Welcome to DK Sports Radio and a new Daily Shot of Penguins, my every-weekday, half-hour program on the local hockey franchise. Today's episode: Mike Matheson makes big mistakes, the type no team can afford in a compacted season like this.
Also, hey, just below, you'll find a full transcript of the opening segment:
If you haven't already subscribed, here are some good links to do so:
• Apple
• Google
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• Overcast
Thanks for listening!
THE TRANSCRIPT
Kris Letang and Mike Matheson come back into the lineup, and immediately, there are big, ugly, glaring mistakes that cost the Penguins a game.
Is that a coincidence?
I thought that their performance the other night on Long Island -- in particular, the forwards -- was among their best of the year, even if it wasn't the best result. Obviously, falling short as they did, 4-3. But it was one of the best and most consistent 60-minute samples of the forwards doing pretty much everything they need to do. And this against a really passive, sit-back-and-wait-for-you-to-make-a-mistake New York team that's been drilled to the bone by Barry Trotz to not give up anything, I thought the Penguins took a lot of what was there and then went further than that, and they deserved a better fate than what they got that night.
But they didn't get it. They didn't get it. And the reason that they didn't get it is that the couple of guys who came back who are prone to giving up big, ugly, glaring chances did that. Matheson made what I thought was a really soft-ish misplay in his own end, and the Islanders cashed in as if he wasn't there. He just flat-out backed off, stayed in no-man's land, and Jordan Eberle ends up pouncing. If it happened once, whatever. But when you see it happening to the same guy again and again, and then he comes right back into the lineup and has that same effect on you ... you know, you pay attention to it a little bit more.
Later in the game, of course, Letang inexplicably followed Pierre-Olivier Joseph behind the net. So both of them are behind the net. And the islanders were handed just the easiest conceivable tying goal. Joseph has been in the NHL for like a week and a half, and and he's playing with more composure and more smarts than Letang did in that game. There's nothing easier at this point -- even the goal that Cal Clutterbuck scored there -- than having a dialogue about how frustrating Letang is. Because when he's on his game, he does things that other people can't do. He adds in ways that maybe a lot of people don't even recognize. But he also does this. He does this.
He's going to stay in the lineup. I mean, there's just there's no way around that. I'm not going to be an idiot and suggest that Mike Sullivan benches Letang are cuts his ice time or whatever else. But what you can't have in your lineup are two of those. You can't have two guys or three guys making big mistakes.
So you can't live in a dream world where you look at Matheson and say, well, I mean, he can fly, he's amazing on his skates, and he has the ability to produce points and he can be one of your prototypical mobile/productive NHL defenseman in 2021. Because this work that the Penguins and Todd Reirden are doing with Matheson ... maybe it will work. He's a really bright guy. This isn't like some flaky dude or someone who's lazy and doesn't want to play defense or anything like that. He just hasn't necessarily gotten all the guidance. I'm not here to rip him or bury him or suggest terrible trade or whatever. Obviously, at the moment, it looks awful, Patric Hornqvist on fire in Sunrise. But that's not why you make trades. You make them ideally, so that you make your organization better, particularly in the longer term. And Matheson is going to be around here for a long time with the contract that he's got.
But what do you do now? This is a 56-game season. The Penguins deserved a W the other night. And they didn't get it principally because of these couple of massive defensive mistakes. What do you do? You can't act like this is a normal season The Penguins have played 11 games, there's a total of 56, and do the math. They've played pretty much 20% of the schedule already. And it only gets tougher from here because they're getting these big breaks now because of the Devils getting COVID, but there are now 16 games in March. It's just going to be brutal. And that's to say nothing of the division, which I still think is going to get even better than it is now because teams like the Islanders aren't gonna be hanging around the bottom for very long.
You're not going to be able to carry a Matheson or to force his contract onto the ice. Remember, the general manager who made that trade is gone. He quit. This isn't a case where you have to try to justify the contract or the trade. If you're the Penguins, if you're Sullivan ... heck, if you're Patrik Allvin -- who has to know he's not getting this job -- you still have a duty to the Pittsburgh Penguins to make the right moves to get them into the playoffs. And whether it's Sullivan, whether it's Reirden, whether it's Mike Vellucci, whether it's someone over their heads, whether it's Allvin who comes in and says, 'Hey, by the way, you don't have to play this guy,' someone needs to do it.
I mean, I get it. You're missing Marcus Pettersen right now, and you're missing Brian Dumoulin. Both are lefties. But you still can't be taking on a project right now if this continues. This isn't the time for Matheson to be learning on the job. This isn't a normal season. These aren't normal circumstances. And even if he does dress, he doesn't have to be out there 20 minutes a game.
I'm telling you, I just I had a bad feeling entering that third period. Because, as I had shared with you previously, at least with these fringe defenseman that they were using -- the Yannick Weber types and so forth -- you knew what you were going to get. You knew that they were just going to stay put, take care of their own end. And, you know, try to survive. Now to the credit of Joseph, he's done way more than that. And he's a child, he's still you know, he's still got a ton of potential in front of him. He's succeeded ... no, he's excelled at both ends. But for the rest of these guys that they were bringing in, Kevin Czuczman and so forth, you were at least going to get sound defense and give your team a chance to kind of find its equilibrium, get the forwards attacking as they did.
This one ended up in an L. You're only gonna be able to be patient with it for so long.
