It's not the fire that needs to be put out, so much as it's the spark.
The Avalanche's Devon Toews, a 53-point defenseman on the NHL's deepest and most dynamic roster -- no, really, this dude's on the second pairing -- was gliding backward across his own blue line. And I do mean gliding. Almost upright. Almost ... casual.
Playing possum?
Hey, whatever works:
Like, yeah, it's lousy that J.T. Compher's left alone in the low slot by Teddy Blueger, his team's sharpest defensive forward. It's lousier still that Marcus Pettersson was spun around on the preceding rush by Alex Newhook. But none of it's got a chance to finished if not for the start. Meaning, as the video painfully illustrates, the part where Jake Guentzel and then Sidney Crosby had forced Toews to retreat just enough, in their minds, to pursue a change on the fly.
Can't happen there.
And neither can a simple, isolated flick of Toews' wrist result in a three-on-two the other way.
And neither can Bryan Rust lagging back at center, even once it's clear an odd-man rush has just materialized.
"We talked about how they generate almost half their chances from from their D-zone, how they transition very well, how fast they are," Pettersson, still the primary culprit in scope on that sequence, would reply to my question about it after the Penguins' 6-4 loss to Colorado on this Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena. "So, I mean, it's a challenge. They're one of the best teams in the league, if not the best. But like I said, off the rush, I think we can do a little bit better."
A lot better. Including Pettersson himself.
There's no mystery here. There isn't even the most rudimentary level of analysis required.
Think of it this way: These Penguins just played this prodigious opponent in back-to-back games, they put up 95 shots on goal, they got reasonable if unspectacular performances out of Tristan Jarry ... and they somehow were swept away by an aggregate score of 9-6.
Gee, wonder what might've gone wrong.
Still, Mike Sullivan seemed to be initially taken a little aback when I asked after this one about the defending:
"Well, I'm not sure what you're alluding to," he began. "When I look at the last handful of games, I think the team has played pretty well. The game in Colorado was a low-scoring game, a tight-checking game. There wasn't a lot of ice. Same thing in Minnesota."
Both were fair points to raise.
"I thought tonight, we gave up a little bit off the rush," he'd continued. "And we lacked some awareness away from the puck, just with the late wave, with picking up that second wave. And that's an awareness thing we've got to get better at to try to limit opportunities off the rush. When you play a team as good as Colorado is, if you give them those looks, they don't need a lot. And they finished."
He paused a moment and concluded, "But from a compete standpoint, you know, I think our team is competing extremely hard. You know, I love the fight in our game."
Respectfully, I don't share that. There's compete, and there's fight, but I don't love it. Not like I did in Tampa, Sunrise, Toronto, Winnipeg, Boston, San Jose, Las Vegas, St. Paul and so many other settings.
Oh, and that one time they beat the Rangers while scoring one whole goal.
Those guys are next, by the way. Thursday night at the Garden and then again, in all likelihood, in Games 1-7 a month from now.
To beat them again -- plus four more times -- the Penguins will have to reclaim a measure of humility that seemed cemented over the season's first four months ... but only makes sporadic appearances now. And if that can't be found after a back-to-back schooling from the Avalanche, who were missing Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri and several other mainstays, I'm not sure if/when it will.
Maybe some harsh truth will help: It's the Avalanche, and not the Penguins or any other team, who are the class of this league. It's the Avalanche that's built on superstars in their prime and at their peak, particularly the brilliant Nathan MacKinnon, author of two goals on this night, and that hasn't described the Penguins in half a decade. It's the Avalanche that's a mile high atop the overall standings with 50 wins, and it's the Penguins who've now inconspicuously slipped into mediocrity at 2-4-1 over their past seven games and 10-9-2 since mid-February.
Know how many current playoff teams have been worse in that latter span?
Right. Zero.
They need to get back to "elite" defending, as Sullivan's often described it over the winter. All three zones. All situations.
"We've done some good things against a lot of really good teams," Rust would say, "and I think these are all things we can learn from. We've got 11 games left to correct those little issues that are maybe not going the right way, or that we aren't quite doing as as well here in the last little bit. We've played a lot of really good hockey but, when you're playing good teams, there's a very fine line between winning and losing."
