CHICAGO -- How bad?
Well, before I begin winding through the muck of maybe the Penguins' worst loss of the Mike Sullivan era, 6-3 to the NHL's most miserable team, the Blackhawks, on this Wednesday night at the United Center, let me first share the sentiment of at least one individual in the immediate aftermath:
"#$@&+*%=!"
If I printed the actual word here, much less in the headline atop this site, probably half our subscribers would cancel. So use the imagination, but don't overthink it. It was a single syllable. And, oh, my goodness, it was delivered with great gusto. Loud enough to be heard three rooms away through cement-block walls. Loud enough to make a photographer near me -- again, three rooms away -- leap as if he'd seen a ghost.
I don't know who it was. The scream was so primal I wouldn't have recognized it if it were my brother.
But being blunt, I'd like to think it was Evgeni Malkin:
That's 1:39 into the third period. The score was 3-3, this after Bryan Rust's breakout hat trick had rallied the Penguins back from a general malaise and into a mostly undeserved tie. But still, it was there to be had, to put it mildly. And not just because the Blackhawks entered as the NHL's rock-bottom team at 9-18-5, mired in eight straight losses and 19 losses in 22 games.
"Right. And they were in Winnipeg last night," as Matt Cullen duly reminded me. While the Penguins were spending a free day in Chicago, the Blackhawks were up in Canada getting beaten, 6-3, and beaten up by the bigger, badder Jets. They were a wounded animal on the highway waiting for the 18-wheeler to do its damage.
All that was needed was effort.
But what Malkin displayed up there wasn't just one of his common mental lapses that result in penalties. That's laziness. In the hockey culture, from the Mon Valley midgets to the Montreal Canadiens, there's nothing deemed lazier than using one's stick to do what one's feet should be doing. Malkin didn't feel like keeping pace with Brendan Perlini, so he placed his stick across Perlini's gloves, which in the modern NHL should be a hooking minor every time.
So, while Malkin goes to the box, the penalty-killers take to the ice and smoothly silence the league's worst power play, buying him a reprieve.
Here's what happened with his first strides of freedom:
None of this went perfectly, aside from Marcus Pettersson's part. He pursued the puck behind the net, got his stick on it, then, when possession was lost, he hurried back to the front. Jack Johnson didn't need to double the puck initially, but he recovered right away. And Sidney Crosby could have had more of a swiveling head to pick up Marcus Kruger before the goal.
But focus on Chicago's Andreas Martinsen in the left corner, and then on Malkin, fresh out of the box, approaching Martinsen ... then casually peeling away for no conceivable reason beyond more laziness:
I can't believe I'm about to type this but, if he were any other player, he'd be a healthy scratch when the Penguins resume play Friday night back in Pittsburgh against the Bruins. And as ridiculous as that sounds, replace his name in those sentences above with that of nearly anyone else on the roster, and try to dispute it.
Because it isn't just about these two sequences, or even this awful loss:
• Malkin's got one even-strength goal in the past 20 games. One. Read that again, and it still won't sink in.
• He's got seven even-strength points since the end of October. That's a goal and six assists over those same 20 games.
• He was minus-4 on this night, making him a team-worst minus-11 on the season. I'm not a fan of plus-minus unless it comes in bulk, and that's serious bulk.
• He's had a 50.44 Corsi For percentage at even-strength in those 20 games, barely above the bellwether 50 percent mark. For anyone unfamiliar with advanced statistics, it means he's on the ice for just as many chances for the Penguins as against. It's average. It's ordinary. It's what Derick Brassard and Derek Grant do.
• He registered four shots on this night, which is OK, but it's also the first time he's taken that many since Nov. 19 against the equally freewheeling Sabres. He totaled 20 shots in the 10 games in between.
It's not enough. It's not nearly enough.
Since Malkin was out of the locker room before it was opened to reporters -- and it was opened very quickly, I might add -- I asked Mike Sullivan about Malkin's penalty and his malaise of late, and the coach didn't exactly hold back:
Notice how he emphasized "Geno's line" rather than just Malkin?
That's fair on Sullivan's part. Because the whole line -- Malkin between Tanner Pearson and Phil Kessel -- was a dud, by far the Penguins' least effective here and on this whole 1-1-1 trip. And because the lack of reliable second and third lines has been the team's most throbbing headache through the first 30 games.
Sullivan acknowledged Wednesday morning considering line combinations that go against his own grain -- "We've talked as a staff about putting more of our top players together than spreading them thin," he said -- and then this is the price that gets paid.
What seems nuts is that Malkin and Kessel are tied for the team lead with 33 points each and yet, they've been anything but part of the solution, particularly when together. And now, or probably before the team charter touches down at Pittsburgh International, Sullivan's got almost no choice but to scrap that line and start over yet again.
That messes up everything, to hear these men tell it. I can't stress that enough.
I'm not about to suggest anything dire. Anyone who's ever bet against Malkin in the past has wound up looking really stupid before long. But it would be wonderful for all concerned if a lot of people started looking stupid sooner rather than later.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THREE STARS
My curtain calls go to …
1. Bryan Rust
Penguins right winger
No one on either side came close. Much more in Drive to the Net.
2. Alex DeBrincat
Blackhawks right winger
His one goal was prettier than all three of Rust's combined ... unless you're Maatta and Casey DeSmith, both getting casually undressed to put Chicago ahead, 3-2, in the second:
3. Brent Seabrook
Blackhawks defenseman
He's 33 and not what he once was, but a goal, an assist, seven attempted shots and a constant presence brought back his best form.
