. As the video below plainly illustrates, Crosby wanted to change earlier, saw that Malkin wasn't standing and ready, then swung back to the bench only upon hearing someone -- presumably -- shout out to bring Crosby off:

• The game was a big bore overall, but Kessel's gorgeous decoy/pass to Hagelin on the tying two-on-one with 3:14 left probably restored some of the ticket value.

That said, way back at the other end, Olli Maatta turned in one dogged effort to ensure the play would go back that way, hounding the Canucks' Jake Virtanen for the circumference of the zone, then burying him to allow Malkin to chip up to Hagelin:

• Anyone care that the Penguins have killed 12 of 13 penalties to date and that, almost as impressive, they've obviously taken only 13 penalties through five games?

Anyone at all?

• There won't be a backup goaltender at the far end tomorrow, by the way. Frederik Andersen had been out for the Maple Leafs because of a knee injury, replaced by rookie Garret Sparks, but Mike Babcock's already declared Andersen his starter against the Penguins.

We'll see how well that hard lesson was learned.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY