DK: Can't change this series without changing anything
So, that's how it's gonna go, huh?
These remarkable, resilient Penguins, who'd ruined pretty much every projection of how the 2025-26 NHL season was expected to play out, who'd risen up from a lottery-pick lock into one of the league's offensive powerhouses, who'd reignited in our city a Stanley Cup playoff spark that'd long since been lost ... they're not about to change a wretched thing, are they?
Even after this:
Uh-huh. Shut out by the Flyers, 3-0, in Game 2 of this first round Monday night at PPG Paints Arena. Headed now across the commonwealth for the next two, with a less-than-zero cause to believe there'll be another held on this end. And about to have everything they've done to date blown to barely recognizable bits.
And all because ... what? Stubbornness? Bravado? Something else entirely?
Dan Muse was asked after the game by our Taylor Haase about some rough stuff in the final few minutes and whether it might've been fueled by frustration. And after suggested she instead ask the players involved, he'd reply, "I think there should be frustration. We should be frustrated. We just lost two games at home."
Brief pause.
"I think, with frustration, though, comes with 'How are you gonna respond?' I would hope every single guy in that room, our stuff ... nobody's happy right now. Nobody should be. Tomorrow, we're gonna have to make a decision in terms of 'Are we gonna stay with it?' Do we stay with what we wanna do? Get to our game? Which we haven't gotten to in two games? Or are we gonna let frustration boil over into the next one? That's gonna be a choice that we together, all of us, including myself, have to make here over the next 24 hours."
Now, that wouldn't have made much sense to me except that Muse spoke something similar after Game 1 in suggesting that the Penguins were allowing their "frustration" with the Flyers' neutral-zone play get the better of them. And from that, suggesting, tacitly, that they only needed to function the same way ... minus the "frustration."
Sorry, Coach, but "frustration" isn't a cause. It's a symptom.
And what all of that sounds like is a continued search for reasons to not change what very, very obviously needs to change.
I tried this after Game 1, citing specifics for how Rick Tocchet had schooled his rookie counterpart, and I'll bellow it right back after this one: This isn't some random mid-winter's Wednesday in Winnipeg. It's the playoffs. It's the part of the year where the focus is purely on one opponent, where every punch gets a counter-punch.
Enjoy these three failed zone entries in a 30-second span:
That, my friends, isn't a team that's prepared for this series, certainly in that one facet that's dominated the strategic storyline in this series.
Ever since the NHL's Olympic break, Tocchet's had the Flyers forming the effective equivalent of a clothesline in the neutral zone. They'll backpedal, they'll concede ice, and then they'll swoop and swarm on any opponent dumb enough to try to cross that blue paint by either carrying or connecting on a pass.
It's dismal to watch. Duller than dirt. But it works ... if the other guys don't get it.
Sure, the Penguins occasionally dumped it deep, occasionally chipped and chased, and yeah, there were times they'd tic-tac-toe their way into solid possession in the Philadelphia zone. But they did infinitely more of what's above, and it'd contribute to another 13 giveaways on top of the 15 already amassed in Game 1.
The way to address the "frustration" Muse described is to stop doing the same damned thing and hoping it works. Again, this isn't the regular season. The timeline's super-finite.
"Nothing was really working there," was what Erik Karlsson told me, and I couldn't argue. "But we've got to figure it out and soon."
This was a wasted opportunity, well beyond salvaging a win. Even if the Penguins hadn't prevailed, the Flyers could've been forced to flee backward for pucks and, within that, forced from their collective comfort zone, where they'd amassed all this confidence in recent weeks.
Poof.
And that's to say nothing of Muse religiously rotating all four lines right through the final horn, this despite a multiple-goal deficit.
Or Muse keeping his leading goal-scorer, Anthony Mantha, on the third forward line and second power-play unit, rather than finding him more meaningful usage.
Or Muse taking far too long to react to the glaring non-chemistry of Egor Chinakhov on the No. 1 line, though he'd bump him back to the No. 2 late in the second period.
Now listen, I can't stress this strongly enough: This isn't just about Muse. It can't be.
At the group level, there still isn't the same crispness, the sharpness that'd been there in the March-April sprint to qualify. Not in the speed, and not in the skill. The skating remained a couple notches below blah. Routine passes, even run-of-the-mill 15-footers, were being missed. The shooting was ... well, imagine unintentionally missing the net 23 times in a single game! Because that happened!
At the individual level, a half-dozen concerns off the top of my head ...
Wow, where's Sidney Crosby?
I'm not new here. I don't casually criticize the captain, and I'd never question character or effort in any context. But my goodness, there's got to be more to his game than no points, seven shots and a .500 split on faceoffs.
Where's Evgeni Malkin?
Goal and an assist in Game 1, but those familiar beast-mode gears never really got going even then, much less in this one, when he had no points and a minus-2.
What to do about Kris Letang?
Fair assessment or not, he's been on the ice for four of the Flyers' five non-empty-net goals, and no one else on his team's been on for more than two.
Or is it really his partner?
I'll apologize in advance, but I can't stand watching Sam Girard play ice hockey, with all that spinning and other silliness. It's all so sloppy, and it seldom results in anything good. If his name was Ryan Graves, he'd have been rocketed into the hot sun by now.
