Lightning 3, Penguins 2 (OT): You're Telling Me The Pittsburgh Penguins Blew A Two-Goal Lead??
The Pens *almost* flipped the script - then rewrote the same script word for word.
The Pens lost in overtime to the Lightning 3-2 Tuesday night, dropping their 4th game in their last 5 (though they earned OT points in two of them.) Some thoughts:
1. The REAL reason the Pens keep blowing two-goal leads
I have to double check this stat, but by my count, in 21 games this season, the Penguins have blown 5,354 two-goal leads, or roughly 254.9 blown two-goal leads per game. That’s just not a way to win consistently in the National Hockey League.
As for why the Penguins keep blowing two-goal leads, I don’t have some great silver-bullet all-encompassing “aha!” answer, but I don’t think it’s as much of a specific “thing” as it seems. I don’t think they “go into a defensive shell” when they go up two goals (does this team ever go into a “defensive” anything?), and I don’t think they’re “fragile” or whatever. I just think they’re a really bad defensive team, they’re a really high-event team that trades quality chances with everyone, and they haven’t gotten consistent goaltending. The result of those three things is, whenever they go up by two goals, it’s very easy to also give up two goals.
I don’t think they suddenly change the way they’re playing when they have leads. If anything, they probably should change the way they’re playing when they have leads. They just suck defensively and bleed goals. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.
2. The Pens have to keep playing Jarry
For fifty minutes, the script for this game wrote itself: Tristan Jarry actually outdueled Andrei Vasilevskiy. Is Jarry’s confidence back??
Even after Tampa tied the game on a weird pass in front that Jarry poke-checked (correctly!) into his own net (incorrectly!), the Jarry game story still mostly held: the Pens got blown out of the water by a superior Tampa team, got outshot 35-19 with a 16-7 edge in high danger chances, and Jarry still played well enough to get them to overtime. Then, in OT, Jarry went flying out of the net towards a shot that never came, the puck slid down behind the net to Brayden Point, and a flailing Jarry couldn’t recover in time to stop Point from tucking the puck in on the short side. It was a really baffling, sloppy goal all around that almost totally undid any “maybe Jarry can build off this” sentiment built up in the previous 63 minutes and 58 seconds.
That said, the Penguins have no choice but to keep playing Jarry. There’s no other alternative. He’s not tradeable right now. Some people have floated attaching a sweetener to move his contract, but the Pens are in rebuild mode right now. They’re taking other teams’ bad contracts for picks themselves. They’re not in a position to trade a pick to get someone to take theirs (if it were even possible.) They just have to play Jarry through it. Goaltending is weird! If he bounces back, then maybe a “trade him for someone else’s bad contract” comes back on the table. If he struggles, well, you’re tanking anyway. You’ve got to burn at least another year before you can consider a buyout. And, honestly, if Jarry puts together just a couple more .914 SV% games like tonight, he really won’t be that far behind where Alex Nedeljkovic is right now.
3. The kids are… fine
Whenever the Penguins call players up, the initial reaction from the masses is almost always the same: “I thought [Player] played fine!” or “I didn’t think [Player] looked out of place!” There’s an initial honeymoon phase with any new callup where, when they simply don’t look immediately-bad, we’re slightly impressed, plus we notice whatever couple positive things they do a little extra-hard in their first couple games. (Ponomarev made a PASS!! Brock McGinn never did that SHIT!!!) Plus we’re always temporarily happy to see anyone other than the bozos we’ve been stuck watching (and that goes for any season, not just when the team’s sucking.)
But that’s always the first very simple step of any callup’s career. Almost any decent AHLer wouldn’t just look immediately terrible if they were dropped into an NHL game. But over time, sometimes you’ll look up and realize, “oh, this guy has 1 point in 30 games.” Going from “not looking out of place” to “making an impact” is a HUGE leap that can take prospects multiple years to make.
That’s not a criticism of the new players! I think the roster will be half-filled with younger players after the trade deadline, and no matter how the team’s playing or what their record is, this will be the right decision. But I think it’ll mostly be an “everyone is just getting their feet wet” type first season for most of the Pens’ prospects. I don’t expect any of them to suddenly look like 15-20 goal scorers out of the chute or anything, and that’s fine. It takes NHL prospects a long time to become even decent NHLers, and some never will. Might as well use a lost season to start finding out.
4. The Pens finally improved OT… and still keep losing
This is a crazy stat from Bob Grove:
Remember how painful the Pens were to watch in OT last year?? They were 6-12 in OT/Shootouts, and often looked completely clueless in the process. This year, they’ve apparently made adjustments and managed to dominate in overtime… and STILL have a losing record in games that go past 60 minutes.
It’s truly one of the most “it miiiight not be their year” stats imaginable.
5. “His fellow countryman”
99.9999% of the time the phrase “fellow countryman” is ever spoken by anyone in the world in any context, it’s an NHL announcer calling a play where two players from the same European country square off.
At one point in the Tampa game, Vasilevskiy stopped Malkin, and I thought I was gonna get a “makes a save on his fellow countryman!” call from Josh Getzoff, but didn’t. But then sure enough, a couple minutes later, Malkin bumped into Kucherov and we got the “runs into his fellow countryman!” call. Whew! I was waiting for it.
It’s every announcer for every team in every situation. Usually Russian players, but you’ll get the occasional Swedes or Finns. It’d be funny to just constantly keep doing it for North American players too. “Owen Pickering LAYS the hit on his fellow countryman Nick Paul!!!” (Both Canadian)
