TAMPA, Fla. -- A decade ago, on June 27, 2009, Garrett Wilson was drafted by the Panthers.
A half-decade ago, on March 23, 2014, Wilson made his NHL debut.
And on this very Saturday night inside Amalie Arena, with one of his best buds saucering the puck for the sweetest of two-on-one setups, a scene he'd undoubtedly dragged via daydream through a billion bus rides from Binghamton to Bridgeport, Wilson finally, finally scored his first NHL goal ...
... and visibly, palpably couldn't come close to enjoying it.
"I mean, it felt good," Wilson told me, seated at his stall, barely able to look up. "I waited a long time for that one. I went a long time thinking about what that would be like. But ..."
But?
"But that was a hard-fought game. I really wanted that one. We all did."
Teddy Blueger, the best bud with the apple, sat silently nearby, nodding and staring straight ahead as if waiting to be sent back over the boards.
So, yeah, the Penguins took this one to heart, this 5-4 loss to the league-leading Lightning. They were bloodied, beaten up, even humbled at times, but they also pushed, shoved, scratched, clawed and however one would care to label Patric Hornqvist's behavior over the evening ... only to come up short.
It wasn't enough. And it hurt, judging from a terse, tense locker room afterward.
"This one's a tough one," Jared McCann told me. "We put everything we had into that, and to not come out on top ..."
I'm guessing the reaction back home in front of TV sets was much the same. In a way, these kinds of losses can sting, inside and outside the team, more than some lazy flat-liner against some lousy opponent. Because these show the collective at its theoretical peak, both in performance and passion. And when that isn't enough, it can raise bigger, broader doubt.
It shouldn't.
I know, I know, no one's in the mood for anything remotely positive. And I won't pretend there aren't real problems. But I also won't pretend they can't be addressed, given the pedigree and character at hand.
So, rather than investing this column in ripping everyone for everything that went awry -- I've got the game report for that -- here instead are a handful of potential solutions, listed deliberately in descending order:
5. Get Justin Schultz back.
This is insultingly obvious, but it comes with benefits beyond the addition of a No. 1A defenseman solid enough to carry a championship corps. And maybe the biggest benefit is bona fide competition.
Schultz will be back very soon. He had two terrific showings at practice on this Florida trip and, while he and the team doctors remain wise to focus on the best time to return rather than the fastest -- "It was a pretty serious injury," as he reminded us all here Friday -- it'll be surprising if it doesn't occur in the coming week.
First order of business: Pair him with Olli Maatta, his longtime partner, and let him get reacclimated on his terms.
Second order: Bump somebody out. Which won't be challenging since, currently, half of the top six is grading out poorly, at least from this perspective.
Jack Johnson's often been unfairly singled out, presumably because of his contract, but he's lived down to that criticism like never before in the past month or so. He's bringing down his partners too, as our Taylor Haase illustrated in an analysis last week, and his poor positioning cost the Penguins the winning goal on this night:
Marcus Pettersson gets picked on, as well, presumably because he came in the Daniel Sprong trade, but he, too, has stumbled. And I mean that literally in the case of the Lightning's second goal of this game, a mindblowing two-on-none break on which the Penguins' only two pursuers were forwards.
I've got a ton more detail on these mistakes and others in the Game Report, but one I'll additionally mention here was Juuso Riikola's astonishingly ill-advised turnover up the middle of the defensive zone in the second period. He hasn't been much better than Johnson or Pettersson in recent weeks and, in this game, his advanced metrics -- a 40.54 Corsi For percentage -- were worse than either.
Scrap this silly switching of the pairings that split up Kris Letang and Dumoulin, and go with what's known to work on the top four: Those two, plus Schultz and Maatta. The other three players -- and heck, why not Chad Ruhwedel? -- can duke it out for the final pairing, but that pairing needs to see little ice time and more favorable matchups.
One other thing: Whoever's scratched, let it be on merit. Contract terms and rookie status can't be a factor.
4. Get Evgeni Malkin back.
Also insultingly obvious. Or at least it should be, even it isn't for some cynics who can't see the value in a player producing 55 points in 50 games while he's miles below his best form.
Malkin's close, too. Closer than Schultz, if I'm reading these situations right. He expressed hope that he could return Monday night in Philadelphia, and his upbeat tempo at the Saturday morning skate -- a first on this trip -- didn't dissuade that.
Know that he's been sorely missed: The Penguins have lost four of the five games since his departure, three by a single goal. They've scored only 13 total, and five of those came in the lone win against the last-place Senators.
Not that Mike Sullivan's willing to play that card.
"I think everybody's got to take ownership of their own game," he'd say after this loss. "Obviously, Geno's a dynamic player, but we've got to find ways to have an impact on the game."
OK, but without Malkin, the lines as a whole make little sense. Sullivan's clearly been trying to slot his forwards, including the three newcomers -- Nick Bjugstad, Jared McCann and Blueger -- where they'll go once Malkin returns, but nothing will be settled until that happens.
I was intrigued by Bjugstad alongside Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel. I also liked what I saw of Bryan Rust taking Carl Hagelin's old role alongside Malkin and Phil Kessel. McCann's looking damned promising early, and Hornqvist is a superior third-liner.
