Kovacevic: Why these perimeter Penguins belong on playoff periphery taken at PPG Paints Arena (DK'S GRIND)

JEANINE LEECH / GETTY

The Flyers' Nicolas Aube-Kubel sets up Claude Giroux's winning goal in the third period Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena.

Yeah, first and foremost, fault the effort.

I'm talking F-minus for every forward, every defenseman.

Because when a hockey team erupts for three goals in the opening four minutes, then settles into witness protection for the final 56, as these infuriating Penguins somehow pulled off in falling hard, 4-3, to the Flyers on this Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena ... man, the principal issue's not too challenging to identify, you know?

I asked Kris Letang immediately afterward to attempt to describe what just happened, and he didn't even hesitate with this: "I think we exhaled."

And that was just clearing the throat.

"We didn't keep pressing. Like, we came out of the gate pretty aggressive, got rewarded ... but let our foot off the gas for the rest of the game, thinking we can get away with it. But in this league, there's too much talent and skill. A three-goal lead, especially early, is not safe. ... We knew we had Sid back, everybody was excited for it ... and we think it's going to be easy for the rest of the game."

Oh. Ouch.

"So I would say," he concluded, "it's a mindset."

Right. Mindset. I'll buy that.

In isolated doses.

Sure, they ripped off those three rapid-fire goals on their first six shots against Brian Elliott, one of the NHL's worst goaltenders, and I've no doubt they were fueled by the word, a couple hours before faceoff, that the NHL cleared Sidney Crosby from the COVID-19 protocol. Twinned with a seriously uplifting victory against this same team Tuesday night, it must've felt like they'd keep right on rolling. Like it'd be "easy," to borrow Letang's barb.

But I'm sorry, I'm not buying that as any broader explanation for all that's befallen this team through this increasingly bizarre winter. Not even close. Because that'd be letting them off way too easily from the truth.

____________________

Anze Kopitar's dad has a name. It's Matzaj Kopitar. But in covering the Sochi Olympics in 2014, I came to referring to him simply as "Kopitar's dad," even in writing, mostly because I found it endearing that the head coach of tiny Slovenia's first-ever entry into the Games was the father of the Kings' star center.

Stay with me on this. It'll be worth it.

Kopitar's dad was a smart guy who, within the two weeks that tournament existed, gained instant admiration from observers over there not only for his team's pluckiness -- beat Slovakia, hung with both the U.S. and host Russia -- but moreso for the two ways he made it happen:

1. Play Anze till he drops.
2. Own the middle of the rink.

It drove the other teams nuts. It was boring but it also was a joy to watch. Here's this ragtag roster from this nation that's got the population of Allegheny County, there's not a single additional NHL or even AHL or ECHL player on the roster, and strategy/hunger were carrying the day.

The strategy, per the second point up there, was to own the middle of the rink. Not between the blue lines, like a trap, but the vertical middle extending from the front of Slovenia's net to the front of the other nation's net. So Kopitar's dad rounded up a few killer defensemen to box out basketball-style on defense -- Sabuhadin Kovacevic, a personal favorite, was so mean he merited a rare Olympics suspension for a brutal elbow -- and enough cut-throat wingers to carve their way to some serious crease-crashing on offense.

Man, did it ever work, too. 

One hasn't lived a sports writer's dream until one covers an arena full of anxious Russians, including Vladimir Putin seated behind one of the goals, fuming that Evgeni Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin and their boys are being besieged by a bunch of mountain farmers. And maybe more impressive, once the Games were done, more than one NHL head coach would cite Slovenia's strategy for influencing their own fresh emphasis on the middle of the rink.

These Penguins, my friends, are the anti-Slovenia.

They're a team Kopitar's dad would despise coaching. And heck, the way they're going in this regard, they're a team I'll bet Kopitar's dad could beat if given a month or so to round up his son and another few snarly farmers.

On offense, these Penguins swing wide at every entry, then stay there, circling, spinning ... toward nothing. Almost no one cuts through the slot, much less cutting any throats to do so. Almost no one's executing a routine center drive, save for a Brandon Tanev rush. And almost no one dares to broach the blue paint, as if worrying they'd have to pick up the rent on Patric Hornqvist's prior home.

It's awful to watch.

Here's one shift by Sid's line in the second period:

Now, one can fairly assess that as a fine shift. Puck's in the zone. Possession maintained. Even two actual attempts to get the puck between the circles. Truth is, over those final 56 minutes, this was among the home side's few highlights.

