Kovacevic: It’s as if these high-flying, shot-generating Penguins need to .... slow down?

PHILADELPHIA -- They were aligned like bowling pins, pretty much begging to be knocked down.

The puck had just dropped for the third period Friday night at Wells Fargo Center, and it’s maybe a blessing there were no more than a couple dozen onlookers on hand to be bored by it. Because it’d take barely a millisecond for the Flyers, bearing a one-goal lead, to back off, to stand still, to await whatever might work its way in their dormant direction. 

Seriously, it’s like they were gathering at the blue line half-expecting Lauren Hart to come back out for an anthem encore:

To which I mumbled aloud from my ice-level perspective, “Alain Vigneault hockey, baby.”

Hey, it worked.

Flyers 5, Penguins 2. 

The home team attempted all of two shots through the first half of that period, tacked on an insurance goal only  when it was safe on a counterattack three-on-one, then punctuated with an empty-netter.

As Vigneault would word it, "When the game was on the line, I thought we played our best hockey of the night."

Yep. In his eyes, that style's a supermodel.

The other guys?

Eh.

If I could place a finger on one principal pattern through the Penguins’ two season-opening losses here, it’d be that they're still searching for a firm sense of identity. In the broadest possible scope.

I mean, go ahead and carve up the blame individually, if that's the preferred MO. Fine by me.

In fact, I can play that game, too ...

Evgeni Malkin left here with nothing but a minus-2 as evidence that he was here. Most maddening, there wasn’t a puck he touched that he didn’t want to dish right away to a lesser player. Blame him.

Kris Letang was on the rink for all five Philadelphia goals on this night. That’s seldom happenstance. Blame him.

Jake Guentzel ... looks exhausted. Constantly behind the play. Hunched over with every return to the bench. He’s either not close to being back into the game swing, or it’s something else. Blame ... his recovery.

Tristan Jarry fished nine pucks from his net here over three periods and change. He had zero chance on the first two on this night, but the third …

Take it from someone who seated directly behind Ivan Provorov: His view of Jarry’s short side there was akin to a cartographer’s view of the Pacific Ocean relative to the Americas. Jarry didn’t challenge at all, and that earned him a yank for Casey DeSmith. So sure, blame him, too.

And if faulting a team facet is the preferred method of blame, the fairest target would be the penalty-killing, which gave up three Philadelphia goals here these two games.

Again, it’s all fine by me..

I’m just not into breaking down the bits yet. Not until I have a far better feel for what these Penguins, collectively, aim to be.

Is this going to be the team that erupted from the opening faceoff of both these games, rendering the Flyers flat-footed for the first few minutes?

Or is this going to be the team that allows that aggression to backfire via odd-man breaks and other high danger chances, of which Philadelphia would get a gaudy 17 over these two games?

Is this going to be a team that controls play to the tune of a 67-45 dominance in shots and an NHL-high 58.45% Corsi For percentage at five-on-five over these two games?

Or the team that, once special teams make savvy a priority over speed and even skill, allow the power play and PK to lag the way they did here?

Is this going to be the team that brings back the hard-to-play-against mantra?

Or the team that, at least in this game, lost its collective cool far too often in committing six penalties, two of them in the attacking zone, and zero of them trying to prevent an opponent from scoring?

Mike Sullivan's stance after this was precisely what I'd anticipated. He knew his team had given him an exemplary effort and, within an 0-2 hole, he'd be nuts to not embrace that aspect of it:

• "I thought we were the better team tonight. We couldn’t convert on our opportunities, and I thought they were opportunistic on their side."

• "I thought we controlled a lot of territory. I believe these guys will score. They’re talented players. It didn’t go in for us tonight, but certainly there was a lot to like in this game."

• "Like I said to the guys after the game, I thought they played really hard. I thought we had a ton of energy. I thought we played with a lot of emotion. We've just got to stay with it here. We’ve got to stick together and stay with it."

I hear him. I respect that.

For what it's worth, Vigneault saw it the same way, singling out his goaltender's 31-save performance in saying, "I thought tonight’s game, there’s no doubt that Carter Hart is the difference. I’m not going to apologize for good goaltending."

Oh, and this from the Flyers' Jakub Voracek: "I think they were the better team, to be honest with you."

The closest the visitors came to conceding anything amiss was the magnitude of their mistakes.

“I think there’s a lot to like,” Bryan Rust would say. “We’ve had the puck an awful lot. We’ve gotten an awful lot of chances. Just in certain situations, when we do break down, we can’t chase a mistake with another mistake. I think we just got to try to limit those snowball-effect areas.”

"We just need to try to eliminate the really high-quality chances against," Chad Ruhwedel would essentially echo. "But the effort is definitely there. We’re working hard."

OK, OK. Effort. Energy. Enthusiasm. Yet again, heard and respected. There’s a lot to like about a hockey team being competitive, even combative. 

But there are also times to ... you know, slow down. Think a little. Sharpen up. Narrow the focus.

I swear, there’s a part of me that saw this coming, what was seen here this week. All through the offseason, ever since the Montreal fiasco, all the buzz about the Penguins, inside and outside their world, both bad and good, had been about speed, speed, speed, fast, faster, fastest, And that kept on all through training camp, as well. They needed to show everyone they’re fast and fired up.

Look, if that winds up being their identity, that’s wonderful. Speed certainly was a need. So was the fire.

But headless-chicken hockey doesn’t win. And it sure won’t win in a division like this new East, where the Flyers are but one of a handful of formidable opponents they’ll be facing all winter.

Here, want another example?

These two two-on-ones occurred in rapid succession late in the second period:

I know, right? 

Shoot the blasted thing. 

A team that’s built on speed and the regular generating of possession and chances, as these Penguins look like they just might be, will need to have it instilled in them that golden looks like those need to result in shots on goal. Fast teams will always benefit from quantity, whereas quality isn’t nearly as important. But if the quantity's squandered ...

The onus for all this, of course, is on Sullivan. He’s lucky to have a group willing to lay it on the line for him, luckier still to have seen it come to life here. Now, he’s just got to ensure the line’s a little straighter, the thought process a lot smarter.