From there, four spots remain on the bottom six. Wilson's earned himself a role. Blueger needs to be playing way more than he has. Matt Cullen's got to be a mainstay for the penalty-kill alone. So that leaves Tanner Pearson, Dominik Simon and a recovered Zach Aston-Reese for one spot. I haven't been wild about Pearson for a while, and Sullivan's trust in Simon tends to stray too far, not least of which was deploying him with the goaltender pulled in this game.
Which resulted in Simon, naturally, being the one to get this opportunity:
Come on. For everything Simon does well, the only priority there was getting a goal, and there were a half-dozen smarter options stuck on the bench.
Is there enough at the wings?
Again, I've got no idea until Malkin sets this all up.
3. Keep shopping.
Even after excitedly acquiring Bjugstad and McCann, Jim Rutherford promised he'd keep a wait-and-see attitude about the NHL's Feb. 25 trade deadline. That seemed smart at the time, and it feels mandatory now.
Goaltending?
That's not going to happen, barring injury. Matt Murray showed enough of his Stanley Cup self before this latest brief setback, and Casey DeSmith was far sharper in this loss than his numbers -- five goals on 34 shots -- would indicate. Both have Sullivan's support.
Defense?
Eh, not seeing that, either. Not with Schultz on the way.
Center?
No chance. McCann's already done more in a week than Derick Brassard was getting done in months. If he isn't that third-line center -- not to mention his upside at age 22 -- then he's fooling a lot of us right now.
But the wings, as already emphasized, might need more than Aston-Reese. Even if the upgrade would be modest improvement over a Pearson or Simon, it might be worth it — if only because it's the most obvious area where the Penguins could use additional skill, speed, size, you name it.
I'll repeat: Sullivan sent Simon over the boards with the goaltender pulled.
2. This power play ... just stop it.
This has to be it. Really it.
Malkin or not, the power play has been reckless with the puck and utterly emotionless in defending once it's lost, the latest case coming in the second period of this one, as if on cue:
That's Anthony Cirelli arriving at DeSmith untouched, courtesy of a gift-wrapped giveaway from Kessel. That put the Lightning ahead, 3-1, despite a minutes-long surge at the other end. And yeah, that's now 12 short-handed goals allowed, two more than anyone else in the NHL.
Enough already. That's embarrassing.
Sullivan gave his stars a little rope, then more, then the whole lariat, and all they've done with it is hang themselves again and again. Effective immediately, he can't send the first unit onto the rink without two defensemen and the explicit understanding that all basic five-on-five strategies apply when pinching.
If I were betting, this will begin in Philadelphia.
Asked if he had anything new to offer on the subject after this loss, Sullivan replied flatly, "No. Nothing." He then briefly drifted to something else but swung back, "But I have nothing more to say about the power play."
Good. Because it's action that's needed. Since the All-Star break, the power play's 1 for 19. In this game, there was just one, for all of 26 seconds, and it still did damage.
Imagine the difference if and when it's damaging at the far end.
1. Give a damn.
This should be assumed, of course. And not just when positioned a point away from plunging out of the East's final playoff spot.
But here's the part no one will want to hear, and it's why I feel the first four items cited are all feasible and within the Penguins' grasp: They do give a damn.
That readiness isn't always there, and the focus can occasionally flop. But if I'll come away from this Florida trip with one impression above all, it's that there's a legit urgency, legit leadership, legit accountability, legit bonds between old and young, between anchors and newcomers, and within all that is a fire just waiting to be lit with a little success. Much like what was witnessed with that six-week roll that began in early December.
One game is one game, but ...
... this one was played with such rabidity, particularly on the part of the visitors, that Sullivan was moved, despite all the mistakes, to bite his lip and observe, “I thought we fought hard all night. We battled. We pushed.”
Jon Cooper, his Tampa counterpart, strikingly called it "feisty" and "a weird game ... but we've had weird games against them."
No one can say why with certainty what made it feisty or weird, and all Crosby could come up with was, "Maybe it's a carryover from the last game," referencing the Penguins' mutually physical 4-2 victory Jan. 30 at PPG Paints Arena.
The Lightning's Tyler Johnson tried, too, and might have nailed it: "Personally, I think it happened just because it's Pittsburgh. It's just two quality teams, both very competitive, hate to lose, give it their all ... so those things are going to happen. I thought it was a hard-fought game."
Taking my own stab, I've sensed a pattern all season, dating back to that thorough October victory in Toronto, that these Penguins can't stand being marginalized. And it makes sense: A good portion of this roster remains less than two years removed from raising the Cup, and they resist -- no, resent -- when anyone else is considered in their class. I vividly recall one player telling me the day after beating the Maple Leafs, "Let's see who everyone's talking about now." It brings out their best and, in some instances, their nastiest.
Why, then, do they sleep through so many stinkers?
Maybe for the same reason. Nothing to prove at that scale.
Mark this down: This team's not missing the playoffs. There's too much skill and, to stress anew, too much will to allow that. And once this team enters the tournament, whether it's second in the conference or eighth, it'll do a lot more of what it just did here, ideally minus the stupid stuff. It'll compete like crazy, and it'll contend. I believe that.
Check out Rust's response when I brought this up after the game:
There's a lot of that in that room. All over.
Burying them in early February would be a grave mistake.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins at Lightning, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 9, 2019 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