That fine line sure feels like it'll involve getting back into people's faces. Chris Kreider's smiling face comes next.
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NHL
• Look, I'm hardly ignoring the Avalanche being good. They might wind up great once all their guys are back, and if they can ever get through those pesky first couple of rounds that keep killing them.
To that end, as Jared Bednar would muse afterward, "In order to win at the most important time of the year, you have to check properly and you've got to be able to do that for 60 minutes. And most of our games here recently, we've been doing that against really good teams. I feel like we're still improving at this point in the year and that's what we want to do right to the bitter end."
Who says it has to be bitter?
• Thing is, from the Pittsburgh perspective, it's well past time to credit opponents for being good, even great. Because the objective's to be the last one standing, regardless of whatever adjectives get affixed.
This is the bar. We all just witnessed the bar.
• The team bar, anyway. This superhuman makes for quite the individual bar:
That's just not right.
Part of MacKinnon's greatness is his ability ... not to find open ice, but to carve it out of nothingness. When he catches that rocket pass from Andrei Burakovsky out of the corner, he's got not one, not two but three black-and-gold sweaters in his immediate vicinity. And rather than taking the standard approach of forcing a shot or turning away altogether, he engages in a mesmerizing stickhandling display while drifting backward like an NBA forward hunting real estate for the fadeaway J.
• MacKinnon's passion was part of the display, too. When he missed a partial break on Jarry in the second period, he skated back to the visitors' bench, slammed his stick on the boards and shouted out.
Easy to see he wants what his fellow Nova Scotian and good friend on the other side has already won three times.
"We've built a strong culture here," MacKinnon would say afterward. "We've got amazing players. Bedsy's done a great job and, obviously, Joe Sakic of putting this team together. But it doesn't mean anything yet."
• That can't be true about Sakic. Jack Johnson's on the top defense pairing of the planet's best hockey team, so Sakic must be a senile, old fool.
Am I doing that right?
• Uplifting rush by Sid to set up Rust's early goal ...
... and a shame he couldn't earn a third assist. But my goodness, we are well past comparing MacKinnon to anyone in the league other than the equally young man in Edmonton and maybe, just over the past few months, the one in Toronto.
• No, the answer isn't to call up the kids. Taylor Haase explains as only she can.
• Give me Pettersson over half these guys still suiting up.
• I can't stand Kasperi Kapanen with the puck. But then, neither can he. Twice more in this game, he had outstanding chances to shoot, only to essentially fall flat on his face. Never seen anything like it.
• Mike Matheson's got 11 goals. The only bottom-six forward -- including injured players -- with more is Danton Heinen with 14. And he logged 6:50 of ice time, which has become a common occurrence in the past week.
• Blueger can provide so much stability, but not if he's skating around with two broken-compass wingers in Kapanen and Evan Rodrigues. No one's ever seen Blueger look as lost as he did throughout this game.
• I'll be flying to St. Louis to cover the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's 136th season opener Thursday afternoon. The Penguins won't need me to figure out which one's Kreider.
• Thanks for reading, as always!
JOE SARGENT / GETTY
Fans visibly express their displeasure at a Darren Helm goal.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Nathan MacKinnon, Avalanche C
2. Andrei Burakovsky, Avalanche LW
3. Jake Guentzel, Penguins LW
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Brock McGinn, left winger, is out with an injured right wrist. He skated on his own in full gear before Tuesday's morning session.
• Jason Zucker, left winger, is out with a lower-body injury. He, too, skated on his own in full gear before Tuesday's morning session.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
Rakell-Malkin-Carter
Rodrigues-Blueger-Kapanen
Heinen-Boyle-Angello
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Marino
Pettersson-Ruhwedel
And for Bednar's Avalanche:
Burakovsky-MacKinnon-Rantanen
Lehkonen-Newhook-Compher
Cogliano-Sturm-O'Connor
MacDermid-Helm-Aube-Kubel
J. Johnson-Makar
Toews-Manson
Byram-E. Johnson
THE SCHEDULE
The team will practice Wednesday, noon, in Cranberry, then fly to New York for the Thursday, 7:08 p.m., game against the Rangers. Dave Molinari's got that one.
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
