SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Penguins have looked like a team intent on making history for most of this season.
Saturday night, they finally made it happen.
It probably wasn't exactly what they had in mind, though.
Their 5-0 loss to San Jose at SAP Center was their sixth defeat in a row, the first time that has happened since Mike Sullivan replaced Mike Johnston as coach in mid-December, 2015.
Indeed, per stats man extraordinaire Bob Grove, it's just their second such free fall in the past 14 years, the other having been Dec. 29, 2011-Jan. 11, 2012. Which means that Stanley Cup parades have been more common that six-game skids in western Pennsylvania for nearly a decade and a half.
And considering the Penguins' oft-stated objective for 2019-20 -- which had seemed like entirely reasonable and realistic until recently, at least -- it's worth noting that they never had a losing streak of six or more games in any of their five Cup-winning seasons.
Being humbled by the Sharks completed a trifecta of losses to the bottom teams in the Western Conference, all in a span of four days.
Groundhog Day is supposed to happen in early February, but the Penguins experienced it during the final 10 days of the month, when they had a half-dozen games and took at least one point out of, well, all but six of them.
The loss to San Jose followed a formula the Penguins have stuck to in most of their games during the past couple of weeks: Their power play was unproductive -- it got the first four man-advantages of the game and didn't convert any of them -- they were guilty of some costly lapses and they failed to ever get a lead, let alone actually try to protect one.
But this defeat, from Sullivan's perspective, was different from most of the others.
"We just weren't very good tonight," he said. "It's my responsibility to try to get this team playing to its capabilities. We know we have a good team when we play the right way.
"I believe in the group of players that we have. I believe we're a much better team than we've showed, and we've got to find a way to work together to make that happen."
Perhaps the most stunning statistics to emerge during this slump is that the Penguins have been in front just once during the past six games, a A 2-1 advantage that lasted six minutes and three seconds during what devolved into a 5-3 defeat in Washington last Sunday.
"It's not easy, chasing the game," Jared McCann said. "Obviously, you use more energy and you try to force plays. We've been chasing the game a lot here in the last six. We have to hit the reset button and go back to what was making us successful."
While the damage this slump has done to their psyches is hard to gauge, its practical impact is obvious: They have slipped one point behind second-place Philadelphia in the Metropolitan Division, mostly because the Flyers have won five in a row while the Penguins have been skydiving without a parachute.
You know how Feb. 29 only comes around once every four years? Lately, it looks like Penguins victories will be on pretty much the same schedule, which surely has eroded their collective confidence.
"As you can imagine, it's not at it's all-time high," Sullivan said. "These guys care and when it doesn't go the right way out there, it can look worse than it actually is. The nice thing about confidence is, you can get it back as quickly as you lose it."
With the Penguins coming off a 3-2 loss in Anaheim Friday, Sullivan couple of noteworthy personnel changes: Former Shark Patrick Marleau got bumped up to the No. 2 line, with Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust, and Juuso Riikola replaced Zach Trotman on the third defense pairing, alongside Chad Ruhwedel.
Riikola sprung Evan Rodrigues on a breakaway when it was 0-0 during the first period, but Rodrigues failed to capitalize on it.
"I just came in and tried to go to my backhand," he said. "The guy jumps around me and nicks my hand and throws me off just a tad. ... That's obviously one you want."
Would a goal then have altered the course of the game? Hard to say, because there hasn't been much of a sample size for such things lately.
The Penguins, you see, have scored first in just four of their past 17 games. And while they've shown a knack for overcoming deficits for much of this season -- witness their seven victories in games they trailed at the second intermission -- consistently playing from behind is no way to pad your points total.
Then again, the Penguins aren't just struggling to score early in games; they've put just eight pucks past opposing goaltenders during their six-game slide.
That explains why, if you put their collective plus-minus rating from the past six games next to the latest numbers from the stock market, it would look like the Dow is coming off a pretty good week.
San Jose got the only goal it needed when Evander Kane threw a shot past Tristan Jarry at 18:48 of the first period, after the Penguins were guilty of a sloppy change and Kane was able to charge down the slot alone:
The goals Timo Meier, Joel Kelleman, Logan Couture and Joe Thornton added before the game mercifully expired simply compounded the Penguins' misery.
Which is something they've had a lot of in recent days, as the habits and qualities that served them so well for most of the season have, for the most part, deserted them.
"It's a little bit of a head-scratcher," Sullivan said. "Consistency this year, has been one of the attributes of this group. ... For whatever reason, we've hit a bump in the road."
Or perhaps they've driven off a cliff, although the players insist their faith in their teammates remains intact.
"We have guys in here who have been through a lot worse than this," McCann said. "We're not going to get down on ourselves. We're not going to mope. We're going to push through, and come out better."
• Sidney Crosby, who needs two assists to become the 32nd player in NHL history to get 800 in his career, hasn't set up a goal since the Penguins' most recent victory.
• The Penguins enjoyed a rare lopsided victory on faceoffs, going 35-27.
• Linesman Tony Sericolo left the game at 17:08 of the first period after being run into by San Jose's Noah Gregor, but returned after the intermission.
• Stefan Noesen, claimed off waivers from the Penguins earlier this season, had one shot and two hits while playing right wing on the Sharks' fourth line.
• San Jose had seven players record three shots on goal.
• Brian Dumoulin, who is recovering from ankle surgery, sat out his 41st game of 2019-20, which means he officially has missed half the season. He and fellow defenseman John Marino, who had surgery to repair cheekbone fractures, appear to at least be candidates to return when the Penguins face Ottawa Tuesday at PPG Paints Arena.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Zach Aston-Reese (unspecified 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-Sheary
Marleau-Malkin-Rust
Simon-McCann-Hornqvist
Tanev-Blueger-Rodrigues
Johnson-Letang
Pettersson-Schultz
Riikola-Ruhwedel
And for Bob Boughner's Sharks:
Kane-Couture-Gregor
Meier-Thornton-Leblanc
Sorensen-Kellman-Gambrell
Bergmann-Suomela-Noesen
Simek-Burns
Vlasic-Ferraro
Middleton-Heed
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins are scheduled to fly home Sunday and practice Monday at 11 a.m. in Cranberry before facing Ottawa Tuesday at 7:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.
THE COVERAGE
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PHOTO GALLERY
Penguins vs. Sharks, Feb. 29, 2020, San Jose, Calif. - GETTY