But watch it again, and try to recall how many times that scene's played out precisely like that. Blah ending and all. Sid ventured once to hit Jake Guentzel darting from a perimeter point, and that was it. Watch the traffic in front of Elliott. Watch the gold sweaters stick to the edges. Watch the avoidance of any and all resistance even out there. After which, one soft pass goes awry, and it's backpedal city.

Ready for me to move on?

Cool. Thought so.

The defense in the middle of the rink isn't awful to watch. It's atrocious.

Here are both of Claude Giroux's goals on the evening, including the winner with 2:08 remaining:

My goodness. There might not be a grislier display of five-on-five defending anywhere in the NHL this month. Bad enough that John Marino and Marcus Pettersson got stuck on a 1:20 shift, which is why they look so gassed, but worse by far that ... oh, no one needs me to break that down.

There's Marino again, there's Mike Matheson sweeping the ice like he's curling, and there's ... a forward or two barely pictured, as is commonly the case.

None of this was unique to this night, to put it mildly. And that's what matters most.

Fast-forwarding on any further footage, the numbers don't lie: The Penguins have now conceded 35 goals on what are classified as high-danger scoring chances, second-most in the league behind the Canucks' absurd 45. They've also got a gross imbalance of high-danger chances created vs. conceded, just 46.3% to the positive, that's fifth-worst in the league.

Mike Sullivan wanted to talk about his team's effort, too, and I get that. It was easy to tell he was fuming, particularly when he spoke of his team's inconsistencies, "If I had an answer for you, I could probably fix it. It's frustrating from the coaches' standpoint, because I know we're capable of more consistent play. But we haven't found it yet."

Still, my question for him wasn't about intangibles but about ... kind of the Kopitar's dad thing. I asked if the Penguins are getting enough done -- or even trying to get enough done -- in the vertical middle of the rink.

The answer, as ever, didn't disappoint.

"Obviously," he began his reply after taking a moment, "the majority of games are won and lost at the net-fronts, and you've got to do a good job at both ends of the rink in that regard. We've got to defend hard in our end, and we've got to get to the net in the opponent's end. When you look at how offense is generated in today's game, there's a fair amount of it where the puck goes low-to-high, and then there's traffic at the net."

He means feeding the points, then setting screens and positioning for rebounds, for anyone who doesn't follow the NHL's other 30 teams.

"I didn't think we were good enough in front of our net tonight," he concluded, "and I don't think we spent enough time in the offensive zone to get to their net."

Nope. And that sure isn't because of anything the head coach wants.

____________________

The easy, arguably lazy way to explain all of the above is the way far too many teams do: The players aren't listening to the coach, the players need to hear a new voice, all that stuff.

It's nonsense. Sullivan's an exemplary coach and, if the season's shown us one glowing plus above all, it's that his players have clawed back time and time again from late deficits, sometimes big deficits, just like these Flyers did here. That's the polar opposite of a disconnect.

The ugliest underbelly to the Penguins' 12-9-1 record, still good for fifth place in the East Division and still just two points out of a playoff spot, is that it's built on a 4-1 overtime record and a 3-0 shootout record. They've had five whole regulation wins. And, if one wants to get that much uglier, they've had nine whole regulation wins in their past 37 regular-season games dating to last season.

That's not effort.

That's not coaching.

That's a team that's either unable or unwilling to venture into the hardest areas of the rink but, hey, it's all well and good when it's three-on-three or, better yet, one-on-one, and isolated skill can still make the difference.

And that, without a doubt in my mind at this stage, is on roster composition.

I can't know what Ron Hextall and/or Brian Burke are thinking these days. We don't hear from them much and, in pandemic times, we see them not at all. But I do know that both of these gentlemen earned their reputations for favoring a hard-nosed approach to hockey, even within the context of the modern game that rightly prioritizes speed, skill and smarts. And I further know that those gentlemen, when introduced to us a month ago, stated in no uncertain terms that their top priority is to push this 2021 team into legit contention for the Stanley Cup.

This. Ain't. It.

This team's going nowhere except in continuous circles, both literally and figuratively. And until Hextall and Burke put their heads together and decide how compelled they feel to invest in what they're watching -- how much to give up, whether or not it's worth it, even larger issues aimed at the future -- get used to a lot more pirouette hockey around here.


Loading...
Loading...