The Pittsburgh Penguins saw their eight-game winning streak end with a 5-3 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday night, in part, because of an ineffective power play.
They went 0 for 3 with the man-advantage, including failing to score on 71 seconds of five-on-three time late in the first period.
When they convened for practice Monday afternoon in Cranberry, they worked on the power play both in the film room and on the ice. Coach Mike Sullivan spent none of that time, however, berating the players involved for their failures the night before.
“I wanted to reinforce their confidence level because they’ve been really good for a long time,” Sullivan said. “They won a lot of games for us. We know that and we’re appreciative of that. We just have to try to learn from that experience and continue to work at it and get better.”
Before going scoreless Sunday, the Penguins were scorching-hot on the power play for the previous five games, putting together a 9-for-13 success rate. In the nine games before that, on the other hand, they went cold, going 3 for 25.
After the Penguins had a 4-for-4 night in a 6-2 win at St. Louis last month, Sullivan said his former coach, Pat Burns, used to say coaching a power play is like training cats.
The way Sullivan sees it, training cats requires a light touch.
“We’re always very cautious in coaching the power play or coaching the offense because what makes them so good is their instinctive play,” he said. “There are certain things. We give them a framework. We do have a game plan that we give these guys so that they can work collectively and they can be somewhat predictable for one another, but what I think makes them unique is their instinctive play. We don’t want to get in the way of that.”
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Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jonathan at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BombulieTrib.
