NEW YORK -- Mike Sullivan learned a few hours before the opening faceoff that Evgeni Malkin was too ill to play against the Rangers Friday night.
And Sullivan found out a few minutes after that faceoff that he wasn't going to be feeling very well, either.
While he might be starting to get over it by now, there's a pretty good chance Sullivan will have a relapse if he subjects himself to video of the Penguins' 5-1 loss at Madison Square Garden.
It was the Penguins' worst game of this season, in just about every conceivable way.
"They dominated in every area," Sidney Crosby said. "And we didn't have a lot of pushback."
His critique is significant, because Crosby is a generally positive sort who doesn't often speak in such blunt, harsh terms.
Mind you, no one disagreed with a single syllable that he uttered.
That makes it easy to understand why Sullivan didn't so much speak during his postgame meeting with reporters as he did seethe.
His observations about what he had witnessed were terse and uncharacteristically brief, but his bottom-line message -- that he didn't care for anything he had just witnessed -- was impossible to miss. Or misinterpret.
"We got outplayed in every facet of the game," Sullivan said. "We got out-coached in every facet of the game. There's no excuses for it. They were just way better than us in every area."
Indeed, if, as seems likely, the Penguins and Rangers meet in the opening round of the playoffs and the teams play the way they did Friday, their best-of-seven series might be deemed a technical knockout after a couple of games.
"That's the way we can play," New York coach Gerard Gallant said. "Tonight was probably our most complete game."
Perhaps, but the Penguins aren't likely to replicate their effort anytime soon, if only because it wouldn't be easy for their quality of play to sink so precipitously.
Heck, if the Penguins' performance had been a Broadway production, it would have been canceled before the first act was complete.
They peaked when Crosby won that faceoff that began the game. A little more than four minutes later, the outcome was effectively decided, because Alexis Lafreniere, Chris Kreider and Frank Vatrano had put pucks past Tristan Jarry, who stopped just two of the first five shots he faced.
"You give up three in the first five minutes, that's not the way you're going to have success," Evan Rodrigues said. "We got behind the 8-ball early, and couldn't seem to find our way back."
Or find their way to anyplace else worth going, for that matter. The Penguins looked a lot more like a team vying for the No. 1 choice in the draft than one intent on contending for a Stanley Cup.
"We still have to do a better job of fighting our way back," Rodrigues said. "There were 56 minutes left in the game, or 55, whatever it was. We just didn't have that push."
Which is why Sullivan didn't see much difference between the Rangers' early-game dominance and anything that came after it.
"(It was) the same as the first few minutes," he said.
It's revealing that the Penguins' best player likely was Casey DeSmith, who got a little more than four minutes of work between the time when he replaced Jarry at 6:37 of the second period and when he adjourned to the locker room to be examined after appearing to strike the back of his head on the goal post.
DeSmith, who stopped all three shots he faced, was victimized by one of the few consequential hits delivered by a Penguin in this game; Brian Dumoulin backed into him, knocking DeSmith, who appeared to be off-balance, backward into the post.
He remained in the game briefly and appeared to be trying to shake off the effects of the incident, but eventually departed and was replaced by Jarry.
Sullivan said after the game that he did not have an update on the nature or severity of DeSmith's injury.
Although being forced to play without Malkin -- regardless of how little notice they had -- was an obvious hardship, the Penguins declined to use his absence to explain away any aspect of their woeful showing.
"It's not ideal, but we've been in situations like that before," Crosby said. "We understand that that's something that can happen. I think everybody prepares for what they need to do. That's no excuse for the way we played."
With Malkin out of the mix, Sullivan had to dress 11 forwards and seven defensemen and to reconfigure his forward lines. Among other moves, he shifted Jeff Carter from the third line into Malkin's spot and Bryan Rust back onto the No. 1 line with Crosby and Jake Guentzel.
The seventh defenseman, Mark Friedman, got some work on right wing.
Even before Malkin was scratched, circumstances suggested that the Penguins' evening might not go well.
