I am not going to say the Pittsburgh Penguins played a perfectly clean, crisp game on Tuesday night against the Chicago Blackhawks.<\/p>\n
They were sloppy at times, some of their puck management and puck support was bad, and they did not capitalize on enough opportunities against a Blackhawks team that was, to be fair, probably even worse.<\/p>\n
And that last part really is the main point here. The Penguins weren\u2019t great. But neither was the team that beat them. The Penguins have reason to be disappointed and frustrated with the way they played (and they should be), but they controlled enough of that game at 5-on-5 that it was probably a passable enough performance to walk out of their with two points.<\/p>\n
One of the main reasons they didn\u2019t is the simple reality they just didn\u2019t get enough saves.<\/p>\n
For as good as Sergei Murashov was in Columbus on Friday, basically stealing them a point against the Blue Jackets, he was that bad on Tuesday in Chicago, probably costing them at least one point.<\/p>\n
As sloppy as the Penguins were, I\u2019m not sure they were four goals against (excluding the fifth goal, an empty net goal) bad. Chicago didn\u2019t have THAT many chances, and every publicly available piece of data suggests the same thing.<\/p>\n
The fourth goal was an absolute crusher, not only by how bad it was, but because it came in the final five minutes after the Penguins had fought back from a two-goal deficit. It\u2019s simply a shot that can\u2019t go in, from that spot, from that angle in that moment. Or any moment. It can\u2019t. Historically, it doesn\u2019t (MoneyPuck had that shot at 0.01 expected goals).<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the other thing about this game \u2014 I keep seeing that you can\u2019t really fault him for the other three goals because they weren\u2019t necessarily his fault. Maybe they weren\u2019t entirely his fault. But \u201cnot entirely his fault,\u201d and \u201cno chance to be stopped,\u201d are two very different things.<\/p>\n
Sometimes your goalie does have to make a stop they are not fully expected to make.<\/p>\n
The first goal? That\u2019s just bad hockey by the Penguins.<\/p>\n
The third goal is a tough cross-ice pass that you\u2019d like to see not get through.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t think the second goal is unstoppable. The fourth goal certainly isn\u2019t. Beyond that, I\u2019m not sure there were *that* many shots that he was asked to make overly challenging saves on. He didn\u2019t even have to face 20 shots. Even when the team in front of him was guilty of bad puck management or puck support, they rebounded and did not always allow a shot or chance. The scoring chance numbers were heavily tilted in the Penguins\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n
Again: they weren\u2019t great. But probably weren\u2019t all that good. But they should have been good enough given what the opponent was also doing.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t meant to sound overly critical of Murashov from a big picture perspective. I like him a lot. You should, too. None of this means you stop playing him, or send him down, or that he\u2019s bad and going to be bad. He might be the highest ceiling young player the Penguins have, at a position that can significantly change a team\u2019s timeline to contend and its chances to contend (both short-term and long-term). But as I\u2019ve said in the past here, while all of that is very true, the reality is that all of the upside and potential is coming from the most volatile position on the ice in terms of performance and projected performance.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s especially true for young players at the position.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re going to get games like Friday in Columbus from him.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re also going to get games and moments like Tuesday in Chicago.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just something you have to be ready for.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s seven games, and that\u2019s far too early to really know what type of team you have or what it is capable of. That is true across the league. But I said at the start of the season that goaltending will be the biggest determining factor in whether or not this is a playoff team or a lottery team. I am sticking with that.<\/p>\n
More quick Penguins thoughts<\/p>\n
1. As frustrating as I found Murashov\u2019s performance on Tuesday to be, there was another big factor in the Penguins losing that game.<\/p>\n
They have now gone five consecutive games without scoring a goal, and have not found the back of the net since the second game of the season against the Montreal Canadiens. That\u2019s not good enough. What\u2019s even worse than the lack of goals is that the unit is back in one of those ruts where it\u2019s not even close to scoring.<\/p>\n
The last two attempts on Tuesday were better in terms of puck movement, and they at least seemed to adjust to the pressure teams have been applying to them, but special teams was the other big factor on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
An 0-for-4 night on the power play and only 1-for-2 on the penalty kill is a good way to lose a winnable game to a bad team. Or any team, for that matter.<\/p>\n
2. Rickard Rakell is playing more minutes per game than he ever has in his career. Almost 20 per game. More than two minutes more per game than he has averaged over his career.<\/p>\n
He has zero goals and two assists.<\/p>\n
Prior to Sidney Crosby\u2019s two goals on Tuesday, the top line has consistently been one of the Penguins biggest problems this season. Bryan Rust has shown some flashes and at least scored a couple of goals. Maybe Tuesday was the jumpstart Crosby needed. Still waiting on Rakell.<\/p>\n
3. I love what the Nicholas Robertson-Blake Lizotte-Connor Dewar line is doing. It\u2019s steamrolling teams in tough minutes, and that\u2019s good. But how much longer can you keep Robertson on the fourth line? Especially when the first line has at least one guy at the moment that\u2019s not doing anything? Robertson has, in my opinion, been one of their best players over the past two games, and he keeps scoring goals. On a per-60-minute basis, he\u2019s been one of the best goal-scorers in the league the past few years. He is showing why. When do you move him back up and give him a little bit of a longer leash?<\/p>\n
4. Egor Chinakhov has not scored a goal since the season-opener, but I do not think he has been as invisible as some have suggested. I think he\u2019s close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am not going to say the Pittsburgh Penguins played a perfectly clean, crisp game on Tuesday night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4687,385,99,19552],"class_list":["post-882286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-analysis","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}