In the Pittsburgh Penguins last six games, they’ve played three Metropolitan Division opponents and two of the top teams from the Western Conference.
The Pens looked like one of the top teams in the league when they came down from a 2-0 deficit to take the Chicago Blackhawks to a shootout and easily handled the Winnipeg Jets without the services of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Marc-Andre Fleury.
In the three previous games against divisional foes, the closest they came to a victory was an overtime loss in Philadelphia, and they were beaten badly by the Islanders and Rangers. That trend continued Wednesday night in Washington, as the Penguins lost 4-0 to the Capitals and fell to 6-9-4 against teams in their division.
Despite the shots being relatively close the Pens never really threatened to beat Braden Holtby, who improved to 23-10-8 on the season and earned his fifth shutout, stopping all 27 Penguins shots. It was Holtby’s second consecutive shutout against the Pens.
“Any time you aren’t generating (scoring chances) it’s frustrating,” said Penguins head coach Mike Johnston after the game. “We’ve got to look at it and see why we aren’t generating. We looked in between periods and took a look at a couple of things we thought we could do better in our game to create some chances on goal, but at the same time, we didn’t want to give up anything.”
Marc-Andre Fleury played well enough despite loss, making 32 saves. The first two goals came via the more-than-capable hands of Alex Ovechkin, who now leads the league with 29 goals on the season.Nicklas Backstrom assisted on both of Ovechkin’s goals to give him 35 helpers for the campaign, which is the fourth-most in the league. Eric Fehr and Mike Green added insurance goals in the third period.
“We have to take some chances, but they have to be measured” said Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi of the team’s play from behind. “They capitalized on our mistakes.”
“We’ve seen what happens when you don’t stick with the game plan for a full 60 minutes.”
The Penguins played most of the third period without defenseman Christian Ehrhoff. He took an awkward fall from a hit by Ovechkin early in the third period and did not return to the game. No update on his condition was immediately available.
Newly acquired forward Max Lapierre played 14:15 of ice time in his Penguins debut and was a minus-1 with two shots, two hits and a blocked shot.
Photo credit: NHL
