Red Wings 3, Penguins 2 (OT): Pens Bounce Back To "Regular Bad" After Dallas Fiasco
The Pens lost an even OT game to resume their dignified tank.
The Pens lost to the Red Wings Wednesday night in Overtime, 3-2. They earned a point in their first game after getting embarrassed by the Stars, but still sit third from last in the conference in points percentage. Some thoughts:
1. Anthony Beauvillier is leading The Tradeables™
Anthony Beauvillier notched his 5th goal of the season and will likely continue to see ice time with Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell for the time being. That puts him on about a 22-goal pace for the season, which would be around the high-teens in goals by the trade deadline. That should make him pretty tradeable for something — I’d guess a 4th round pick, but maybe if he gets really hot that’d tick up to a 3rd.
Elsewhere on trade watch, Marcus Pettersson had a nice primary assist on Beauvillier’s goal. I thought Drew O’Connor had some jump against Detroit, but he’s gotta start getting on the scoresheet to up his value. Matt Grzelcyk is more likely to end up on waivers than the trade market at the moment. And Kevin Hayes and Cody Glass remain TBD.
If the Penguins ever do really open things up trade-wise, though, I just keep thinking what a perfect fit Bryan Rust would be for the Oilers. Send them Rust and take back Evander Kane’s contract for a 1st? Who says no?
2. Alex Nedeljkovic was over .900 for only the third time this year
Alex Nedeljkovic hasn’t felt like he’s played poorly this season, but his performance against the Red Wings — stopping 28 of 31 shots — was only the third time this season in nine games that he finished the game with a save percentage over .900. Granted, a lot of that has to do with the Pens’ comical defense, but rookie Joel Blomqvist has been over .900 in 5 of his 8 appearances behind that same D.
Generally, I think Tristan Jarry’s struggles have been so glaring and received so much attention, that it’s taken all the pressure off Nedeljkovic and shielded him from much criticism or even analysis. He definitely hasn’t been bad, but I think him swooping in after Jarry’s struggles last year gave fans the impression that he’s been playing great, when really he’s been about league-average in his Pens career so far, and a tick below this year. He’s still been completely fine for a $2.5 mil 1B goalie — there’s value to be had in just having “a guy,” as the Jarry meltdown has shown — but I do wonder how the Pens will handle their goaltending load moving forward. Blomqvist is clearly the most intriguing of the three, but contract-wise, they just can’t give up on giving games to Jarry and Nedeljkovic. And as the Dallas game showed, Blomqvist hasn’t really suffered many setbacks in his young career yet. We’ll see how he responds and what the rotation looks like.
I expect Jarry to get the start in Columbus. It’s an easier game than Dallas or Detroit, and he’ll be on the road so the crowd won’t be booing him. Although…it’ll be loaded with Pens fans. Uhoh!
3. The Pens have the worst goal differential in the NHL
The Dallas game did a number on the Pens’ stats, but as of Wednesday night, the Pens have the single worst goal differential of any team in the NHL at -22. I only think that’s significant in the sense that, whenever people say “the Pens should be rebuilding but they have too many pieces to really tank,” one has to think… do they? Just look at their raw numbers. They are absolutely one of the worst teams in the NHL right now. They’re not “stuck in the middle” of anything. Especially if these next two games go south…
4. This week is set up like a gauntlet of increasingly bad games to blow
As embarrassing as the Dallas game was, at least the Stars are a legit Stanley Cup contender who probably would’ve beaten the Pens anyway. The rest of the week, however, goes Red Wings > Blue Jackets > Sharks. The Blue Jackets have lost 6 straight, and the Sharks have the next-worst goal differential in the league after the Pens (a mere -21.)
Basically, each game the Pens lose this week will be increasingly more embarrassing than the previous one. If they lose all four, I really think we’re in “pull the trigger on Sullivan” territory.
5. Do the refs still hate Michael Bunting?
Michael Bunting was very obviously hooked by Patrick Kane in the third, but there was no call. I usually don’t make too much of a stink about missed calls, because there’s a dozen a game and it’s baked into the sport, but it’s rare you see a player clearly do the “I’m going to intentionally take a penalty here to break up this scoring chance” move and it still doesn’t come. It made me think back to the discourse (with evidence!) that the refs in the league truly do not like Michael Bunting because of his propensity for agitation and embellishment.
Then, Bryan Rust clearly got slashed on a mini-breakaway on what was again a player consciously choosing to trade a penalty for breaking up a scoring chance, and that one wasn’t called either. Maybe because Rust is Bunting’s teammate and the refs just hate him that much??
6. Why was the entire TNT broadcast out of sync?
Why was the audio a half second ahead of the action for the entire Pens / Red Wings game? And why were the wide shots and tight shots out of sync? How is a national broadcast noticably worse at a very standard technical aspect than every random regional cable game? I thought it was just my cable, but I saw other people mentioning the problem too, and I toggled over to the MAX feed and it had the same issue.
TNT’s broadcasts have mostly been very good, I’ve thought, but it reminded me of ESPN’s first year after reacquiring the NHL when every national game on ESPN had the audio out of sync. How does this happen on marquee broadcasts on major networks? And when it does happen, how is there not someone watching the first period saying, “oh man, there’s a huge lag between the audio and video, we’ve gotta fix that?”
They never did. The announcer called Edvinsson’s game winner before he shot the puck. Maybe his ability to come unstuck in time fooled Nedeljkovic?
