When the Penguins made the playoffs, their PR catchphrase was \u201cFlip the Script.\u201d Receipts time. Revenge tour. You doubted us, but we showed you.<\/p>\n
Looks like the doubters were right.<\/p>\n
It just took longer than expected to manifest itself.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the Penguins will, indeed, flip the script in Game 3 at Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
But that would entail a cataclysmic reversal of a series that got away from the Penguins the moment the puck was dropped for Game 1.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s to blame?<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s all gone wrong.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s young legs vs. old legs in the heightened pace of playoff hockey.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a team on the ascension vs. a team in decline.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lopsided nightmare.<\/p>\n
The Penguins are being taught a systematic masterclass by a Flyers team that has utterly stifled a Penguins attack that netted 293 regular-season goals, third-most in the NHL. The Flyers give no room, especially on the inside.<\/p>\n
A power play that ranked seventh in the league got just two shots in five attempts on Monday night, conceding a short-handed goal.<\/p>\n
The Flyers have ripped all individuality from the series. The Penguins\u2019 stars are invisible. Their best line has been their fourth line.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a compliment to Noel Acciari, Connor Dewar and Blake Lizotte. It\u2019s also a one-way ticket to Palookaville.<\/p>\n
It has a 2013 Eastern Conference final vs. Boston vibe. The Penguins have a lot of players who can score. But they\u2019re not going to.<\/p>\n
If this script can be flipped, do it now.<\/p>\n
If it can\u2019t, the Penguins have wasted a season.<\/p>\n
The Penguins maintained the rebuilding process at their Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton farm team and via prospects playing in college and juniors.<\/p>\n
But at the NHL level, it\u2019s an old team: Only two players who dressed Monday are under 25. The Penguins\u2019 average age is 29.<\/p>\n
This season started out as rebuilding.<\/p>\n
But when the Penguins went 8-2-2 in October, the internal script got flipped. Priority was given to winning now.<\/p>\n
Rookie Ben Kindel kept playing because he excelled. But other prospects like Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty went on the pay-no-mind list. The Penguins\u2019 chase for the playoffs postponed development at the NHL level.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not criticism. President of hockey ops\/GM Kyle Dubas and coach Dan Muse have done a marvelous job.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s how the season evolved, and it went pretty well. Give the old firm another kick at the can.<\/p>\n
But, if the Penguins lose this series, the can didn\u2019t get kicked far enough.<\/p>\n
These Penguins, as constituted, will get older, not better. They\u2019re likely to hit a wall. That appears to be happening.<\/p>\n
There could be a major overhaul. It might not be pretty.<\/p>\n
We may have seen Evgeni Malkin\u2019s last home game as a Penguin.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see what Sidney Crosby thinks of that.<\/p>\n
Such changes aren\u2019t yet upon the Penguins. There are at least two more games to play.<\/p>\n
Muse switched the Penguins\u2019 top two lines back to combinations that previously worked: Crosby-Rickard Rakell-Bryan Rust, Malkin-Egor Chinakov-Tommy Novak. That change made for a better third period Monday but produced no goals.<\/p>\n
The Penguins did marginally better on the road than they did at home during the regular season: 21-12-8 vs. 20-13-8. They went 1-0-1 at Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
But that seems grasping at straws.<\/p>\n
The Penguins were never in danger of winning either of the first two games.<\/p>\n
The Penguins won 41 and lost 41 during the regular season. If they lose this series, they conclude the campaign with more defeats than victories.<\/p>\n
The Penguins were predicted to finish bottom five and get a corresponding pick in a draft top-heavy with talent at forward. If they lose this series, that would have been a preferred option. Not least if they lose in short, embarrassing fashion to the old enemy.<\/p>\n
If the Penguins lose this series, the script will flip in dramatic, franchise-altering fashion. Perhaps by taking steps backward to eventually take more forward.<\/p>\n
Or maybe the Penguins just run it back, no matter what, like the Steelers.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t rule that out.<\/p>\n
If the Penguins turn this series around and win it, the franchise should feel free to receipt this column in their subsequent PR blast. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Penguins made the playoffs, their PR catchphrase was \u201cFlip the Script.\u201d Receipts time. Revenge tour. You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-621594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}