It's tempting, after a terrible loss like the 5-2 pummeling the Penguins absorbed from the Sabres on this Saturday afternoon at PPG Paints Arena, to seek out the snap-of-a-finger fix.
Well, I'm here to tell you it won't happen. And even if there's any such attempt, it'll fail.
Want to see another big trade?
Jim Rutherford's very much open for business on that front, I'm told, in advance of the NHL deadline Monday. And there were a bunch of names bouncing around the building here as potential targets -- Max Domi, Andreas Athanasiou, even Eric Staal came up -- for whatever such peripheral buzz is worth.
Won't matter if Rutherford pulls it off. Not in isolation.
Want to see different player combinations?
Mike Sullivan was very much in agreement, shaking up his top three forward lines entering the third period, not least of which was the striking removal of Jason Zucker from Sidney Crosby's flank, this after Zucker had pumped three goals in his first five games since arriving from St. Paul. Others shifted around, as well. And on defense, Juuso Riikola lost his spot in the lineup to freshly recalled Zach Trotman, even though Trotman had to slide to his wrong side.
Didn't matter. Any of it. Won't matter much moving forward, either.
Want to see renewed emphasis on strategy?
Suffice it to say I ran that past Sullivan afterward, and it brought the expected response: "I know our guys know how to play. That's not that's not the issue. For me, the challenge is the mindset. You know: Are we are we thinking the right way before the puck drops? How we committed are we? And are we willing to play that way for 60 minutes? That's a discipline. And we haven't had that the last few games. And so, this is what happens."
Right. As in, this:
That's Evgeni Malkin going indefensibly soft with a reversal attempt to Marcus Pettersson, handing Buffalo's Zemgus Girgensons the icebreaker just 14 seconds after the 1:08 p.m. faceoff.
And this:
That's Jack Johnson bypassing an easy outlet up the left side to toss across to Kris Letang, who butchers further by placing the puck on the blade of Buffalo's Sam Reinhart for another goal at 6:48.
I could share a ton more, but let's leave it with this:
That's the Penguins' entire penalty-killing box, Crosby included, being yanked way over to one side, and everyone ignoring, um, Jack Eichel at the left dot. Which is only the Sabres' raison-d'etre with the extra man.
I mean ...
"We felt like we were able to create a lot of time and space for ourselves," was how the Sabres' Jeff Skinner generously worded it.
Here's how I'd word it: They were giftwrapped most everything they got.
So, completing the above thought, want to see someone read the Penguins the riot act?
Too late. Sullivan tried that with a timeout right after that Eichel strike and, while his players appeared to at least wake up a little, not all of the collective brain cells came along for the ride.
"I thought our team worked hard to try to get back in the game today, but we didn't play smart. So we got beat," Sullivan assessed. "You know, it's not good enough just play hard. You have to play smart. It's the combination that gives you a chance to win. And when we don't have that combination right now."
Nope. Not even when victorious.
In fact, I'd argue -- and I've been arguing this since, oh, mid-January -- that we haven't witnessed peak-fork Penguins for more than a month now. The lone front-to-finish 200-foot performance in all that time came Tuesday against a Toronto team that appeared as comatose that night as the Penguins did here. That's it. The rest were either dominated by Tristan Jarry or Matt Murray, or they came against the Canadiens, Red Wings, etc.
And again, that's not simply solved. Not by trades, not by changes of any kind, not even by getting back the quarter of the roster that's still out with injuries.
Not without a renewed focus on what'd been working beforehand. That's what made this team special, what put it in position toward serious contention for a sixth Stanley Cup. And all the other pieces can't add up to what's missing without the proper approach.
As Sullivan himself noted, "Our guys are saying all the right things," and that was the case after this, too.
Malkin was asked what the Penguins were missing, and he came back beautifully, "We missed the first period. We were not ready."
"But we're not playing right the last 10 games, I think," he'd add. "Same mistakes. We're trying to play easy. It's not the right way."
"We've got to be a lot better," Jared McCann would tell me. "At everything."
"We've got to make smarter decisions," Teddy Blueger would essentially echo from the next stall. "All the little things we were doing before."
Maybe the switch will flip back Sunday in D.C. We'll see.
