Good Monday morning!

• Bad days will happen. Brutal days, even. In work, in life and, of course, in men's ice hockey.

This, my friends, might've been all three of those:

This was Hurricanes 5, Penguins 1, Sunday afternoon at PPG Paints Arena and, truth be told, the only thing to take from it would be ... well, I like how Justin Brazeau put it for me:

"There isn't much to say for now," he'd reply. "Just gotta kinda reset. Just gotta find a way to bounce back on Tuesday."

That's when the touchdown-stricken Avalanche will visit.

Erik Karlsson was equally eloquent.

"I think we battled hard yesterday, had a tough game," he'd say, referring to beating the Jets, 5-4 by shootout, "and I just don't think that energy was there today. At the same time, this time of the year, we got to figure out a way how to manage that without feeling our best. And today, we didn't do much of anything."

Nope. Not from the opening draw onward.

I don't have much more to say on it, either, though I'll acknowledge, after covering Carolina take the past three meetings in a 13-day span, that there could be three collective lessons to be culled from those, given that the first-place Hurricanes are bound to be someone's significant obstacle on this side of the Stanley Cup playoff bracket:

1. DIVE MORE

I'm serious.

Rod Brind'Amour's longstanding systematic approach to having the Hurricanes dive to draw penalties -- he's got his guys who'll do it, and they'll do it at just the right times -- might be unethical, but it's effective. Partly because NHL referees tend to be terrible, but mostly because the league does next to nothing to curtail players taking spills. (Players or teams would pay the cheesy $5,000 fines into eternity for free power plays.)

In this one, Andrei Svechnikov felt the stick of 5-foot-10 Sam Girard on his back and fell forward as if he'd been blasted by a bazooka. A minute later, Carolina converted on the power play.

And never to be outdone in this category, later in the same period, Taylor Hall, the league's reigning Emperor of Embellishment, went all-the-way airborne to exaggerate an Evgeni Malkin trip ...

JOE SARGENT / GETTY

... and that, too, resulted in a Carolina power-play goal.

With Hall having pulled this stuff in the two previous meetings, as well, the Penguins had been filling the ears of both referees, Kelly Sutherland and Justin Kea, to keep eyes pried for more. So, to their credit, when the officials gathered, they assessed an additional unsportsmanlike conduct minor on Hall ... but without calling it that. And that's a shame. Because there should be shame associated with it. That player needs to hear the crowd's reaction when 'embellishment' gets announced over the PA system.

At any rate, good for Anthony Mantha for skating by and letting Hall know what he and the Penguins think about his antics:

As ever in Gary Bettman's NHL, if the league won't address it, the players have to.

But until that time, I've got zero problem putting forth that the Penguins can't be left out. They need more power-play opportunities, ranking 23rd at 2.84 per game, this despite having a generally strong team that should cause more right arms to be raised.

So, start buying a few. Especially with the games getting bigger and bigger.

• SHOOT FROM DISTANCE

Another Brind'Amour trademark, this one far more positive, is that the Hurricanes will run up shot totals. And they'll do so by flicking the puck from almost any angle anywhere in the attacking zone, while also assuring that there's ample traffic for screens, deflections and rebounds.

I've got very little good to say about the Penguins' goaltending all weekend, Arturs Silovs against Winnipeg and Stuart Skinner against these guys, and that's largely because both were beaten from distance again and again. But it's also an effective way for any opponent to create offense, and Carolina's long been among the best at it.

More of that's needed from the Penguins. They've got maybe the most gifted player in hockey history at the specific skill of targeting long-range shots toward tips in Erik Karlsson, but it can't be just him. And when it is him, the traffic can't be optional. They've got to move for him, not the other way around.

I'd contrast such an approach with all the glaring giveaways, over-passing and other ugliness on this day, but that wouldn't be worth anyone's time after witnessing just 19 shots on a goaltender, Frederik Anderson, with an .872 save percentage.

Shoot the bleeping thing.

• STICKS! STICKS! STICKS!

The Hurricanes might also be more proficient than anyone at utilizing their sticks to create turnovers. That's hardly isolated to this game but, in the first period of this one, they'd occasionally appear to have two, three, even four sticks any which way a Pittsburgh puck-carrier would turn.

That comes with risk, but a fast team can pull it off, and there's quite a reward.

The Penguins have been OK at this at times themselves, though nothing like these guys, and it's hard to imagine they'd be able to dramatically upgrade by the playoffs. So, the more plausible lesson to be taken from this would be how to handle an opponent smothering them this way, doubly so in the neutral zone. 

Answer: Chip and chase.

Second answer: Don't wait till the third to chip and chase.

Third answer: Don't forget the chase part.

No, really, I see this as one of precious few shortcomings to Dan Muse's coaching to date. Opponents will make a conscious choice to clog -- or even clothesline -- the Penguins between the blue lines, and they'll take forever to accept that the puck can beat any type of trap, and all they've got to do then is go after that puck with gusto.

It's not just the Hurricanes. The Bruins have done this. The Senators. There'll be others.

Shake this off. Better yet, emerge stronger from it.

• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. I'll be flipping my script to a bunch of baseball later in the week over in New York.