Penguins Go Down Valiantly in Game 7

At various times through this playoff series, I was elated, anxious, irritated, amazed, disgusted, depressed, joyful, angry, delighted and even perplexed.

If the Penguins collective performance in Game 5 was adismal (abysmal + dismal), Game 7 was the opposite.

I was in awe.

Marc-Andre Fleury was magnificent. The penalty killers were just as good, finally shutting down the dynamic Tampa power play.

They generated rushes, they transitioned, they fought for every puck along the boards. They outhit the Lightning by a mile.

It was gutty and gritty and it reminded me of why I like this team so much.

But it wasn't enough.

The Lightning are loaded with goal scorers -- Steven Stamkos, Simon Gagne, Vincent Lecavalier, and, of course, Martin St. Louis. The Penguins were without their best goal-scorers and even though they managed to win more often than not in the regular season, that inability to score in bunches became a deep, life-sucking crevasse in the post-season.

With a full-compliment of skaters and scorers, offensively speaking, the Lightning were shooting with uzis. The Penguins could only counter with flintlock muskets. (Frankly, it should have been more like .38's, and if anybody's seen Kris Letang's shot, I'm sure he'd like it back. You can turn it in at the Lost & Found at Consol Energy Center. Just through the Trib Total Media Gate -- the one opposite the old barn.)

Imagine what Tampa Bay might have looked like without their leader (Martin St. Louis) and one of their best snipers (Steven Stamkos) on the ice? Think they would have been able to bounce back from 3-1?

Me neither.

The other issue with the Penguins and I think this is the real crux of the matter -- was a pronounced leadership void. The Penguins are all good soldiers. Perhaps there are none better than guys like Tyler Kennedy, Mike Rupp, Craig Adams and Max Talbot -- if I were in a foxhole, I'd want those guys with me, for a fact. But Sidney Crosby is the leader of this team, not just in points, not just in goals scored, not just in stick skills. He is their leader in the intangible ways. His heart, his drive, his bravura all power this team. And like good soldiers, they follow him. He doesn't wear that captain's "C" solely because he's a goal scorer. He wears it because he's their unquestioned leader.

Some guys disappeared for much of this series (yes, Letang and Jordan Staal, I am looking at you), but not last night. Game 7, it was all hands on deck and it looked to me like they tried their best, gave their best, most complete effort, ironically enough, in a loss.

Like good soldiers, the Penguins did everything they knew to do, but without General Omar Bradley out there wearing #87, it was a valiant effort in a losing cause.

I'm sad to see the season end, but I never thought they could seriously make a run at the Cup without Sid. Or Geno, for that matter. Some day, the sting of this loss will fade and we'll remember the many good things from this season, but not right now. Today is a good day to mourn.

[Image from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.]

Yinz Call That Hockey?

Like I said, when Flower lays a stinker, he lays a bad stinky stinker. Not all his fault. Duper was retrieving his stick and Letang got caught pinching back on the first goal. Not a good effort by anybody by any stretch. In the words of the great Theodor Geisel:

Stink:

Stank:

Stunk:

[Photos from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Top 5 Reasons for the Penguins Hot Streak

The hottest team in hockey has not only the hottest forward in hockey in the other-worldly Sidney Crosby, but also tremendous chemistry, and coach Dan Bylsma has the Midas touch of late in stringing lines together. Doesn't matter who is out of the line up, he just moves people around and plugs them in and it seems to work. They are going to have to lose a game sooner or later, but so far, they've been outworking teams and when you combine that kind of consistent work with the kind of talent they have, you end up with an 11 game winning streak.

The top five reasons the Pens are clicking right now:

1. Flower is a pistol. I have no idea what was wrong with him the first month of the season. He looked distracted. Like he was thinking about pie, rather than the game in front of him. Maybe it wasn't pie. Maybe it was mousse. Whatever it was, he let in soft goal after soft goal. And usually very early in the game. I have no idea what that was about or, more importantly, how he fixed it. But fixed it seems to be. He started to turn a corner in mid-November and seems to me that he's been getting better and better ever since. For the season, his goals against average is 2.33, which matches his career best of 2.33 in 2007-2008 (when he helped carry the team to their first Stanley Cup Final appearance), but if you look at his stats for just the last month or so when he started to really bring it, he's allowed just 22 goals in 13 games (starting in mid-November.) That's a goals against average of 1.69.

I've missed only a handful of games in the Marc-Andre Fleury era and I can say that it's not just numbers. When he's going good, the team seems to really feed off of it. If he makes just one spectacular save in a game, they seem to rise up collectively around him. Memory is a funny thing, but of the Pens 2008-2009 Stanley Cup run, I remember a few moments, a few snapshots from that post-season, that feel as though they happened 15 minutes ago and the clearest memory I have of that post-season run is Flower stoning Alex Ovechkin on a break away in the Capitals series. I believe the series, and maybe the whole magical post-season run, turned on that one save. Everything works better when Flower is hot.
2. Kris Letang and Crazy Eyes Killer. The defensive pairings are all working really well. Deryk Engelland is the muscle that Alex Gologoski needs to balance him; Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek are just steady-eddies together. But the stars of the show, are the two best defensemen the Pens have, and they're paired together.

