COLUMBUS, Ohio -- "It's just ... empty."
That's how Rickard Rakell described the feeling he had to me Thursday night following the Penguins' 3-2 overtime loss to the Blue Jackets here at Nationwide Arena, Ohio. It was a meaningless game for the Penguins, having been eliminated Wednesday night with the Islanders' win. The Penguins hoped to go out on a high note in the regular-season finale, but the disappointing overtime loss marked the end of a disappointing season.
"It feels like something's not right," Rakell continued of the feeling entering the offseason. "Ever since last game, and last night, watching the game... It just feels like an empty feeling. We're going to have to digest this for a little bit, then go home and work even harder for next year."
The Penguins didn't miss the playoffs by much. They finished with 91 points, one point shy of the Panthers' 92 points for the second wild card spot. Since the Panthers had the tiebreaker of more regulation wins, the Penguins were two points -- one win -- away from making the playoffs. You could look back at a number of different games that the Penguins could have or should have won, and say that that was the difference in a playoff spot and an early summer.
There's no shortage of trends to point to that plagued the Penguins and cost them games throughout the season. A streaky power play, especially when on the road. The sub-par goaltending in different stretches of the season. Poor starts. Struggles in overtime. A weak bottom-six. One big one was the inability to close out third periods during games in which they led at second intermission. They had nine total losses in games in which they led after two periods -- four in regulation (tied for second-most in the league) and five in overtime (tied for most in the league).
Fittingly enough, a blown lead late is what happened in this game here in Columbus too. The Penguins entered the third period tied 1-1, but Jake Guentzel gave the Penguins the lead with a power play goal 3:53 into the third period. Emil Bemstrom tied the game at the 16:35 mark. Johnny Gaudreau gave the Blue Jackets the win 60 seconds into overtime with a breakaway goal:
It's a fitting way to end the season, given how much the inability to close out games has plagued this team this season.
"We fluctuated a lot, up and downs," Guentzel told me Thursday of what went wrong this season. "We let a lot of points slip in third periods. It's just tough to think about, when you miss by a couple of points, how many points you left out there. It doesn't come down to just any one game, but there were a lot of points we left out there. ... There's a couple, you think of a lot of them. For us, we just have to be better in the third period. There were a lot of third periods where we had leads, and that just can't happen. We have to be stronger and make sure we're playing on our toes. We'll learn from this."
Rakell also said such a tight margin had him thinking about some of those games the Penguins let slip away.
"I think we had a lot of them this year," Rakell said. "We had a lead in the third period and not being able to convert late in games, it just feels like the story of our season."
This is unfamiliar territory for much of the Penguins' lineup. For players who have come up through the system like Guentzel, Bryan Rust, Brian Dumoulin, even Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, they only know the feeling of making it to the playoffs. The only player who knew what it's like to miss the playoffs with the Penguins is Sidney Crosby, who was a rookie when the Penguins last missed the playoffs in 2005-06. Even then, the Penguins were well out of the playoffs that year. To have to play a "meaningless" game so suddenly after having their playoff hopes dashed is a foreign experience.
"It's been a long time since this group has been in this type of a game," Mike Sullivan said of the circumstances. "I always believe there's something to play for. But obviously, when you're officially eliminated from the playoffs, it's a whole different experience. From that standpoint, it's a difficult one to even assess."
This core isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And they don't want to experience this feeling again.
"It's just disappointing," Crosby said. "That's the motivation when you start camp, start the season. That's what you're playing for. To not have the opportunity, it's disappointing, but it's something you have to earn. We didn't do that."
The word Letang used to describe the feeling was "awful."
"You try to reflect on things that slipped through our hands," Letang said. "It's not like we didn't have our destiny in our hands. We found a way to lose games this year. When you have your best performance on the ice and you're converting those games at a 20% or 25% rate, it's not good enough. Good teams, even if they don't play good games they find ways to win. For the most of the time, we were trying to find ways to lose."
It's hard to say what could have been had the Penguins made the playoffs. They likely would have made it as the No. 2 wild card, which would have given them the Bruins as their first-round opponent. That's the Presidents' Trophy-winning Boston Bruins, who set NHL records this season for points (133) and wins (65). That's as tough of a matchup as it could have been, but the Penguins genuinely liked their chances at making a real run happen had they just earned their way into the playoffs.
"Right now, it sucks," Rakell said. "It's not right. We definitely feel like we played our best hockey against the best teams in this league. That's why it feels so sour. It we would have just made the playoffs, we could have made some damage. But that's not the case right now. We had the chance. We didn't take it. It's just a bad feeling right now. I just want to be better next year."
The Penguins don't have many years left with this core. If the team is going to find a way to make another playoff run while players like Crosby, Malkin and Letang are still around, then most everyone in that room needs to be better next year.
