Even the most average hockey fan must have seen this coming. I certainly do not profess to be an expert on NHL hockey or the Pittsburgh Penguins, but having watched plenty of games since the pre-Crosby years, there is no doubt that this 2014 version is the strangest, most disappointing one to date.
Since the two consecutive Stanley Cup Finals teams, which of course culminated in a championship the second time around, this team led by head coach Dan Bylsma has not made it back and does not appear ready to make the kind of run necessary to get there this year. A slew of stars including Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre Fleury, Kris Letang, Chris Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, Brooks Orpik and others who have come and gone along the way have been, for whatever reason, unable to live up to the high expectations set by national media and a demanding fan base.
Crosby was just 21 in 2009 when he raised the Cup and it seemed extremely likely that many more were on the horizon with the make-up of the roster, long-term contracts, etc. He is now 26 and his team has been eliminated in the playoffs four straight years. There was the conference semi-finals loss to Montreal in 2010 and a quarterfinals oust at the hands of Tampa in 2011, when number 87 was injured and could not contribute. The next year, Pittsburgh gave up seemingly a million goals in a quarterfinals loss to rival Philadelphia and last year they made it to the conference finals, only to be swept by the Boston Bruins.
Pittsburgh won the division crown in the new Metropolitan Division easily, by 13 points despite playing pretty average over the latter parts of the season. After Bylsma and many of his star players coached and played in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, they seemed slightly worn down and listless thereafter. There is no doubt that injuries kept the team reeling at times, as there were many new, young faces inserted in Bylsma’s lineup throughout the entire year. The loss of Dupuis for the season zapped energy and scoring talent and the frightening situation involving Letang left many wondering whether he would play again this season, or at all. He is, however, back on defense (sort of) and Malkin and others returned in time for the playoffs as well. At least…I think.
Where are these guys? Four games into the opening playoff series with new geographic rival Columbus, the series is tied 2-2 and, frankly, the Pens are a couple of miraculous bursts of good play and better fortune away from possibly having been swept by the Blue Jackets. The Game 1 victory at Consol last Wednesday featured Pittsburgh trailing 3-1 before scoring two late goals in the second and breaking the tie in the third on a goal by Brandon Sutter.
In Game 2, it was Pittsburgh that blew a 3-1 lead this time, allowing Columbus to chip away and tie the game late and win it in overtime. Game 3 in Columbus saw the Pens down 2-0 before Orpik scored with less than two seconds in the second period, then down 3-1 again before scoring three times in less than three minutes to take the series lead again.
Game 4 at Nationwide Arena on Wednesday ended in a 4-3 score for the fourth time in the series, bizarrely following the same pattern as the previous three games. Pittsburgh led 3-1 after one period and that score proved to be dooming to the early frontrunner. Columbus scored with an extra attacker on the ice with 24 seconds left to tie the game and won it less than three minutes into overtime to knot the series. Game 5 is in Pittsburgh at 7:00 pm, and the pressure is really on now. Bylsma may be coaching for his job and another disappointing loss may result in even more questioning of the team leadership and effort.
While it is easy to point at Fleury for allowing three to four goals per game so far in the series, the defense has been suspect, stupid penalty after stupid penalty puts the penalty kill unit in numerous bad situations, and a multitude of offensive threats have gone quietly into the night in the first four games. Martin leads all NHL postseason players with eight points, which is great, but Malkin and Crosby have zero goals (each has four assists), Kunitz has one goal and one assist and Neal has just one assist. Matt Niskanen and Beau Bennett have been bright spots with five and four points, respectively, but cannot be expected to carry the load in a playoff series.
The stars need to be stars…that much is true. This isn’t a groundbreaking theory, just a reassertion that a ton more is expected of this group of skilled and seasoned players. Many of them have been together for years now, in the same system for half a decade. The performance on Saturday will go a long way in determining whether any of that means anything, or if that game and this series will be just another enigmatic misstep in the recent history of Mario Lemieux’s potential dynasty.