Crazy Eyes Killer, a/k/a Brooks Orpik, is about as good a defenseman as you might find in the league. He's a heavy, an enforcer, and I don't mean that in the way that those terms are generally used in hockey parlance. He's not a fighter, not an instigator and not one to take foolish penalties. Through 24 games, he has just 18 penalty minutes. (The league's biggest wanker, Sean Avery, leads the NHL in penalty minutes with 103. Think about that.) No, Orpik is so solid, so steady that he's able to be tremendously physical without ever playing dirty or taking cheap shots. And he is the last man on earth I would want hitting me along the boards. Ouch.

All of which frees up Letang to work his magic. Letang is the most elegant skater on the ice most of the time. He's fast. He's got a quick release and a knack for scoring -- it's no mistake that Sid feeds the puck out to him. In the past, Letang has been paired with other offensive-minded defensemen, which I think tied his hands, forced him to cover a bit. With Orpik out there being the Yin to Letang's Yang, he's blossoming into one of the best scoring defensemen in the league. They go together like Butch and Sundance. That's some high praise indeed.

3. Paul Martin. Actually, I should have just called this one Ray Shero because Shero seems to make all the right moves in the off-season. He's always looking to tweak the team without disrupting the core of it.

All of which brings me to Martin, the defensive presence they have missed since Rob Scuderi left. In fact, I think the team has sorely missed the defensive pairing of Scuderi and USS Hal Gill since the Cup year. The teams was weaker defensively last year -- anybody remember Sergei Gonchar standing there like a statue as the Montreal Canadiens just blew by him at the blue line? Then they lost Mark Eaton, one of the more reliable defensemen, to free agency, making the defense even weaker. They had recalled Knuckles Engelland from Wilkes-Barre and then Shero went to work, his biggest moves being to bring in Martin and Michalek.

It took some time for them to work together as Michalek was out with some injuries, but they have developed real chemistry and trust together. Plus, Byslma & Co. fixed the anemic power play unit by putting Martin at point. He's a very straight forward kind of player, not one to dither around in the defensive zone considering a hundred and one options as time drains away from the man-advantage. Nope, guy puts his head up and just brings the puck up. It's made a huge, huge difference.

4. Depth.Without Jordan Staal for the whole season, without Aran Asham for a chunk of games, without Michalek for a chunk of games, without Evgeni Malkin, without Mike Comrie (who it was thought would be a great wingman for Sid), they just keep on chugging. Mark Letestu and Chris Conner are playing themselves into starting spots even when Malkin and Staal are back. But what to do with Craig Adams? Mike Rupp? These are good problems for a coach to have -- to have too many players and not enough starting spots.

5. Sid. You can never write too much about what Crosby does on the ice. Sure, he scores a ton and he's on a real tear during this winning streak. And he feeds perfect tape-to-tape passes to his linemates. He handles face offs. He contributes on the penalty kill. He's made a home for himself beside the night, fighting to get dirty goals. Only somehow, when Sid makes them, they're spectacular. He's shooting the puck more from outside. Every time I turn on a game, I marvel at something else he does. Every time.

Wednesday night versus the Toronto Maple Leafs, he broke his stick with a Leaf bearing straight down on Fleury. So he just got right in the way, and was hitting the ice to block a shot with his body, which forced the Leaf to go around him and took him off line. I don't even think the guy got a shot on net. When the best offensive player in the game sells out like that, how can his teammates not?

The Curse of Ilya Kovalchuk Smites the Devils

The New Jersey Devils swung into the Consol Monday night and became just the latest grist for the Penguins mill. As to the Devils biggest name, Ilya Kovalchuk, he spent an uninspiring 24 minutes or so on the ice, posting a minus 2 on the night and putting just three shots on net, the first of which came 43 minutes into the game.

Kovalchuk has just five goals and only 11 points in 26 games. I don't think this is what the Devils had in mind at the 2009-2010 trade deadline when they brought the most coveted prize on the pond on board. Kovalchuk broght with him a Rocket Richard trophy and his Calder Trophy nomination, two 52 goal seasons and an average of more than 42 goals per year to Newark. The prevailing thought was that the Devils were loading up to battle the Pens, Caps and Flyers in the East.

But he scored just 10 more goals in the remaining 27 games for New Jersey. And the Devils were easily ousted by the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of the playoffs, even though Kovalchuk contributed six points in those five games.

Things take time, it would take a while for him to get used to a new system, develop chemistry with new teammates, right? The Devils were to be a significant force in the East.

Hey, wait a minute ... if the playoffs started today, the Devils would be out and Kovy's old team, the perpetually moribund Thrashers, would be in. They would be the last team in, but still, in the playoffs nonetheless, something that the Thrashers haven't visited since the '06-'07 season, the only time Kovalchuk visited the post-season during his tenure in Atlanta.

