Flames 4, Penguins 3: Are The Pens Already Underwater For Good?

We knew the D would struggle - but what about Sidney Crosby?

The Penguins outshot the Flames 38-25 on Tuesday night but gave up a game-tying goal with Calgary’s goalie pulled and lost in a shootout, 4-3. The Pens are now 3-4-1 with a back-to-back in Edmonton and Vancouver looming this weekend. Some thoughts:

1. Is Crosby going to be like this all season?

The Pens haven’t gotten anything close to Sidney Crosby’s best so far this season. His numbers at 5-on-5 are alarmingly bad, and the eye test backs it up. He’s not doing any of the “Crosby” things we’re used to seeing when he’s on his game. On one play in the Third Period, he cleaned out a Flames defenseman with his body behind the net and flung a pass to the point for a decent scoring chance — a Crosby trademark that I literally don’t remember seeing a single time before this one play last night. He’s mostly hanging to the perimeter, making “hope” passes, and rarely using his leverage to win puck battles all over the ice like he does when he’s locked in. On the power play, THREE times he made flat-footed saucer passes that turned into immediate odd man breaks the other way. What is going on?

I mentioned this after the Jets game, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Crosby go through patches like this. He had a 13 game span right around the trade deadline where he put up 1 goal and 6 assists while the Pens mostly got crushed. I remember thinking at the time, “if they’re not firing Mike Sullivan because he’s the only coach Crosby wants to play for, it sure doesn’t look like he actually wants to play for this one.” Then, out of nowhere, he ripped off 9 goals and 16 assists in the final 13 games while the Pens went on their mini-run. He was Crosby again out of nowhere.

Until something changes, it’s fair to speculate what exactly is going on with him. Is he hurt? Is he checked out because he knows it’s a rebuilding season? I don’t think it’s solely his linemates, because he went on that run last season with Drew O’Connor and Bryan Rust. But again, like last year, this funk could just suddenly reverse itself at any time.

My personal speculation is that he’s just older and paces himself a little more than he’d probably like to admit, and the result is stretches like right now or early March last season. But in any calculus about the Pens’ fortunes this year — can the defense get it together, can the power play get it together, will the goaltending hold up, will the depth scoring continue, etc. — none of us ever really factored in, “will Sidney Crosby’s line be a nonfactor?” If the Pens don’t have at least this bedrock foundation to build off of, none of that other stuff’s going to amount to much anyway.

2. The Pens’ left defensemen are like a shell game with two radioactive shells

The Pens switched up their D pairs before this game and during the game, putting Marcus Pettersson back with Kris Letang and moving Matt Grzelcyk with Erik Karlsson. The result was Pettersson’s best game of the season by far, but the Grzelcyk / Karlsson pair struggled immensely, with Grzelcyk himself making a couple absolutely baffling plays. Ryan Graves, who’s actually put up pretty good underlying numbers playing reduced third-pairing minutes, got promoted back up into the Top 6 for some shifts, with mixed results.

Basically, the Pens’ left D situation is this: They have one very good defensive player who’s capable of playing top-4 minutes (Pettersson.) Then they have two players in Graves and Grzelcyk who can break even if they’re kept in third-pairing roles for ~15 minutes a night, but who get immediately crushed if they’re promoted back into the top 4 (especially if Letang or Karlsson are having their own struggles.)

The next few weeks are going to be a “pick your poison” situation where the Pens are going to have to put Pettersson on whatever line they truly want to be their “shutdown” line (inasmuch as the Pens can “shut” anyone down; maybe “shut” teams down to under 1.5 odd man breaks per shift), then shelter one of the other left D and pray to God whichever one ends up in the top 4 does as little damage as possible. It’s not an ideal dynamic for success, especially when no one’s even injured yet — a harrowing thought.

3. Alex Nedeljkovic was good, but…

I thought once again Alex Nedeljkovic played pretty well, especially considering how flat the Pens looked in the First, but he again finished with an .880 SV%, while his opponent, the rookie Dustin Wolf, stopped 35 of 38 (.921.) Factoring in the quality of the chances each way, their workloads were more similar, but still, I don’t think Nedeljkovic outplayed Wolf or the Jets’ Eric Comrie in the last two games.

It’s only two games, and we all know what level of defense we’re talking about, but if Tristan Jarry had given up 8 goals in two games with an .869 SV%, would any of us be saying “it’s HIS net right now, no question?” The Pens’ goaltending situation is far from settled.

4. Noel Acciari does have a 20-goal and a 14-goal season on his resume

Noel Acciari was a target of much rightful criticism last year for signing a three-year deal and posting just 4 goals and 7 points in 55 games on the Pens’ fourth line that mostly got buried possession-wise last year. But while Acciari does clearly lack a lot of typical “offensive center” traits — the ability to create time & space on zone entries and the ability to distribute — he has scored some goals in his career, notching 14 in the season before the Pens signed him and 20 back with the ‘19-’20 Panthers.

The guy isn’t Tanner Glass. He’s not Matt Cullen either, but still, last year he was saddled with Jansen Harkins (speaking of Tanner Glass) and Jeff Carter as his most common linemates, and had to play center, and had the most defensive-heavy deployment of any forward in the NHL outside the Capitals’ fourth liners. If he plays like he did against Calgary some more nights, he can be much more productive than what we saw out of him last year.

5. This weekend could put the Penguins underwater for good

Not to gloom-and-doom this early in the season, but the Pens have yet to beat a playoff team from last year this season, and now they’re facing a road back-to-back against Edmonton and Vancouver, two of the Conference’s best teams. If they can’t scratch out any points against these two, they’ll already be on the outside of the playoff picture, and even though it’s early in the season, there’s a surprisingly strong correlation between teams that are in or out of the Playoffs by Thanksgiving weekend and the teams that end up in the Playoffs at the end of the year. Most of the teams that buck the trend, too, are teams everyone knows are good but that got off to slow starts (like the Oilers last season.) The Pens do not fit this category.

The Sabres beat Dallas last night. Ottawa shut out Utah on the road. The Capitals are 4-1-0. If the Pens come out of this road trip at 3-6-1, even though it’s October, they’re gonna have to go on a major run at some point to get back into the playoff picture. Do they look like a team that’s capable of that?