Just look at the final score and see that the Penguins lost, 5-2, and you might think that they didn't do anything well against Washington Saturday at PPG Paints Arena.
Not so.
Fact is, they were very good at giving up odd-man breaks. Did a terrific job of allowing uncontested shots from the slot, too. And they were simply outstanding at not taking advantage of yet another five-on-three power play.
Oh, and they were pretty impressive in transforming Nic Dowd, the Capitals' fourth-line center, into a major offensive force, too.
Dowd didn't have a goal in his previous 24 games, but ended that drought just 1:52 into the opening period. And while that would be been a nice day's offensive output for him, Dowd added another just 34 seconds into the third period, while the Penguins were plodding through yet another unproductive power play.
He scored that one off a feed from Penguins alum Carl Hagelin to cap a two-on-one rush, one of Washington's many odd-man breaks in this game:
Indeed, if the Penguins had gotten a goal for every three or four odd-man rushes they surrendered, they would have won the game. In a blowout.
"They just took advantage of our mistakes and made us pay on the odd-man rushes," Matt Murray said.
Dowd's second of the game was also the second shorthanded goal the Penguins have given up in the past two games after allowing just three in the first 65 this season.
"That's obviously an area where I thought, for most of the year, we've been very good at," Mike Sullivan said.
Of course, for much of 2019-20, the Penguins also were pretty good at limiting how man two-on-ones and three-on-twos they faced. But those odd-man rushes -- and the lapses that lead to them -- have become increasingly common during the past month or so.
"It's certainly an area we've discussed a lot in the last five or six weeks," Sullivan said. "It just boils down to discipline and details, making sure we pay attention. That we have awareness on the ice and we make better decisions and we support one another. It's definitely an area of our game where we have to get better."
The Penguins' power play managed to break even for the day when Evgeni Malkin converted on their fifth -- and final -- chance with the extra man, but the Penguins could have used a goal from it a couple of hours earlier, when they were losing, 1-0, and had a two-man advantage for 85 seconds.
They generated just one shot on goal during that span, however. For the season, they are 2-for-6 during 5-on-3s, covering a total of seven minutes, two seconds. That's a miserable showing for a power play with the Penguins' exceptional skill level.
"Five-on-threes are usually important," Sidney Crosby said. "Momentum swings and shifts in games. We had one, and didn't capitalize."
The Penguins usually don't, probably because they tend to put a lot more time and effort into passing the puck than shooting it, which is the same issue that leads to them underachieving on conventional power plays, too.
The loss was a serious blow to the Penguins' chances of overtaking Washington and Philadelphia for first place in the Metropolitan Division. They have a game-in-hand on the Capitals, but now trail them by five points.
This was their second defeat in two weeks by the Capitals, who have been pretty lackluster in two kinds of games -- home and away -- for about 2 1/2 months.
Washington began the day 14-14-2 since the NHL's holiday break in late December, and had leaked in a league-high average of 3.53 goals during that 30-game span.
The Penguins, though, didn't seem inclined to try to add to the Capitals' defensive miseries.
For most of the first two periods, they acted as if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had advised them to do everything possible to avoid interacting with Capitals goalie Braden Holtby, who did not face his tenth shot of the game until less than two minutes remained before the second intermission.
Shortly after the Penguins hit double-digits in shots, Holtby was compelled to reject a penalty shot by Penguins forward Jared McCann -- who has at least one goal in each of his past 20 games, except for 20 of them -- but still had to make only a handful of quality stops among his 26 saves.
The Penguins actually managed to match Washington's total of 28 shots, but those raw numbers strictly reflect quantity, not quality.
And while third-period goals by Crosby and Malkin scuffed up Holtby's personal stats a bit -- and gave those in the crowd of 18,656 who weren't wearing red jerseys a little reason to cheer -- they never really injected any real suspense about the outcome into the proceedings.
Especially when T.J. Oshie closed out the scoring just 56 seconds after Malkin had given the crowd a wisp of hope by scoring a power-play goal to make it 4-2 at 12:16 of the third.
But Oshie's goal was neither the official game-winner nor one that had a profound impact on anything other than Washington's margin of victory.
The hard reality is that the outcome had been all but settled during the first period, when the Capitals exploited a series of letdowns and breakdowns by the Penguins to build a 3-0 lead.
"The first period, we were asleep," Malkin said. "We think we’re home and it’s an easy game, but it’s not."
Actually, the Penguins did make it all look fairly easy. For the Capitals, anyway.
"We definitely gave them a few in the first," Brian Dumoulin said. "They capitalized. They're a dangerous team if you give them those chances. ... We just dug too big of a hole in the first."
Add it to the list of things the Penguins did really, really well on Saturday.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THE INJURIES
• Anthony Angello (unspecified upper-body)
• Zach Aston-Reese (unspecified lower-body)
• Jake Guentzel (shoulder surgery)
• Dominik Simon (unspecified upper-body)
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and defense pairings:
Zucker-Crosby-Sheary
Marleau-Malkin-Rust
McCann-Bjugstad-Hornqvist
Tanev-Blueger-Lafferty
Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Johnson-Schultz
And for Todd Reirden's Capitals:
Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Wilson
Vrana-Backstrom-Oshie
Hagelin-Eller-Kovalchuk
Panik-Dowd-Hathaway
Dillon-Carlson
Orlov-Jensen
Siegenthaler-Kempny
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins will face Carolina Sunday at 1:38 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena in the second of 10 consecutive games against Metropolitan Division opponents.
THE COVERAGE
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