Too little, too late: Pens fall to Boston on Monday
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Tuesday’s list of walking wounded includes Sidney Crosby, Pascal Dupuis, James Neal, Arron Asham, Deryk Engelland, Zbynek Michalek, Kris Letang and Richard Park, according to the
Penguins’ Web site. None of these players practiced.
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Name your conference. The NHL has four brand new conferences and don’t have any names for them. Help make the NHL a more well-named sport. Please list your conference names in the comments.
Did you know? Did you know that 16 of 21 NHL teams made the playoffs when the Penguins won their first Stanley Cup in 1990? A team had to be really bad not to make the postseason. Of course, the Penguins missed the playoffs seven of eight seasons prior to winning the Cup. Long-time fans (translation: old) like myself really appreciate the current state of the team after years of losing and four team bankruptcies.
My personal preference regarding NHL realignment was simply to switch Winnipeg from the West and bring Columbus to the East. I’m not one for change. But, it will be interesting to see the Pens play each team in the league a home and away series. Some teams have feasted off of weak divisional opponents for a long time. The Penguins, meanwhile, have gone 6-0-3 against Western Conference foes in 2011-12.
Getting Sidney Crosby out to all 30 venues will help create added re-venues for the NHL.
The Penguins have problems with 5-on-3 power plays. They’ve looked a lot better defending them than scoring on one the last two games.
Had Pittsburgh played the first 50 minutes the way they worked the final 10 Monday, the score probably wouldn’t have been 3-1.
Craig Adams lost his man and Marc-Andre Fleury lost his post on the Bruins’ first score.
Brooks Orpik deserved an assist for his attempted clearing pass on Boston’s second goal. Moments before Paul Martin threw a pass at the feet of his d-partner, nearly leading to another golden opportunity.
ROOT’s Bob Errey spoke glowingly of Martin during his gig between the benches Monday night. Errey was amazed by Martin’s on-ice intuition of seeing a play before it actually happens. That’s nothing Pens fans don’t already know about the $5 million dollar man, but it’s nice to have good information reinforced.
If there’s such a thing as mojo, it wasn’t working in Pittsburgh’s favor from the get-go. The team had received bad news on Kris Letang, bad news on Zbynek Michalek and bad news of Deryk Engelland. Then, Sidney Crosby gets a shiner under his right eye, Matt Cooke gets hit in the left hand blocking a slap shot, Brad Marchant slew foots one of the Pens’ few healthy defensemen (Matt Niskanen), Chris Kunitz checks Crosby at center ice after Crosby is felled earlier by Milan Lucic. Evgeni Malkin gets pasted by a flying faceshield check by Daniel Paille and all the time Jordan Staal is skating with his first shield since junior following a Tomas Kaberle puck pass to his face.
The best play by a Pens Monday night might’ve come when coach Dan Bylsma jumped up and caught a puck behind the bench like a baseball at a Pirates game. Well played.
Something needs to change on the Pens’ power play. The team entered Monday with four goals in 23 tries since Sidney Crosby’s comeback. If the Penguins were a basketball team, they’d lead the league in three point shots.
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RINK LINKS
In case you missed John Steigerwald’s article regarding Alexander Ovechkin,
here it is.
After all the tearful, indignant denials by athletes who were later found to be juicers, I've taken the position that if you're performing at a near super-human level and your doctor is arrested for selling steroids, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Not guilty in a court of law, just in my mind. Sorry.
Mark Madden asks if Matt Cooke is still a marked man, in the
Beaver County Times.
It seemed Shanahan was onto something with his videos and explanations. But he's just another agenda-serving clod in the mold of his predecessor, Colin Campbell. A judge is only as good as his weakest decision.
Deryk Engelland continues to exceed expectations, the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.
"All along, there were people who thought he couldn't play at the next level," coach Bylsma said of Engelland. "They didn't think his skating was good enough. That's a moot point now. He moves so well."
David Morehouse, the Pens’ president and rep on the board of governors, said Monday that he was fine with the NHL’s current six-division setup, according to the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
"Our preference is to maintain the current format and simply move one team, Columbus or Detroit, to the East and Winnipeg to the West," Morehouse said. "The game is enjoying unprecedented popularity, and we're in the process of expanding our fan base — in Pittsburgh, we doubled our fan base in the past four years — so we wouldn't advocate for wholesale realignment with disruption to the current playoff format and disruption to longtime rivalries, thereby confusing our new fans."
The Pens kept their rivals and the league got its four conferences.
Penguins powerless against Bruins, the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.
"Right now," defenseman Matt Niskanen said, "Boston is probably the best team in the league."
"I thought they played very well," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. "They dictated."
"We're thinking too much," said Kunitz, who was in front of the net during both two-man advantages, including an unsuccessful bid that lasted 70 seconds in the first period.
"You have to score there. It changes the momentum of the game. It hasn't been pretty for us lately. We study stuff. We talk about doing things. And then we don't go out and execute. It kills momentum. You can't do that if you want to beat one of the best teams in hockey."
Don’t forget to check out my NHL power rankings on Rotowire right
here.
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Treasure life & have a great Tuesday!
JT
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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