"The expectations are high," Sullivan said of this group. "We have high expectations of ourselves. Nobody likes this feeling. Nobody likes this feeling. I believe we'll be more determined than ever to try to right the ship and get this thing moving in the right direction."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Tristan Jarry finished with 31 saves on 34 shots. He said afterward that he's still dealing with a number of physical limitations that impacted him much of the season. Danny Shirey has more on that and his future here.
• Letang scored the lone goal in the first-period tally, a shot from the point that went off a Blue Jackets defenseman in front:
• Blue Jackets defenseman Andrew Peeke tied it in the second period with a blast of a shot from the top of the right circle.
• Guentzel's last gift to fans this season was one more day of half-off Jake's Shakes at The Milkshake Factory, the result of another power play goal:
• Letang on his season full of adversity: "This year was really tough, especially on the personal side. I was never really able to get into a grove or mentally be totally there, if I can say it like that. I'm just going to try to go away and clear my head."
• This was likely Dumoulin's last game as a Penguin. Letang is hoping it wasn't: "He's the guy I'm the most comfortable to play with. My best years in the league were spent beside him. He's such a good partner to be paired with. It's not only that -- he's vocal, he's a guy that understands the game really well. In the room he's a guy that people want to gravitate around. I just hope that he's with us next year. I think he's proven that he's a top defender in this league."
• Ryan Poehling had two wraparound attempts in this game. They didn't go in, but pretty skilled plays nonetheless, also made possible by his skating. I'm not sure what the final results were, but at some point late this season he had the fastest recorded speed in the entire league.
• Pretty Penguins-heavy crowd at this one, by both the looks and sounds of it. Of course, the cheers for Penguins goals also could have been Blue Jackets fans cheering for their Connor Bedard odds.
• The Penguins were approaching this game like any other game -- they were trying to win, they weren't treating it like exhibition. But I still think it would have been cool to use this as an opportunity to see personnel combinations we don't often see, like Zucker or Alex Nylander on the top line.
• The Penguins put Mark Friedman on waivers on Wednesday, he cleared Thursday and was sent back to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. I wouldn’t expect Friedman to actually report to Wilkes-Barre, since they only have two games left in the season and are out of a playoff spot.
• Ron Hextall and Brian Burke were both on this trip. As Dejan wrote in the Point Park University Friday Insider, it sounds like it will be their last trip with the Penguins.
• The Fenway Sports Group executive vice president and chief strategy officer David Beeston was on this trip as well, he's the executive who has been around the team most of the season. He sat in a box with Penguins president of business operations Kevin Ackin, who also regularly travels with the team.
• Cool to see defenseman Billy Sweezey earn himself a spot in the NHL with Columbus. Sweezey is a big, nasty, right-handed defenseman out of Yale who made his pro debut on an AHL contract with Wilkes-Barre in the 2020-21 season after being lured to the organization by Kevin Stevens. Sweezey turned that into an NHL deal with Columbus last season and made his NHL debut this season, playing eight NHL games. Here's a pretty in-depth feature I did on him during his time in Wilkes-Barre.
• One final press box snack review: It's only fitting that this disappointment of a season ends in a place with one of the most disappointing press box spreads in the entire league. Popcorn and plain potato chips. That's it. The only building it edges out is Calgary's Saddledome, which only has the popcorn. There was a table somewhere else in the press box that had what I think was a single truffle and a stray cookie. I don't know if they were for us, but I ate the alleged truffle and Danny ate the cookie, just scavenging for decent snacks like animals. Solid F.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Nationwide Arena:
1. Michael Hutchinson, Blue Jackets G
2. Johnny Gaudreau, Blue Jackets LW
3. Emil Bemstrom, Blue Jackets RW
THE INJURIES
• Forward Nick Bonino suffered a lacerated kidney on March 9. He was practicing with the team in a full capacity toward the end but was never cleared to play.
• Forward Bryan Rust left this game after the second period with an unknown injury.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker - Evgeni Malkin - Rickard Rakell
Mikael Granlund - Ryan Pohling - Alex Nylander
Drew O'Connor - Jeff Carter - Danton Heinen
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Jeff Petry
P.O Joseph - Dmitry Kulikov
And for Brad Larsen's Blue Jackets:
Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Kuraly - Kirill Marchenko
Kent Johnson - Jack Roslovic - Liam Foudy
Joona Luoto - Hunter McKown - Emil Bemstrom
Mikael Pyyhtia - Tyler Angle
Gavin Bayreuther - Andrew Peeke
Tim Berni - Adam Boqvist
Stanislav Svozil - Billy Sweezey
Samuel Knazko
THE SCHEDULE
That's it. Exit interviews and cleanout day will be sometime in the coming days. The team hasn't set a date for that yet.
THE MULTIMEDIA
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
