COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It was yet another game for the Penguins, that 5-2 loss in Edmonton late Wednesday night, where they fell short despite controlling play for large stretches, as well as out-shooting and out-chancing the opposition.
Though the troubling trend of not being able to score with regularity looms large, it was their overzealousness in the offensive zone and inability to defend the rush that ultimately did them in.
Mike Sullivan has done a phenomenal job over the years getting his team to limit rush chances against while still being able to take the calculated risks necessary to generate their own chances, but the Penguins inexplicably threw such principles out the window while facing one of the most dangerous rush players the game has ever seen in Connor McDavid.
Sullivan told reporters at Rogers Place, including our Dave Molinari, after the game, "We could've made better decisions with the puck and not fed their transition game."
On Edmonton's ice-breaking goal fewer than seven minutes into the game, all three Pittsburgh forwards got caught below the faceoff dots as McDavid swiped the puck from Jake Guentzel and quickly moved it up ice:
Sidney Crosby drifted into open ice on the weak side of the puck, hoping Guentzel would win his battle along the boards and reverse the play. Ideally, Crosby should've been much closer to the center of the ice, which would have allowed Evan Rodrigues to step up and support Guentzel. By not doing so, there was plenty of ice for the Oilers to get the puck out of the zone after McDavid took the puck and chipped it around Rodrigues.
As Zach Hyman got on his horse and transitioned the puck through the neutral zone, Crosby hustled on the backcheck to make it a three-on-three, but a miscommunication between him and Brian Dumoulin, as well as a miscue by Kris Letang, resulted in the puck getting wired past Tristan Jarry.
Letang found himself just outside the faceoff dots near the blue line as Hyman gained the zone. As a rule of thumb, defensemen should stay between the dots and force the puck-carrier to the outside. Because of Letang's exceptional skating ability, he's long had the benefit of playing wider to bait puck-carriers to the middle, only to use his agility to quickly step up and poke the puck away.
This instance, though, it bit Letang, as a beautiful overlap and subtle pick from Zack Kassian prevented him from being able to stay in front of the puck-carrier.
As this happened, Dumoulin motioned for Crosby to change his angle and step up toward Hyman, but Crosby continued his pursuit of the Edmonton forward crashing the back post. This forced Dumoulin to cross in front of Jarry to cover Kassian who was crashing the net on the strong side of the puck.
Letang did his best to recover, but Hyman simply had too much momentum as he barreled through the slot and scored.
Edmonton's second goal in the final minutes of the opening frame was another situation where the Penguins had too many bodies down low in the offensive zone and got burned for it:
Letang activated down the right side, but none of his forwards covered for him at the point.
He quickly found himself in the corner and dangerously forced a pass to the heart of the slot. Of course, McDavid was sitting on it and quickly scooped the puck and high-tailed it the other way.
When a defenseman is defending a two-on-one, his responsibility is to take away the cross-ice pass and let his goaltender handle the puck-carrier's shot. That being said, it's understandable that Dumoulin wasn't all that keen on the idea of McDavid flying in one-on-one against Jarry. He elected to stay with McDavid, but didn't sell out on his decision in hopes that he could get his stick on the royal road feed, but it was a near impossible task.
Had Dumoulin sold out to step up on McDavid, he ran the risk of getting walked or letting a pass get through, but the latter ended up happening anyway because he was halfway in and halfway out the door.
McDavid put a pass just out of Dumoulin's reach and right in Hyman's wheelhouse as he buried it for his second of the night.
Edmonton's fourth goal, and third off the rush, found Dumoulin yet again defending a two-on-one with McDavid powering into the zone:
Before we get back to Dumoulin, I want to make note of Crosby's egregious read as Edmonton was breaking out of the zone.
Marino fell down toward the Edmonton net during four-on-four play. That should have been a giant flashing sign for Crosby to hang back, but instead he came from the other side of the ice toward the puck-carrier in attempt to block a pass that he had no chance of stopping. In doing so, he let two Edmonton skaters, one of which was, you guessed it, McDavid, get behind three of the Penguins' skaters to create a two-on-one.
There's no excuse for jumping up, especially with McDavid on the ice and extra room to work with.
Regardless, Dumoulin was stranded and played the two-on-one about as poorly as it gets.
Again, Dumoulin failed to sell out and take the pass option away while also failing to step up and make a play on the puck-carrier. I understand that he didn't want to leave the most dynamic player in hockey all alone against his goalie, but twisting yourself into no-man's land has similar results to just skating to the bench and allowing a two-on-none.
McDavid has the talent to make anyone in the NHL look like a fool, but Dumoulin making the same exact costly error twice in the same game couldn't be more glaring, especially for someone whose bread and butter is his defense.
It wasn't his fault that the odd-man rushes developed, but he certainly didn't defend them anything like the stalwart we've seen in the past.
I don't foresee the odd-man rushes against becoming a recurring problem. Not to make excuses for the Penguins, but they had been spending so much time in the offensive zone that I can at least understand their aggressiveness, however poorly executed it may have been. At the same time, it's more than peculiar they weren't abundantly cautious with the always dangerous McDavid waiting to pounce on their mistakes.