CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Sidney Crosby has enjoyed one of the most remarkable careers in hockey history. He's won three Stanley Cups and a pair of Olympic gold medals. He's won the World Cup and the World Championship. He's won scoring titles and MVP awards.
One of the few things he's never done is overcome a 3-0 series deficit. But, man, he'd like to. Starting now.
“It’s not the position you want to be in but, I think that being said, I’d love to be a part of a team that comes back from that and we believe that it starts with just winning one game," Crosby was saying Monday at the Lemieux Complex where the Penguins held team meetings.
Well, now he and his teammates will have their shot. It begins tomorrow night at PPG Paints Arena, as the Penguins will look to stave off elimination in Game 4 of their first-round series against the Islanders. Obviously, the odds are stacked against them. Of the 186 teams that have trailed 3-0 in an NHL playoff series, only four have come back to win. But two of those teams -- the 2010 Flyers and 2014 Kings -- have done it in the last decade. So there's that.
This will be the third time in Crosby's 14 seasons that his team has been down 3-0. In 2012, the Penguins managed to push the Flyers to six games in a wild, first-round series. A year later, the Penguins were swept by the Bruins in the Eastern Conference Final.
But in each instance, when facing elimination, neither Crosby nor the Penguins went down meekly. In Game 4 in 2012, Crosby put up a goal and two assists in a 10-3 win at Philadelphia. Even as the Penguins got shutout in Game 4 in 2013, Crosby had four shots on goal as the Bruins scored a 1-0 win on a rare goal from defensive-defenseman Adam McQuaid.
Nobody knows for sure how tomorrow night's Game 4 will pan out, but you'd have to assume the Penguins would like to put forth a better effort than Sunday afternoon's dismal performance in a 4-1 home loss.
"We’ve been on the other side of it and been up in a series, and I think that level of urgency that you’re going to get from a team that’s down, that’s something that we know we can use to our advantage, too," Crosby was saying.
If the Penguins are to somehow win a game, let alone make a series of it, it will likely be up to Crosby. He's the team's leader, both on the stat sheet and off the ice. But through three games, he's been as mediocre -- at best -- as his Corsi For (50.3) and high-danger chances for (50.0) percentages would indicate. A 1.13 point-per-game producer in 163 career playoff games, he has been held without a point with just six shots on goal and a minus-4 rating in three games against the Islanders.
Some of it has simply been a continuation of the regular-season for the captain. Crosby went a season-worst 10 games without a goal before scoring against the Red Wings and Rangers on April 4 and 6, respectively. A lot of it, of course, has had to do with the the play of the Islanders and the defense in front of Robin Lehner. New York, which surrendered the fewest goals per game and the fewest odd-man rushes this season, has allowed little room to operate.
"They’ve defended really hard, and they got a timely save when they needed it," Mike Sullivan was saying. "We’ve just got to continue to find ways to get more pucks to the net to create opportunities for ourselves.
"But at the same time, we can’t become a high-risk team in the process, trying to score so much. I think that was part of the message today: Making sure that we stay within ourselves, and we take what the game gives us. When you look at the way the game was played last game, some of the best chances that the Islanders got were a result of some of the decisions we made, either with the puck or without the puck, trying to score. I think we’ve got to do a better job there, making sure that we take what the game gives us."
If the Penguins can do that, who knows what can happen.
“As a group, we talked about what we needed to do to come in here mentally and physically to win a game tomorrow," Crosby said. "That’s all we can control, and we can’t get all those games back at once. So I think you’ve got to trust what’s gotten you to this point and what our strengths are and how we got here, and also learn from the games."
• The Penguins had originally been scheduled to take the ice for practice at 11 a.m. on Monday at the Lemieux Complex, but that was pushed back to noon a few hours after Game 3 ended. However, it wasn't until 11:30 a.m. on Monday morning that Sullivan decided to scrap the on-ice session all together.
"It’s something we had talked out and planned out based on the schedule, before the series even started," Sullivan said when I'd asked about the change in plans. "We’ve skated eight days in a row now, I believe. We’ve also been in situations during the regular season and the month of March, one in particular where we played a lot of games every other day like we are now, and our team responded really well when we didn’t skate the day before, had morning skates and played. We have some history there to draw on."
Though they didn't take the ice, Sullivan still held a team meeting to go over some things. He called the day "productive."
• Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin and Crosby are the only remaining players from the 2013 team that got swept by the Bruins. However, that same spring Brian Dumoulin was in Wilkes-Barre as the Penguins' AHL team came all the way back to beat Providence, Boston's affiliate, in a second-round Calder Cup series. They were the first lower seed to climb out of a 3-0 hole. Call him naive, but Dumoulin believes it can be done again. When I asked him about the mood in the room today, he said it was upbeat in part because of that experience.
"Obviously, we’ve got to try stay as positive as we can," he said. "A few of us have been in this situation. Six years ago, we came back from 3-0 in Wilkes, and we just want to try to get better each game. I think a few of us were there, so we know it can be done; teams have done it before and I think we still have a belief.
"It’s funny once you win one or win two, the statistics start looking a lot better and the pressure stops on us and kind of turns to them. So we’ve just got to get this next one."
Actually, Dumoulin is the only player in the organization remaining from that Wilkes-Barre team.
• On the list of the Penguins' problems in this series, goaltending would not rank very high. Matt Murray has been good, but hardly great. His .902 save percentage and 3.33 goals-against average through three games are the worst of his career in the playoffs. Does he feel he must be perfect for the Penguins to win?
"No, never," he said. "Nobody's perfect. Especially not me. Just got to play my game, personally. And I think we all need to do that as a team. Nobody is ever going to be perfect. So I think we should stop worrying about that. Just do the best you can and let the result take care of itself."
• With a rare day off on Monday, some of the Penguins and their head coach plan to make the most of it. Justin Schultz is an avid golfer but didn't get to see Tiger Woods in the final round of the Masters on Sunday. He plans to catch up today. Sullivan said he planned on watching "Game of Thrones" and walking his dogs.
• The Penguins will hold a full morning skate at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday. I'll have your coverage beginning at 10:30 a.m. DK, Taylor and Sunday will join me at game time.
• Though they're up 3-0, the Islanders still took to the ice to practice Monday at PPG Paints Arena. The only notable absence was Scott Mayfield.
“Just a maintenance day, he’s fine," explained Barry Trotz. "It was really my decision. He was going to come out for practice and I said we’ll just give him the day."
• The Islanders showed no changes to their lines or defense pairs in practice.
