COLUMBUS, Ohio -- I mean, really, what the hell's even happening here?
Two young players, Owen Pickering and Vasily Ponomarev, accompanied the Penguins to Nationwide Arena on this Friday, both freshly promoted from the AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, both having done well of late down there, both having very real pedigree ... and both sat in the press box with me.
The organization's top goaltending prospect in quite some time, Joel Blomqvist, was just sent back to Wilkes-Barre, at the first and tiniest trace of anything less than perfection ... while everyone got to witness Exhibit Billion and a Half of what to expect when Tristan Jarry's asked to carry any collective cause.
The only effective -- and for most of this event, the only fully invested -- forward line was a newly formed and way-younger-than-the-rest trio of Drew O'Connor, Sam Poulin and Jesse Puljujarvi. The latter, in particular, was excellent, probably the best I've seen of Puljujarvi at the NHL level. All over the ice. Flying. Grinding. Creating.
Sit down for this: He logged 11:50 of ice time. Half of what the main guys got. Third-lowest on the team. Lower than Matt Nieto, a 32-year-old who returned on this day from a yearlong absence due to major surgeries on both knees.
And to what effect?
Meaning all of this.
To what effect are Kyle Dubas, Mike Sullivan and seemingly everyone else in the Penguins' process pushing forward with the same people in the same roles, allowing for the same passive approach to spread, seldom awakening in time for opening faceoffs, sickeningly folding at any sign of adversity .. and, oh, by the way, now getting toasted for a touchdown by one of the NHL's traditional patsies?
You read that right.
Afterward, Sullivan lamented that a tight game would be blown up because, as he worded it, "We didn’t defend our net front. You look at a couple of the goals they scored, they’re outside shots where the rebound lays there, and we’re either puck watching or we don’t get into people. We got to be harder on our net front. We got to make them work harder for those goals.”
And he was right, to be fair:
Dmitri Voronkov shovels home Marchenko's rebound, putting the Jackets up by 2!#CBJ pic.twitter.com/u03TjnOWFY
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) November 16, 2024
But that's a lot like lamenting the initial leak rather than the all-out dam break, and trust me, almost everyone would wind up all wet:
Déjà un 5e but cette saison pour Mathieu Olivier 💪 pic.twitter.com/vPrRQLpVOq
— TVA Sports (@TVASports) November 16, 2024
That's Marcus Pettersson facing a three-on-one. Act surprised.
In fact, Erik Karlsson's pinch and resultant half-speed retreat took so long that Pettersson admirably had time to take on both the passer and the shooter, which all by itself should've had patrons here saving their ticket stubs for posterity.
Sullivan, on what went awry there: “It’s tough because we had significant zone time, but the reality is, when our D goes down the wall, then we need a forward to work to support that and reload and get above the attack, and we didn’t. I think, sometimes, when you have that much offensive zone time, you get lured into it a little bit, and we have to have the diligence to support that when Karl goes down that wall. We need a reload from a forward to get above."
Here again, he's right, certainly within the context of his system. A forward's got to cover for Karlsson and, as the clip shows, all three were fried.
But I've got a thought, and hear me out on this: Don't.
As in, don't always pinch.
As in, it's not forever acceptable to finger individual failures to execute when the Penguins have allowed a league-worst 75 goals, an average of 33.0 shots per game, more odd-man rushes and clean breakaways than any other team ... and I'm scarcely scratching the surface before I get to this Columbus offense somehow generating 40 shots on goal.
As in, it's not OK to suggest that the scheme's without fault. Not when far too many of the players obviously -- and painfully so -- aren't a fit.
And please, don't interpret that to mean the players are fine:
Damon Severson adds to the Jackets lead in the third period!#CBJ pic.twitter.com/XIMAs1SBqp
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) November 16, 2024
That one's ... I don't have anything to say about that sequence that'd be published on a family-friendly site. I just don't.
Know what that was?
That was Dallas. The entire slaughter.
That was the first period against Detroit, the alleged bounceback that several players claimed they'd covet on home ice after Evgeni Malkin apologized to paying customers for the Dallas embarrasment.
That was most of this one, too.
Sidney Crosby's the captain of this team, he's a legendary winner in all walks of hockey, and he'd know what makes a winner in ways that most of the population could never conceive. I'm absolutely nobody to question what he'd have to say on such a subject.
And yet, respectfully, when I asked him after this if the Penguins were pushing enough this week, in general, his reply surprised me at least a little:
"Besides the Dallas game," he'd begin, and I'm OK with omitting that in every way, "against Detroit, we probably were guilty the first 10 minutes trying to feel it out, but we found our game after that. Tonight, I think we got down, but we were doing some good things. I think they’re kind of three different stories, to be honest with you. But I think whenever you’re losing, you always want to find more.”
Yeah, we'll agree there. On the finding more.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I keep anticipating that the next game's going to be the one where everyone shows up like it's a Stanley Cup playoff opener or something. I thought that coming here today, too. I thought, between the Blue Jackets being stuck in one of their standard six-game losing streaks, then the even worse Sharks waiting back home the next night, this could be a chance to really rev it up.
Crazy but true: Even at 6-10-3, the Penguins are three whole points behind the Islanders and Bruins, the Eastern Conference's current occupants of the final two playoff positions.
I know, right?
But it doesn't materialize. It doesn't come close to materializing. There's no whoa-they-mean-business-tonight moment. There's the occasional strong shift, but no sequel. There's the occasional rally -- tied after two goals down against the Red Wings and Blue Jackets -- but no punctuation. If there's urgency, never mind the desperation that'd actually be more appropriate in this scenario, I'm not sensing so much as a sliver of it. Other than, of course, among the smattering of players who legitimately believe they're at-risk employees in the NHL.
I asked Pettersson, who's never without solutions, specific or otherwise, what's missing.
"Really, it's different things," he'd try this time. "Every game, every shift ... I can't point to one thing that's obvious. In this one, we needed to be harder at the net-front."
In this one, right. But the next?
Again but with greater gusto: What the hell's even happening here?
How much longer do Dubas, Sullivan and another decision-makers need to drag this out before realizing -- and I can't believe I'm about to type this -- that wrapping a whole lot of the Wilkes-Barre roster around Sid and a few others would've presented the Penguins with better odds of beating these Blue Jackets?
• I'll be traveling back home overnight, then taking Saturday down before covering Steelers-Ravens the next day. Taylor Haase will have Penguins-Sharks.
• Lots more on our Penguins Feed.
• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage.