Is Connor Dewar healthy enough?
I respect that he'd have been rushed back from injury, but the fourth line hasn't been the fourth line, and both Blake Lizotte and Noel Acciari have been far more visible.
Has Ben Kindel run out of gas?
Not blaming him. He just turned 19. He's never logged anywhere near the minutes or miles he's just experienced. But it's easy to see he doesn't have the usual jump or fluidity.
Can Tommy Novak be scratched?
I don't have that answer based solely on who'd replace him, but he was doubly guilty of an embarrassing effort on the first two Philadelphia goals:
PORTER MARTONE SCORES HIS SECOND GOAL IN HIS SECOND #STANLEYCUP PLAYOFF GAME!!!
Grotesque. Both of them. Shouldn't have seen another shift.
Regardless of the scope, where'd it all go? Particularly the offense?
"We aren't making tape-to-tape passes," Bryan Rust would say. "We aren't making the right reads. We're not doing the things that made us successful. And we've gotta take a hard look in the mirror and correct that fast."
“We played in their end a little bit more, generated some really good looks, had a couple of really good chances there," Sid would say, searching for silver linings as ever. "We've got to build off that. It wasn't the difference tonight but, if we carry that over, maybe that's something that we can feed off of, for sure."
Game 3 will be Wednesday night in Philadelphia.
Karlsson told me he welcomes that change in venue:
“I think the will and the determination is there," he'd say. "Now, it's all about either we figure it out or we don't. There's no real beating around it. We've played 82 games. We know how to play hockey in here. I think maybe we're overthinking things a little bit too much, and we're not playing on our instincts, which we'd done a great job at throughout the year. I think that everybody in here is looking forward to getting out of Pittsburgh for a little bit and going to Philly and, hopefully, the hostile environment can make us just focus on playing the situation we're in and not what's going on around us."
Dude keeps it real.
“We got outplayed for two games at home. It hurts. But we've got no one else to blame but ourselves, and all we can do is take care of that and move forward.”
Could be that it'll help. And it could be that they'll finally put more pucks on Dan Vladar than around him. And it could be that a few of those will poke through. And it could be that some of the same spirit that'd defined this team through the regular season will return, will revive the series, will bring it back here.
Of course, it also could be that the nobody's about to call it a series from the other perspective. Because that's not how playoffs work.
“Coming in here and winning two games is tough to do,” Tocchet would say down the hall. “They’re not dead, so we have to act like they’re not dead. We’re not coming out of here on a high horse. We’re happy, but we’re going to have to adjust a few things.”
THE ASYLUM
DK: Can't change this series without changing anything
So, that's how it's gonna go, huh?
These remarkable, resilient Penguins, who'd ruined pretty much every projection of how the 2025-26 NHL season was expected to play out, who'd risen up from a lottery-pick lock into one of the league's offensive powerhouses, who'd reignited in our city a Stanley Cup playoff spark that'd long since been lost ... they're not about to change a wretched thing, are they?
Even after this:
Uh-huh. Shut out by the Flyers, 3-0, in Game 2 of this first round Monday night at PPG Paints Arena. Headed now across the commonwealth for the next two, with a less-than-zero cause to believe there'll be another held on this end. And about to have everything they've done to date blown to barely recognizable bits.
And all because ... what? Stubbornness? Bravado? Something else entirely?
Dan Muse was asked after the game by our Taylor Haase about some rough stuff in the final few minutes and whether it might've been fueled by frustration. And after suggested she instead ask the players involved, he'd reply, "I think there should be frustration. We should be frustrated. We just lost two games at home."
Brief pause.
"I think, with frustration, though, comes with 'How are you gonna respond?' I would hope every single guy in that room, our stuff ... nobody's happy right now. Nobody should be. Tomorrow, we're gonna have to make a decision in terms of 'Are we gonna stay with it?' Do we stay with what we wanna do? Get to our game? Which we haven't gotten to in two games? Or are we gonna let frustration boil over into the next one? That's gonna be a choice that we together, all of us, including myself, have to make here over the next 24 hours."
Now, that wouldn't have made much sense to me except that Muse spoke something similar after Game 1 in suggesting that the Penguins were allowing their "frustration" with the Flyers' neutral-zone play get the better of them. And from that, suggesting, tacitly, that they only needed to function the same way ... minus the "frustration."
Sorry, Coach, but "frustration" isn't a cause. It's a symptom.
And what all of that sounds like is a continued search for reasons to not change what very, very obviously needs to change.
I tried this after Game 1, citing specifics for how Rick Tocchet had schooled his rookie counterpart, and I'll bellow it right back after this one: This isn't some random mid-winter's Wednesday in Winnipeg. It's the playoffs. It's the part of the year where the focus is purely on one opponent, where every punch gets a counter-punch.
Enjoy these three failed zone entries in a 30-second span:
That, my friends, isn't a team that's prepared for this series, certainly in that one facet that's dominated the strategic storyline in this series.
