Whether or not the performances from Kris Letang and Jeff Petry this season have been up to the level they're capable of is one thing. It's something entirely else to recognize that their absences from the Penguins' lineup are leaving behind holes that simply can't be filled, only plugged. And those plugs are hanging on for dear life.
Throw Marcus Pettersson into that mix, as well, after he missed the Penguins' 4-1 loss to the Jets here at PPG Paints Arena Friday night due to illness.
The minutes and situations Letang and Petry -- and Pettersson, here and there -- routinely handle with ease can definitely be taken for granted on nights when the Penguins merely break even in shots and chances with them out on the ice. But not on nights like Friday. Not one bit.
Now, it's not exactly a revelation that any team would struggle without their three best defensemen. Then again, that's the reality the Penguins are facing right now.
Unfortunate circumstances considered, the attention to detail, effort and, of course, execution, wasn't good enough against the Jets. The Penguins' defensemen had a rough night defensively, and their forwards didn't do them any favors.
Just over halfway through the first period, the Penguins gave a glimpse of what was to come throughout the night when things went south on the penalty-kill in a hurry.
Blake Wheeler notched the game's first goal:
Things started out well for the Penguins in that sequence. To that point, they'd done a fine job on the penalty-kill. With about 30 seconds remaining on the penalty, they allowed a rather unthreatening blast from the point. But that blast from the point might as well have been a nuke for what it led to.
Dustin Tokarski allowed a juicy rebound on the blast, but it couldn't have been in a better spot, as Mark Friedman was boxing out Adam Lowry while Teddy Blueger and Brock McGinn were the only other players in the immediate vicinity of the puck. What came next from Blueger was near-inexcusable for a player whose value has been almost entirely reduced to the penalty-kill this season.
In a compromised position like that with the rebound hopping to his stick, his two options were to softly push the puck to Tokarski for him to freeze it, or rip the puck out of harm's way as hard as possible. He did neither, instead forcing a destined-to-fail pass to McGinn that forced Tokarski to make a sprawling save along the goal line. That sprawling save, however, sent the puck right to an unmarked Cole Perfetti, and it was just a snap later that Wheeler infiltrated the very space he shouldn't have been able to reach before scoring.
Should Chad Ruhwedel be blamed for getting knocked off balance there? Or Friedman for motioning to get in the way of Perfetti's shot, taking himself out of position to physically engage with a Jets skater in the crease? It's tough to say due to the bang-bang nature of the play, but they still failed to get the job done. Same goes for McGinn, who stood around and watched the whole thing unfold.
The Jets' second goal featured more sloppy defensive work from a pair of Penguins forwards as Brian Dumoulin once again got outclassed in the one area that he's supposed to be making a positive difference.
Mark Scheifele scored this one:
Not only did the Penguins allow two cross-ice passes while the Jets rushed into the zone, Rickard Rakell and Jason Zucker then had the batteries die in their controllers, leaving Wheeler all alone to creep in on goal to set up Scheifele.
Seriously, go pause the frame right after Wheeler gets the puck back. The "Oh ****" body language from both Rakell and Zucker tells all.
Dumoulin did a decent job of staying with Scheifele ... until he didn't:
Dumoulin played a team-high 23:04. With the way he's played this season, he shouldn't be sniffing 20 minutes, but the Penguins weren't left with much of a choice. P.O Joseph logged a season-high 19:43 and the Penguins' results were just as poor with him out there as they were with Dumoulin.
"It's a challenge," Mike Sullivan said after the game. "We're missing some guys back there that play heavy minutes for us. It's hard to replace those guys, without a doubt. But we've got find a way to simplify the game, play as a group of five out there, and try to play more of a simplified version of ourselves to give ourselves a chance."
Moments after Scheifele made it a 2-1 game in favor of the Jets, Nikolaj Ehlers capitalized on loose gaps from Dumoulin and Friedman to make it 3-1:
This really captures an issue I've had with the Penguins at various points of the season. All three forwards got beat with a counterattack in the neutral zone and quickly found themselves below the puck with the Jets going the other way. That is what it is, but see how much space there was between Dumoulin and Friedman and the furthest Penguins forward back? Yeah, that's a problem. Or a massive opportunity if you're the Jets.
You'll frequently hear players and coaches refer to playing as a unit, just like Sullivan did in the above quote. The defensemen are absolutely included in that, and failing to gap up with your forwards goes directly against it. The same thing happens in the offensive zone. All three forwards will be working down low, but the defensemen fail to shrink the zone, then all of the sudden there's a change of possession and the opposition has plenty of time and space to operate in transition.
To cap it all off, Scheifele picked up his second of the night during the third period, blistering a one-timer by Tokarski as the Penguins stood around and watched him do it:
Not the only one at fault, Ty Smith was the biggest puck-watcher of them all, failing to mark Scheifele until it was far too late.
"It doesn't matter who's in the lineup," Joseph would say, "we've still got to do the job."
And that's what's so puzzling about what transpired Friday. The Penguins have found themselves in situations like this plenty of times before. OK, maybe not plenty of times before to this degree, but still, they've managed to squeeze quite a bit of juice out of seemingly dry lemons when the injury bug hits. What's different now?
Nobody is expecting business-as-usual results from this current D-corps. That said, it's not unreasonable to expect much better from them than what they showed Friday night.