Currently, his plus/minus rating sits at minus 17. Minus 17. That's more than one negative point for every year of his contract. And his stink is spreading to the whole damned team. Of the active Devils roster, only four players have positive +/- ratings, three are right at zero and 22 players have negative +/- ratings.

By way of comparison, the Penguins have just six players in the negative and only two of those are regular starters (Evgeni Malkin and Zbynek Michalek.) Looks like a little more than half of the Devils players with stinky ratings play very regularly. The best +/- rating on the Devils plus 2 for former Senator Anton Volchenkov. Again, by way of comparison, Kris Letang is plus 15, Sid is plus 10 and Alex Gologoski is plus 10.

As a team, the Devils have scored more than two goals only seven times in their 27 games this season.
That's not industrial waste you're smelling along the New Jersey turnpike, that's the Devils.

I know all about Zach Parise's injury and and that without him, there's no net presence to scoop up any rebounds and make some dirty goals. But the rest of the team should be able to hold down the fort in Parise's absence, particularly a big ticket player like Kovalchuk; but rather than step up and drag the team with him, Kovalchuk seems to prefer just teetering along the blue line. In Monday night's game against the Pens, he looked like one of those dogs behind an invisible fence, so glued was he to the blue line.

Is Kovalchuck the hockey equivalent of Randy Moss?

Like Moss, he's clearly gifted. He has a wicked shot. He has amazing balance and flexibility. He's got great vision. He skates beautifully. And until his arrival in Newark, he put up big numbers year after year. On paper, he should make the Devils a better team.

But what has become clear is that Kovalchuk, despite his obvious gifts, cannot carry a team or, at the very least, lead a team. He's not the showboating, 'everybody have fun tonight' presence that Alex Ovechkin is or driven like Sid; he's not the personification of quiet competence and confidence like Nicklas Lidstrom, nor does he provide the fire to the Devils that Zach Parise does.

Given how much the Devils have tortured the Penguins over the years, I, for one, couldn't be happier about that.

Penguins Power Play Key

Every team has holes to fill, every team goes into each new season with questions. Penguins fans wondered, who was going to play on the wing with Sid? Frankly, that seems to be a question every year and Mike Comrie was supposed to be the answer there, but, meh, not so much. (More on that in another post.)

Then there was the question of how and where Arron Asham might fit in? Turns out, of late he's fit quite nicely next to Evgeni Malkin.

There were questions about how they would replace the solid defense of Mark Eaton (not to mention and Rob Scuderi, who I don't think has been adequately replaced since he left after winning the Cup.)

Just when, oh when, would we get the magnificent Jordan Staal back?

And of course, we all wondered if Flower would return to 2008-2009 magnificence? Or be the hot, erratic post-Olympic mess he was in the spring of 2010? That's still unanswered, really.

There were questions. Questions, questions everywhere.

But the big fat elephant at center ice for the Penguins was, in the absence of Sergei Gonchar, just who would quarterback the power play?

So far, the answer is nobody which might account for the fact that I actually groan when the Pens go on the power play. In the words of noted hockey fan Harvey Fierstein, is that so wrong?

A couple of years ago, we watched Geno quarterback the PP and that was P.U. Not wanting to revisit that ineptitude, they did the obvious and plugged in Gonchar's wingman on the PP, Alex Gologoski. Despite Gogo's obvious shooting ability, my buddy the UConn Fan astutely pointed out that dude just thinks way too much at the point and by the time he figures out what he wants to do, the defense has completely adjusted. You know, now that I think about it, rather than groaning, I should run a quick lap from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen, and then reverse my course and do it again, because when I'm done with that, the Pens power play should be set up in the offensive zone. It takes them at least 30 second, sometimes closer to a full minute - an eternity in hockey time - to set up.

Sometimes, I watch other teams and within 15 seconds of the power play starting, they've buried the puck in the back of the net. It looks so easy. They make it look fun, even. Power plays can be fun? Who knew. May god have mercy on my immortal soul, but the Flyers and the Capitals make it look like child's play.

But not our Pens, who convert on the PP only 13% of the time, good for 24th out of 30. I could understand how you might think the power play unit ranked 31st out of 30 if you have been watching them squander 80 out of their 92 opportunities. [That 92 power play chances? Is first in the league by a mile, which makes it even more painful somehow.]

But the problems with the power play go deeper, much deeper than the points they're leaving out there. Its like their special teams futility weighs on them, weighs them down, putting subsequent shifts in a funk, a malaise. Their inability to score -- heck, their inability to even generate scoring chances -- is killing them in all areas. The way they get a lift from a successful penalty kill, they get a comparable drag from failure on the power play.

Rumbles are that Dan Bylsma is going to deploy the pairing of Kris Letang and Paul Martin out there to run the PP starting tonight. Martin has been a really solid addition and I love Letang's speed and grace, so it's worth a shot. They'll need a boost tonight, because they've got Vancouver, a team with a solid penalty kill unit and Roberto Luongo in net.