Ever since the NHL's Olympic break, Tocchet's had the Flyers forming the effective equivalent of a clothesline in the neutral zone. They'll backpedal, they'll concede ice, and then they'll swoop and swarm on any opponent dumb enough to try to cross that blue paint by either carrying or connecting on a pass.
It's dismal to watch. Duller than dirt. But it works ... if the other guys don't get it.
Sure, the Penguins occasionally dumped it deep, occasionally chipped and chased, and yeah, there were times they'd tic-tac-toe their way into solid possession in the Philadelphia zone. But they did infinitely more of what's above, and it'd contribute to another 13 giveaways on top of the 15 already amassed in Game 1.
The way to address the "frustration" Muse described is to stop doing the same damned thing and hoping it works. Again, this isn't the regular season. The timeline's super-finite.
"Nothing was really working there," was what Erik Karlsson told me, and I couldn't argue. "But we've got to figure it out and soon."
This was a wasted opportunity, well beyond salvaging a win. Even if the Penguins hadn't prevailed, the Flyers could've been forced to flee backward for pucks and, within that, forced from their collective comfort zone, where they'd amassed all this confidence in recent weeks.
Poof.
And that's to say nothing of Muse religiously rotating all four lines right through the final horn, this despite a multiple-goal deficit.
Or Muse keeping his leading goal-scorer, Anthony Mantha, on the third forward line and second power-play unit, rather than finding him more meaningful usage.
Or Muse taking far too long to react to the glaring non-chemistry of Egor Chinakhov on the No. 1 line, though he'd bump him back to the No. 2 late in the second period.
Now listen, I can't stress this strongly enough: This isn't just about Muse. It can't be.
At the group level, there still isn't the same crispness, the sharpness that'd been there in the March-April sprint to qualify. Not in the speed, and not in the skill. The skating remained a couple notches below blah. Routine passes, even run-of-the-mill 15-footers, were being missed. The shooting was ... well, imagine unintentionally missing the net 23 times in a single game! Because that happened!
At the individual level, a half-dozen concerns off the top of my head ...
Wow, where's Sidney Crosby?
I'm not new here. I don't casually criticize the captain, and I'd never question character or effort in any context. But my goodness, there's got to be more to his game than no points, seven shots and a .500 split on faceoffs.
Where's Evgeni Malkin?
Goal and an assist in Game 1, but those familiar beast-mode gears never really got going even then, much less in this one, when he had no points and a minus-2.
What to do about Kris Letang?
Fair assessment or not, he's been on the ice for four of the Flyers' five non-empty-net goals, and no one else on his team's been on for more than two.
Or is it really his partner?
I'll apologize in advance, but I can't stand watching Sam Girard play ice hockey, with all that spinning and other silliness. It's all so sloppy, and it seldom results in anything good. If his name was Ryan Graves, he'd have been rocketed into the hot sun by now.
Is Connor Dewar healthy enough?
I respect that he'd have been rushed back from injury, but the fourth line hasn't been the fourth line, and both Blake Lizotte and Noel Acciari have been far more visible.
Has Ben Kindel run out of gas?
Not blaming him. He just turned 19. He's never logged anywhere near the minutes or miles he's just experienced. But it's easy to see he doesn't have the usual jump or fluidity.
Can Tommy Novak be scratched?
I don't have that answer based solely on who'd replace him, but he was doubly guilty of an embarrassing effort on the first two Philadelphia goals:
Grotesque. Both of them. Shouldn't have seen another shift.
Regardless of the scope, where'd it all go? Particularly the offense?
"We aren't making tape-to-tape passes," Bryan Rust would say. "We aren't making the right reads. We're not doing the things that made us successful. And we've gotta take a hard look in the mirror and correct that fast."
“We played in their end a little bit more, generated some really good looks, had a couple of really good chances there," Sid would say, searching for silver linings as ever. "We've got to build off that. It wasn't the difference tonight but, if we carry that over, maybe that's something that we can feed off of, for sure."
Game 3 will be Wednesday night in Philadelphia.
Karlsson told me he welcomes that change in venue:
“I think the will and the determination is there," he'd say. "Now, it's all about either we figure it out or we don't. There's no real beating around it. We've played 82 games. We know how to play hockey in here. I think maybe we're overthinking things a little bit too much, and we're not playing on our instincts, which we'd done a great job at throughout the year. I think that everybody in here is looking forward to getting out of Pittsburgh for a little bit and going to Philly and, hopefully, the hostile environment can make us just focus on playing the situation we're in and not what's going on around us."
Dude keeps it real.
“We got outplayed for two games at home. It hurts. But we've got no one else to blame but ourselves, and all we can do is take care of that and move forward.”
Could be that it'll help. And it could be that they'll finally put more pucks on Dan Vladar than around him. And it could be that a few of those will poke through. And it could be that some of the same spirit that'd defined this team through the regular season will return, will revive the series, will bring it back here.
Of course, it also could be that the nobody's about to call it a series from the other perspective. Because that's not how playoffs work.
“Coming in here and winning two games is tough to do,” Tocchet would say down the hall. “They’re not dead, so we have to act like they’re not dead. We’re not coming out of here on a high horse. We’re happy, but we’re going to have to adjust a few things.”
Adjust? To what?
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