They were playing for the third time in four days, while the Rangers had been off since Tuesday. Consequently, New York had plenty of time to marinate in the misery of a 7-4 loss to New Jersey that night, and to fixate on what it might take to earn a measure of redemption Friday.
Sullivan, though, shrugged off any significance of the Penguins' hectic schedule.
"Not for me, it doesn't (matter)," he said. "That's the challenge of playing in the league. You've got to find ways to win. You have to manage the game appropriately, and we didn't do a very good job."
Of anything.
The Penguins got their only goal during a power play six minutes into the third period, when a Kasperi Kapanen shot from above the right hash deflected off Carter, who was hovering around the crease, and got by goalie Igor Shesterkin.
That goal not only underscored the value of shooting pucks and going to the net to set screens, but allowed the Penguins' power play to break even for the game. It had, you see, earlier yielded a shorthanded goal to Kreider, who converted one of the numerous scoring chances the Rangers generated while down a man.
"That's kind of what they do (while killing penalties)," Rodrigues said. "When they get a turnover, they kind of blow the zone. They get three men up on the rush. We didn't do a good enough job of keeping it away from their goalie on our dump-ins, and it just seemed like we were in-between when they got the puck. They had enough time to blow the zone and kind of get it up there and we weren't coming up in (five-man units) and being able to get a controlled entry."
Those were just a couple of the Penguins' failings when they were up a man.
"We struggled making tape-to-tape passes," Sullivan said. "We couldn't execute. We made poor decisions. We lacked awareness. We just weren't good in any aspect of the game."
And that might be understating it.
Still, deflating as this defeat had to have been, it was no more costly in the standings than any of their other 16 regulation losses in 2021-22.
"It's two points, whether we lose in that fashion or we lose in the last minute of the game," Crosby said. "We have to make sure we don't have an effort like that for the rest of the year."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• While it probably wouldn't have changed the outcome, the Penguins had an apparent goal disallowed shortly after the Rangers built their 3-0 lead. It was waived off immediately because the referee determined that the Penguins had pushed Shesterkin's pad across the goal line, and a subsequent video review confirmed the finding of "goaltender interference."
• Sullivan said during his postgame press conference that he hadn't spoken with Malkin since earlier in the day, and thus could not update his condition.
• Jarry, who allowed four goals on 15 shots before being replaced by DeSmith, turned aside 14 of 15 after returning to the game.
• Seven of the Penguins' 18 forwards and defensemen failed to record a shot on goal. Newcomer Rickard Rakell was one of them.
• The Penguins failed to capitalize on a four-minute power play late in the opening period. "To me, the turning point was killing that four-minute penalty," Gallant said. "If they would have gotten one, it's a different story, but it takes a lot out of them when they don't score."
• Carter's goal initially was credited to Kapanen. It would have been Kapanen's first man-advantage goal of the season and just the third of his NHL career.
• More proof that raw statistics can be misleading: The Penguins had a 26-16 advantage on faceoffs.
• Chad Ruhwedel blocked a game-high three shots.
• Shesterkin was rarely tested and finished with 20 saves,
GETTY
Rickard Rakell takes a shot during the third period Friday night at Madison Square Garden.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Madison Square Garden:
1. Mike Zibanejad, Rangers C
2. Chris Kreider, Rangers LW
3. Alexis Lafreniere, Rangers LW
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Brock McGinn, left winger, is week-to-week because of an unspecified upper-body injury.
• Jason Zucker, left winger, had core-muscle surgery Jan. 25 and is week-to-week. He participated in the game-day skate Friday.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
Rakell-Carter-Kapanen
Heinen-Blueger-Rodrigues
Boyle-Zohorna
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Marino
Pettersson-Ruhwedel
(Friedman)
And for Gerard Gallant's Rangers:
Kreider-Zibanejad-Vatrano
Panarin-Strome-Copp
Lefreniere-Chytil-Goodrow
Motte-Brodzinski-Hunt
Lindgren-Fox
Miller-Trouba
Nemeth-Schneider
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins are scheduled to practice Saturday at noon at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex before facing the Red Wings Sunday at 5:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.
THE CONTENT
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