Penguins need to quickly find traction coming out of Christmas break
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When the Pittsburgh Penguins hit Thanksgiving, they were 9-9-0, and no one was feeling great about it.
Now, coming out of Christmas, the Pens have won 15 games and lost 17 (15-13-4). The sentiment about the team is pretty much the same. The club’s 34 points are the second-lowest total in the Metropolitan Division, and they are five points behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for the final wild-card slot, with five teams to climb over to get in playoff position.
The most recent decision was a disappointing 5-4 loss in Ottawa. Against the worst team in the Eastern Conference, the Pens scrambled back from a 4-2 deficit in the third period to force overtime, only to lose 70 seconds into the extra session.
Tim finishes off a hard-working series of events for the OT win! ????#GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/NrTOo8drJi
— Ottawa Senators (@Senators) December 24, 2023
Not a great result to chew on for three days during the holiday break. I’m assuming it took more than one or two glasses of eggnog for head coach Mike Sullivan to wash down the aftertaste of that one — especially since the recently improving power play appears to have regressed.
“They just weren’t in sync,” Sullivan said of the man-up unit. “We didn’t execute. We didn’t make great decisions. We thought we were making traction there. The power play has scored a lot of goals for us as of late. (Saturday) I didn’t think we were as sharp.”
The Penguins’ once anemic power play had scored six times over a four-game span between Dec. 12-18, with Pittsburgh winning three of those contests. But over the past two games, the Pens are just 1 for 12 on the power play, going 1 for 7 in the loss to Ottawa and 0 for 5 in a win against Carolina last Thursday.
That’s the Penguins’ reality, as the team will now cram in three games before New Year’s Day and four over the course of the next week. Three of those matchups are against Metro Division foes who are currently in playoff positions. The Penguins play the second-place New York Islanders (41 points) on Wednesday (away) and Sunday (home). They also host the Washington Capitals on Tuesday. With 39 points, the Caps currently have one of the Eastern Conference’s two wild-card spots.
The Penguins have yet to play the Islanders and haven’t played Washington since Game 2 of the regular season. That was a 4-0 Penguins win. The Caps are managing to stay in the playoff hunt despite just six goals and 14 points from Alex Ovechkin. Their 2.68 goals-against average is sixth best in the NHL.
Also wedged into that schedule over the next week is a Saturday night home game against the St. Louis Blues (35 points, sixth in the Central Division).
In this week’s hockey podcast, Brian Metzer of the Penguins Radio Network joins me to discuss the jam-packed schedule to end the calendar year, some of the Penguins’ struggles heading into the Christmas break, and the potential for improvement coming out of it.