THE GOOD
Just Rust. Nothing else. No one else. This isn't just about Malkin. He had ample company.
But for Rust, I've got a full Drive to the Net.
THE BAD
Wow, where to start?
How about the history, if only because I just spent the weekend out in Oakland covering another Pittsburgh team playing the NFL's worst team on the road and stinking up that place, too?
The Penguins have now lost nine in a row -- 0-6-3 -- to the Blackhawks and have been outscored, 36-13. It's that much worse when it's here, as they haven't won in Chicago since Feb. 27, 2009, when Malkin scored in overtime, and they haven't won in regulation since Oct. 30, 2003, a 1-0 shutout that was Marc-Andre Fleury's first in the NHL.
Even that's just scratching the surface of the futility in Chicago: The Penguins' all-time cumulative record here is 12-45-10, including 8-35-9 at old Chicago Stadium, 4-9-1 at the United Center and, of course, 0-1 at Soldier Field in the outdoor game there a couple years back.
Crosby alone has one assist to show for seven career games in this city.
It's Madness on Madison, as they say here.
None of that made a dent on the participants, clearly, although they all talked it up after the morning skate, praising the Blackhawks' championship pedigree and rattling off their most prominent names with awe.
They even spoke of hope of extending a 6-3-2 run that, almost as important as the jump in the standings, finally was lending credibility to the concept they were coming around.
"We're trending in the right direction," Jamie Oleksiak told me after the skate. "We went through our struggles there for a bit, but I think that built some character for us. It humbled us a little bit. We saw how hard we have to work for goals, for wins. We can't just sit back and rely on our skill. And I think it was good that we kind of got that out of the way early."
They didn't. They haven't.
"I don't know how that happens," Sullivan said of his team's lack of jump right from the opening faceoff. "It's disappointing. Then we scratch and claw to get back in, and it's disappointing that we didn't find a way to win."
He was only clearing his throat.
"Yeah, I mean, we're trying to build some traction here. We've played a lot of good hockey over the last three or four weeks, we're trying to string some wins together, build some momentum ... and when you have a night like this, it sets you back. It's a missed opportunity, from our standpoint."
THE PLAY
Since I already detailed Malkin's mess, and Rust's hat trick is over at Drive to the Net, let's invest this in one type of play that was witnessed way more than it had been of late.
"I thought we gave up more odd-man rushes tonight than we had in the last three or four weeks," Sullivan answered when asked if any specific facet had troubled him the most. "That's the one area of our game where I think we've been a whole lot better in the last month. And there's a direct correlation between that and winning games because you don't give teams easy opportunities."
I counted six odd-man rushes for Chicago and, though most were of the less dangerous three-on-two variety, it had to be unsettling for Sullivan and the staff to see a two-on-one in the game's fourth minute when Oleksiak was caught up ice.
In general, this is all that 'right side of the puck' preaching he does daily with his players.
THE CALL
There were no official calls or challenges of note, but it wouldn't have mattered. Because the call of the night went to my man Brian Ferber, a longtime reader who, before embarking for the United Center to attend this game, made this prediction in public:
I’ve lost out on a lot of friendly wagers to my #Chicago friends over these @penguins at @NHLBlackhawks contests the last few years.
After reading Stats n’at, let’s call it...Rusty with a Hatty tonight! #LetsGoPens
Can’t wait for the anthem at the @UnitedCenter tonight! ??
— Brian Ferber (@Culture_Content) December 12, 2018
Brian's inspiration, as he noted, was David Golebiewski's terrific Stats 'N' At installment yesterday. If you aren't reading it, this is clearly a mistake.
THE OTHER SIDE
How bad?
That's the question posed atop this report, referencing the magnitude of the awfulness of this result for the visitors. But to fully appreciate that magnitude, this single statistic might be most vital: In their previous 11 games, the Blackhawks had held a lead for a total of 41 seconds.
As one might expect from the math involved, that meant the Blackhawks had given up the first goal in all 11 of those games. But even that doesn't best sum up their distress in this regard as, the previous night in Winnipeg, they went the first 17 minutes without a shot.
All that changed when they ran into the Penguins' preseason mode in the first period and scored the first two goals and piled up 13 shots.
"Obviously, with what's been happening here, getting off to a good start was huge," Jonathan Toews said. "And we sustained the effort even when they had spurts and they played hard."
The Penguins had 'spurts' of playing hard?
Ow.
THE INJURIES
• Patric Hornqvist, forward, has an upper-body injury. He was placed on the NHL's Injured Reserve list Wednesday, meaning he has to miss seven days. Since that was retroactive to Dec. 6, that week's already elapsed. Sullivan dismissed IR as being a paper move and said Hornqvist's status hasn't changed from day-to-day.
• Matt Murray, goaltender, was activated from IR and backed up for the first time since his lower-body injury Nov. 17. Sullivan said he expects Murray to start one of the weekend games in Pittsburgh.
• Matt Cullen, center, was activated from IR after missing 11 games to a lower-body injury. He logged 10:14 of ice time and a plus-1 rating.
• Dominik Simon, forward, is on IR with a lower-body injury.
• Justin Schultz, defenseman, is on long-term IR, out until February with a fractured leg.
THE SCHEDULE
The team is off Thursday, an official travel day. The next games are Friday against the Bruins and Saturday against the Kings, both at 7:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.
THE COVERAGE
Visit our Penguins team page for everything.