If it doesn't, then what sure felt like a fun thing the other night when the Penguins overtook the Capitals for first place ... that'll disintegrate sooner than most might realize. See, the Penguins are still atop the Metro, mostly because the Capitals are in their own season-worst slump with four losses in a row, including 3-2 to the Devils on this same day in Newark, N.J. But the Flyers are now just three points back of both. And if one wants to go all-out paranoid, the Hurricanes, the East's ninth-place team, is eight points back.
"When there are 20 games left, everyone tries to fight for playoffs," Malkin added. "We think we're fine. We think we're all right. But every team is close, and we need to understand that."
• The Sabres, at 28-25-8, are still nine points out of a playoff spot, which means they're immensely likely to sit out for a ninth consecutive year. That's crazy. NHL history has seen only four other franchises sit out that long: Devils in 1979-87, Panthers in 2000-11, Oilers in 2007-16, Hurricanes in 2010-18.
Small wonder that they and Eichel, their outspoken captain, took at least some satisfaction from this one.
"Jeez, I thought we came out hard," Eichel said. "I thought we had a good start, I thought we played really desperate, and we got rewarded. It's a really good team we faced. It's a good way to play they've got over there. But we smothered them."
Eichel's two goals gave him 35, fourth-most in the league.
• Funny that two of the Penguins' worst five losses all season came to the Sabres, but let's never forget that 3-1 stinker in the opener. This wasn't quite that horrific, but it was close.
Malkin tried to atone for his early lapse by skating with gusto the rest of the way, as well as scoring this goal ...
... and another in garbage time.
• The goal shown above cut the Buffalo lead to 3-1, after which the Penguins applied their greatest pressure. Ralph Krueger, the Sabres' coach, acknowledged some concern in that time: "They never stop coming at you. They never stop believing they can score or change the score. They're not daunted by a 3-0 hole and you can feel that in their game. It was important for us to psychologically just stay with the game."
• No one asked, but I hated the new lines. A lot.
If the legit concern is comfort level for Crosby -- and there's no other reason Zucker would've been lifted -- then move Bryan Rust back up there with him. Rust has a goal and two assists over his past nine games, and all three points came that night against the comatose Leafs. But leave Zucker there, too, That's why he was acquired.
• Sullivan didn't mince words on the subject, either, saying of Zucker, "Our hope is that he can find some chemistry with Sid. And he has at times. We're trying to get him to utilize his skating game a little bit more than he has at this point. We understand that's a process. We think, when he really skates, he's a dangerous player."
Translation: We're trying to knock the Wild out of him.
• Add Rust's first slump with McCann going 14 games without a goal, then throw in Dominik Simon with one goal in his past 12 games, then Patric Hornqvist with three goals in his past 15 games, and that's a whole lot of current top-six wingers finishing almost nothing. Hard to win like that.
• If I'm Rutherford, wingers are my entire focus. Wingers are the separator between the Penguins and the rest of the East elite. That won't change internally.
• Jarry didn't lose this game any more than he ever had a chance to win it. But he did get beaten cleanly to the short side three times, and that's not something often seen in the NHL. Just being fair here. If it'd been Murray, he'd have been torched and pitchforked to death.
• Riikola really needs to be traded. He's not the type to ask for one, but maybe he should be. He'll never get a chance here.
• It's Washington. But it's also another obscenely early faceoff, at 12:10 p.m. We'll see.
• Much more on the Capitals from Taylor Haase.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Zach Aston-Reese (lower body)
• Nick Bjugstad (core muscle surgery)
• Brian Dumoulin (ankle surgery)
• Jake Guentzel (shoulder surgery)
• John Marino (facial surgery)
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Zucker-Crosby-Simon
Rust-Malkin-Hornqvist
McCann-Blueger-Tanev
Lafferty-Agozzino-Angello
Johnson-Letang
Pettersson-Schultz
Trotman-Ruhwedel
And for Krueger's Sabres:
Olofsson-Eichel-Reinhart
Vesey-Johansson-Sheary
Skinner-Lazar-Frolik
Girgensons-Larsson-Okposo
Montour-Ristolainen
McCabe-Jokiharju
Dahlin-Miller
THE SCHEDULE
No time to waste. It's off to Washington for another matinee Sunday, 12:10 p.m., at Capital One Arena. This one's on our local TV partner WPXI, as well as NBC nationally. Taylor will be there.
THE COVERAGE
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PHOTO GALLERY
Penguins vs. Sabres, Feb. 22, 2020, PPG Paints Arena. - GETTY