Even after an immensely disappointing Western road trip in which they lost four consecutive games, the Penguins' ability to create quality offensive chances this season -- especially at 5-on-5 -- has been better than the vast majority of the league.
That didn't change during Tuesday's 6-5 overtime loss to the Bruins, but the problem is that the Penguins are giving a ton of it right back going the other way.
Several seasons removed from back-to-back Stanley Cups, Mike Sullivan morphed the Penguins into one of the better defensive teams around the league. They were never the cream of the crop in their own end, but dating back to the 2019-20 season they are comfortably a top-10 team at limiting high-octane chances from the opposition.
Of course, despite those strong overall impacts, there was a legitimate -- if not always prevalent -- problem regarding defensive play at the net-front. The issues within that problem ranged from getting outmuscled to simply not making the proper reads at the appropriate times.
Ron Hextall re-tooled the blue line this past offseason to address the problem, among several other factors, but 10 games into the new season there isn't much at all indicating that the Penguins are a better defensive team now than they were six months ago.
If anything, the current state of the Penguins' defense poses more questions than the D-corps that was recently torn apart.
And that's coming from someone who advocated for it.
"Well, it’s a number of things, but at the end of the day we’ve got to find a way to win games," Sullivan said after the Penguins surrendered four unanswered goals, blowing a three-goal lead. "When you get a two-goal lead going into the third, you’re in a good position to win, and we had opportunities to win and we didn’t take advantage of it."
The thing is, the Penguins played a relatively decent game on Tuesday -- even more so when you consider the opponent -- but just as it has been in the past, it was the breakdowns at the most inopportune times that did them in.
Don't get it twisted, the Penguins' forwards are not absolved in the slightest for some of the positions they have put the defense in. Some of those things can, and probably will be, cleaned up, but the style of hockey they play will inherently lead to such instances where the D needs to step up and compensate, and they just aren't doing so right now.
That's Charlie Coyle whacking home a loose puck in the crease five minutes into the game after Sidney Crosby had already put the Penguins up 1-0.
The Bruins' counterattack started with Drew O'Connor making an off-the-mark pass to Jeff Petry, which he does carry blame for. That specific error, though, shouldn't suddenly lead to several high-danger chances against with the puck ultimately ending up in the net. Petry found himself in no man's land and didn't even so much as attempt to recover as he was getting burned to the outside.
Then there's Brian Dumoulin collapsing to the crease in the perfect spot to get the puck out of harm's way, only to take a giant swing-and-miss while taking himself out of position. The puck was bouncing, and it was unlucky that he missed, but that's all the more reason that Dumoulin should have had a little more body control and established his position right on top of the crease.
The Bruins nabbed their second goal of the game later in the first period on a blunder between Petry and Chad Ruhwedel:
A stick that got in his way caused Ruhwedel to miss the fact that Petry was on his way back in support. He played the rush like a 2-on-1 instead of shading over to the puck carrier, but Petry shares the burden of letting the cross-ice pass get through, as he lock-eyed on the carrier and failed to pick up the eventual goal-scorer, who cut underneath his linemates to the weak side of the ice as the trailing forward.
Overlaps are one of the best ways to create offense off the rush, but Petry has to have a higher level of awareness here, not only for the forward who escaped him, but recognizing that he is converging on a player who is quite clearly taken out of the play.
The Bruins worked their way back to make it a 5-4 game with time winding down in the third period.
"It wasn’t a matter of getting hemmed in our end the whole third period," Sullivan said. "I didn’t feel that at all. I thought we broke down on a couple of occasions and it ended up in the back of our net."
Or as Crosby put it: "I think we gotta do a better job locking it down."
After pulling the goalie, Taylor Hall found the back of the net to tie things up, in large thanks to the "defense" from Dumoulin and Petry during the sequence:
There's Dumoulin getting outworked, making poor reads and allowing the prime real estate in front of Tristan Jarry to be occupied by someone other than himself. And then there's Petry getting knocked off balance and falling to the corner as the puck is banged home.
It's hockey. Screw-ups like that, and goofy plays in general, are going to happen. But this is happening to both Dumoulin and Petry at an alarming rate right now.
Dumoulin is not doing much of anything to positively impact the game. The current rates at which he's on the ice for 5-on-5 quality chances against and goals against are the highest of his career. It's becoming increasingly apparent that he is no longer capable of filling a top-pairing role, and that spells big issues for the rest of the blue line.
Following the game, I asked Sullivan for his assessment of Dumoulin's performance.
"I thought he competed hard tonight," he said. "We relied on him in a lot of situations, I thought he competed hard."
Anyone expecting Sullivan to throw his longtime defenseman under the bus doesn't know how he operates. That was never going to happen, and I didn't want him to. I was hoping for a more detailed response, but the lack of detail is just as telling.
The question, though, is whether or not anything changes.
There's a good chance that you know by now how highly I think of Marcus Pettersson. He's the Penguins' best pure defensive defenseman, and has more offensive upside than many give him credit for. That said, he's a second-pairing defender. It is what it is, and there's nothing wrong with that.
There is something wrong with the fact that Pettersson has -- far and away -- been the Penguins' best and most consistent defenseman this season. That's squarely directed at Petry and Kris Letang, who missed the game due to illness.
As evidenced by Hampus Lindholm's overtime-winner, Pettersson isn't perfect all the time, either:
When Letang inevitably returns, which could be as soon as Wednesday night in Buffalo, the Penguins have the option to continue trotting out the usual D-pairings that we've seen for most of the season, or they could accept that something needs to change. That starts with getting Dumoulin off the top pairing and minimizing his role.
I'd be tempted to bring Pettersson up in his place, but as I mentioned, he's best suited as a second-pairing defenseman. And for as rough as Petry's play has been at various points of this season, his pairing with Pettersson is currently rocking a 59% share of 5-on-5 goals and a 61.1% share of expected goals, per Evolving-Hockey. It would be wise to let that continue.
That leaves Jan Rutta or P.O Joseph to slide up with Letang. Rutta is an enticing option in that spot because he spent time playing on the Lightning's first-pairing with Victor Hedman, but if that were to happen, it would force another defender to play on their off-side.
Joseph hasn't been lighting the world on fire with his performance, but he has been solid enough to earn a look next to Letang considering the current alternatives. This would allow Dumoulin to swap with him on the third pairing, which, in theory, should be beneficial toward his overall impacts.
Whatever ends up happening with the pairings, the Penguins cannot go through the rest of the season getting more of the same from the entire group. That much was clear after Tuesday's collapse to the Bruins.
