The Pittsburgh Penguins probably don’t enjoy playing the Carolina Hurricanes all that much. After all, the Hurricanes seem to find a way to get the best of the Penguins more often than not, having won two of the previous three meetings between the two.
The Hurricanes controlled play from start to finish in this one, avenging a Dec. 30 5-1 loss to the Penguins with a win by the same score. It wasn’t pretty, but let’s get into the takeaways in Sunday’s 5-1 loss to the Hurricanes.
Undisciplined Hockey Loses Games
There are a lot of things you can’t do if you hope to beat the best teams in the league. One of the things you definitely can’t do against a team as good as the Hurricanes is give them power play after power play to work with.
The Penguins were down a man five times on Sunday and the Hurricanes made them pay on three of those occasions. When Nikolaj Ehlers scored the second goal of the game, it felt like the Penguins would be in for a long day and they were.
The Penguins are playing with house money, especially given how the outlook was on the future rather than this season. That being said, the Penguins are sitting in a playoff spot but could not have looked further away from the Hurricanes than they did in this one.
Completely Flat Offensively
Being undisciplined is bad enough, but you can overcome it. Unfortunately, you can’t overcome that kind of performance when you must just 19 shots and can’t seem to find a shred of momentum to save your life.
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Sidney Crosby has been his usual self since returning, but the Penguins need much more than what they showed on Sunday. Other than a late goal by Egor Chinakhov on a beautiful pass from Bryan Rust, the Penguins showed no life offensively.
Part of that is simply playing the Hurricanes, a disciplined team that can smother even the best offenses in the league. Even still, it would have been nice to see some of the offensive firepower that the Penguins have showed in their other three contests with the Hurricanes (16 goals combined).
Skinner Was Better Than the Numbers Showed
If anyone is going to get a stick tap coming out of this one, it should be goaltender Stuart Skinner. Giving up four goals on 25 shots may seem like a horrible night at the office, but very little of that had to do with the performance of Skinner.
Every goal came through heavy traffic that the Penguins did little to disperse. Poor team defense, like the kind that left Seth Jarvis untouched in the midst of three Penguins, did little favors for the Pittsburgh netminder.
Skinner would have had to stand on his head to make any of those stops and that still would not have been enough given the overall performance of the Penguins on Sunday.
A Brutal Stretch Coming
The ultra-tight Eastern Conference leaves the Penguins with little breathing room. Yes, they are second to only the Hurricanes in the Metropolitan, but both the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Islanders are a point back.
Even worse, the schedule from here is nightmarish. In the next six games, the Penguins have the Colorado Avalanche, Ottawa Senators, Dallas Stars, Islanders, Detroit Red Wings, and Tampa Bay Lightning. This stretch will likely decide whether the Penguins make the playoffs or are left on the outside looking in.
