Penguins can't handle Islanders' 'push,' blow yet another two-goal lead

ELMONT, N.Y. -- The most dangerous lead in hockey, apparently, is just whatever one the Penguins are currently holding.

They dropped their first of a three-game Metropolitan Division road trip to the Islanders, losing 4-3 in a shootout at UBS Arena, and the point gained in the standings by reaching overtime was hardly some solace for a team that should have closed this one out in regulation.

It's early enough in the season that for most teams, it would be too soon to call this a "trend" of being unable to hold onto leads. But given that this is an issue that has plagued the Penguins in the recent past, it's not too soon at all.

The Penguins opened the scoring in the second period, with Sidney Crosby backhanding a shot past Ilya Sorokin off a setup from Evgeni Malkin: 

The Penguins, believe it or not, are tied for fourth in the entire NHL in games in which they've scored first. They've done so in eight of their 14 games, just one game shy of the league-lead. They also have the league-worst points percentage in games in which they score first at just .250, going 2-5-1 in those games. So that's five times in which they've scored first and not even gotten a point in the standings for the early effort. 

The Islanders tied the game later in the period in part due to a fortuitous bounce. The play started with a Marcus Pettersson giveaway, and Alex Nedeljkovic was able to make the first save on the shot that resulted from it. But when the rebound popped straight up in the air, Nedeljkovic and a number of other players on the ice lost track of it ... until it landed directly in front of an open Kyle Palmieri: 

"I caught it off my stick," Nedeljkovic recalled. "It went in the air, and I lost it when it went straight up, and I had a feeling it was kind of going behind me. That's why I did that turn. I just lost it. Lost sight of it. And unfortunately, he was pretty aware of where it was going."

The tie was short-lived. Malkin regained the lead with a power-play tally just over a minute later off a one-timer set up by Matt Grzelcyk. Michael Bunting doubled the Penguins' lead 7:44 into the third period with his first goal of the season, set up by a heads-up pass from Jesse Puljujarvi. 

The Penguins had a multi-goal lead well into the third period ... right where the Islanders must have wanted them.

Two stats illustrate the trend, including results from Tuesday's game: The Penguins have allowed the third-most third-period goals in the entire league at 19, two shy of the league-lead. And in their last eight games, they've managed to carve out a two-goal lead in five of them. They've lost all of those but one. The Penguins' defensive lapses manifest late in the game, and their early leads often aren't enough to compensate for that.

That's what happened here in New York.

The Penguins went on the penalty-kill near the midpoint of the third when Drew O'Connor got called for kneeing Noah Dobson. It took just 22 seconds for the Islanders to capitalize on the man advantage. Pettersson dropped to the ice as Simon Holmstrom fired a backhand shot top-shelf:

I asked Pettersson what happened there.

"They put a puck on net," he said. "I tried to tie a guy up, kind of got the wrong end and he got the rebound."

At the 12:48 mark of the third, Jean-Gabriel Pageau blew past Malkin to put in a snap shot:

After a scoreless overtime period in which each team got a power play, the game went to a shootout. Crosby, Rickard Rakell and Kris Letang all failed to score on their attempts, and Bo Horvat scored the only goal the Islanders needed for the win. 

All because the Penguins couldn't hold onto a multi-goal third-period lead.

I asked Nedeljkovic what flipped in the third period, from his perspective, and at first he said he wasn't quite sure. Then he elaborated.

"You know, you've got to expect they're going to come out with the push," he said. "Montreal came out with the push last week. Anaheim, same thing. Teams are going to push back, obviously. I don't know if we handled it the best. I think we just got away from what was making us successful the first two periods. It's hard to play that way. It's not like we were giving up a lot. It's just what we were giving up wasn't great. We weren't really giving up much the first two periods, so they capitalized on it. They got a power-play goal, a tough rebound from me, and then they found a little soft spot on the third one. We've just got to find a way to handle that push from them a little bit better."

Mike Sullivan, asked how he would have liked the Penguins to respond to that push in the third, said, "We just need to play better."

"We should have played the way that we played in the first two periods," he said. "We would have been fine. We played a straight-ahead game. I think we were we weren't as diligent with the puck. We didn't play as much north-south. Give the Islanders credit, they pushed back."

But with these blown leads being an issue now spanning multiple games, it's more than just the Islanders pushing. I asked Sullivan why he thinks that's becoming a real issue, and his response again was just, "We've got to play better."

The Penguins' roster isn't currently built to be a Stanley Cup contender. But it should at least be a team that finds itself closer to a wild card spot than a spot in the draft lottery. They won't be able to escape the league's basement if they can't find a way to hold onto leads.