The Penguins' 2-5-2 skid after a 3-0-2 start hasn't just pushed them toward the bottom of the Metropolitan Division.
It has carried them out of contention for an Eastern Conference playoff spot, at least in the short term.
Pretty far out, actually.
Sure, there still is ample time to salvage their season, but it's far from certain that they're capable of it.
Or that many other clubs would be, for that matter.
Indeed, the Penguins' 5-5-4 record, which makes them the only Metropolitan team that isn't on the sunny side of .500, gets even more troubling when viewed in the context of what it will take to qualify the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 16th consecutive year.
While it's far from settled where teams will finish in the Eastern Conference, the seventh and eighth spots in the race there (based on winning percentage, not points) are shared by Boston and Philadelphia.
Those two are on pace to finish with 101 points, so that, at least for now, is the minimum level for which teams that aspire to participate in the postseason should be aiming.
Getting there might well be a challenge for the Penguins, who have taken just 14 points out of their first 14 games.
They will have to earn 87 points in the remaining 68 games to reach 101; that translates to a record of 43-24-1 (or its equivalent), a winning percentage of .640.
Attainable? Definitely.
Easily done? Hardly.
Not when only 11 of the NHL's then-31 members collected points at or above that pace in 2020-21, and only six did it during the season before that.
And remember, those 87 additional points are what, as of today, would be required to possibly lock up the final playoff berth, depending on how tiebreakers would play out. The issue is not what it would take to win the division or secure home-ice advantage for even one round of the playoffs.
The whole point simply would be to avoid having to watch the first round on TV.
The most obvious -- and legitimate -- explanation for the lackluster opening month of the Penguins' season is the number of core players who spent much of that time in street clothes. Or quarantine.
Members of the Penguins' No. 1 line and top defense pairing -- Jake Guentzel, Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Brian Dumoulin and Kris Letang -- have accounted for 29 of the 60 man-games the team has lost because of injuries and illness. (And that's without noting that their highest-paid player, No. 2 center Evgeni Malkin, has missed all 14 and isn't expected to make his 2021-22 debut until sometime next month.)
Overcoming adversity, like losing key contributors because they're injured or ailing, is part of the challenge of succeeding in pro sports, and all the talk of a next-man-up mentality when that happens is fine. But just think about it: If guys making the league minimum could produce and perform at the same level as those receiving $8 or $9 million per season, what reason would management have to keep the higher-paid players around, aside from reaching the salary-cap floor?
Before their lopsided losses in Ottawa and Washington this weekend, the Penguins had gotten pretty good mileage out of lineups that, at times, appeared to be held together mostly with spit and duct tape. But getting embarrassed by the Senators, who had even greater personnel issues than the Penguins because of COVID-19, and spanked by the Capitals underscored the importance of not only getting prominent players back, but of having them produce as anticipated.
Dumoulin returned from the COVID-19 protocol Sunday and will be a plus for the penalty-kill. That group has been outstanding, although it plunged from first place to seventh in the league rankings after giving up more goals (3) over the weekend than it had in the previous 12 games (2),
While that unit's effectiveness has been a bit of a surprise, the power play's abject inability to generate goals has been nothing less than shocking.
Even the most efficient power plays sputter at times, so a protracted dry spell like the Penguins' current 0-for-25 slump is somewhat understandable.
What is not is how this team is converting just 8.7 percent of its chances so deep into the season.
Yeah, missing the likes of Crosby and Malkin and Letang explains why the power play has not been one of the league's most lethal, as it is expected to be when everyone on the No. 1 unit is healthy.
Their absences do not, however, justify it being the NHL's worst.
Frankly, a club should be able to send out a power play consisting of three granite-hands forwards, a defensive defenseman and its backup goalie -- all of them blindfolded -- and still capitalize on more than four of 46 chances, which is how the Penguins have fared to this point.
Happily for the Penguins, there's nothing special -- or spectacular -- about the formula for reviving a struggling power play: Get pucks and bodies to the net.
Set a screen, so the goaltender doesn't see what's coming at him. Perhaps there will be a deflection. Or a rebound. Or a puck that caroms in off someone's shinpads or backside.
The details of how the puck ends up across the goal line don't matter. Goals that are ugly and/or the result of a lucky bounce count just as much as the ones that result from precision passing and end up on the highlights video.
The Penguins talk a lot about being resilient, but the reality is that they are winless (0-4-4) when allowing the first goal of the game.
If they can figure out how to avoid going weeks at a time between man-advantage goals, perhaps 1-0 deficits won't continue to be virtually insurmountable.
If they can't, however, it's hard to like their chances of collecting those 101 points it looks as if they'll need.