LOS ANGELES -- This can be a hell of a hockey team. Still. For real.
I've felt that way about these Penguins through training camp, through the season's slow start, through tearing it up for a month, through knocking off powerhouses, through letdowns against last-place patsies, through this particular California trip's opening romp Friday night in Anaheim and, yeah, believe it or not, through this 6-0 blanking by the Kings less than 24 hours later here at Crypto.com Arena.
Maybe that'll sound silly. Or even stupid. I'm certainly aware of the timing.
So wait, I can offer one that'll sound even more silly/stupid, at least on the surface: They should've won this one.
They were the aggressors from the drop of the puck, they had ample hop, they had a handful of quality chances offensively, they had all the right positioning at all points in the rink and ... man, they were just sharp. And that persisted through the now-standard early goal allowed, this time at 2:28 by Jaret Anderson-Dolan. Everyone kept coming. Atop the puck, stick-to-it-iveness, heads on swivels, all that Mike Sullivan material.
Don't take my word for it, though.
"Yeah, I thought we had a real good first," Sullivan would say afterward. "I thought we came out with a lot of energy. We were trying to play quick. I thought we made good decisions, for the most part. We came out on the wrong side of the score, but I thought the first period was a good period for us. They got that third goal early in the second, and it was just tough to overcome that."
That was Adrian Kempe's first of a franchise-record four consecutive goals, 1:58 into the second, at which point Sullivan pulled Casey DeSmith after three goals on 15 shots. Dustin Tokarski was waved onto the ice.
I asked Sullivan if he'd still seen a lot of the intangibles he'd been lauding of late, notably in the overtime victory over the Avalanche back home, then in Anaheim.
"In the first, yeah. I thought we brought the right mindset, the right energy. The intentions were there. We had some really good looks early in that period. We could've gotten a lead right away. I thought their goalie made some big saves for them. And you know, that's hockey."
Hm. Well, sure, goaltending is hockey. And though Sullivan didn't make that connection himself -- that'd violate multiple codes of the hockey culture manual -- it wasn't hard. Pheonix Copley stopped all 25 shots his way, and DeSmith and Tokarski also stopped 25 ... out of 31.
Asked if this was another example of the Penguins' inconsistency, Sullivan came right back, "I don't think that was the case. You know, we got on the wrong side of the score tonight. It got away from us. But like I said, I thought the start of the game, the first period, I thought we played really well. It just got away from us as the game went on."
If that's not enough, I asked Kris Letang something similar, and he, too, downplayed the score:
"At the end of the day, we're looking at the performance," he'd say. "We did a good job in the first and ... it doesn't go your way. You have to shake it off."
No one in the Eastern time zone who stayed up till 2 a.m. will want to hear this, but neither of these two is the positive-spin type, and they're both right. Setting aside what was plainly evident, the Penguins wound up with a 68-54 edge in shot attempts and controlled 55.7% of play. Which probably isn't a persistent result in losses by a margin of a half-dozen goals.
So I'll say what they can't, filter-free: The goaltending wasn't of NHL caliber. And it hasn't been of NHL caliber for the overwhelming bulk of the time that Tristan Jarry's missed to injury with DeSmith and Tokarski combining for a sickly .902 save percentage. When Jarry's in the net, the Penguins are 16-5-5, a comfortable, contending pace. But he's missed way too much time, not just this winter but over the past three.
In fact, if anyone's still reading this after my first few paragraphs up there -- and there are a lot of folks who can't get past a scoreboard in any analysis -- I'm going to take this little filter-free exercise further. Because on this night, it feels especially right.
The three big solutions for this team at this time are, in order:
3. JEFF CARTER'S DONE.
That's not being mean. That's not being disrespectful. It's every bit as fair and respectful as if, in the event he were still performing as he did upon his arrival from the Kings, I were to advocate for the Penguins to offer him a contract extension. It's two sides of the same coin, handled in the same manner.
He's done. D-O-N-E.
I could bore everyone to tears with accumulated advanced statistics, all of which painfully illustrate him both as the roster's worst defensive player by a broad margin, or I could cite his one point over the past 13 games, or I could get super-stark and show this from the second period here:
If that's an isolated instance, it's hollow. Could happen to anyone. But this is how Carter looks, sadly, in general now. And how he's looked for quite a while now.
If I keep elaborating, it'll cross into mean. So I won't. But it's not as if everyone -- including Sullivan, Ron Hextall and Brian Burke -- aren't seeing this for themselves.
Act on it. This is awful. Including for Carter.
I was about to ask him to evaluate his own game after this one, but when the question before mine -- only the fourth of the brief session -- brought up his hit earlier this week that concussed the Avalanche's Cale Makar, a team official declared, 'Last question!' and I didn't get the chance. And since Carter had emerged from a month of avoiding the media only because he was in L.A. and could answer happy questions about the Kings retiring former teammate Dustin Brown's number before this game ... yeah, I'll try in March, I guess.
Again, act on it. Find a two-way center via trade. Get clever with the cap. Be willing to send out draft picks.
Imagine the difference of an impact player in precisely Carter's place.
2. FIX THE BOTTOM SIX.
Meaning almost all of it, not just Carter.
It's wild that anything about the bottom six could be a more vexing issue than Carter himself, but it's also accurate. When Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and the rest of the top two lines are doing almost all of the scoring -- and for that matter, when Sid and Geno are yet again handling their own physical affairs, as they had to again here -- that's a Hollywood-sized sign of a grotesque imbalance within the forward group.
The fourth line's mostly just missing the pre-broken-jaw version of Teddy Blueger. Ryan Poehling's been outstanding, Josh Archibald capable. But Teddy's got to be the glue he once was, or not much will come of this unit that Poehling won't create himself.
The third line ... that's different.
It couldn't be more obvious that neither Brock McGinn nor Kasperi Kapanen even sees himself as a bottom-six type. Not once on the rink, anyway. The grit level's negligible with McGinn, next to nothing with Kapanen. They aren't defending, aren't driving play anywhere near what's needed. And my goodness, for guys who apparently think they're scorers, McGinn doesn't have a point -- A POINT -- since Dec. 19, a span of 19 games, and Kapanen's got a goal and two assists in his past 10 games.
But to McGinn alone: It's not easy to not have a point as a forward in 19 consecutive games, but it's a hell of a lot easier than explaining how such a player could go out of his way to avoid attempting to block a shot three times on the same Los Angeles power play in the third period, lowlighted by this gem:
Herculean effort there, huh?
If that's Sid or Geno or most every other forward, I don't want them dropping in a blowout. I might not even want McGinn dropping. But barely reaching forward with the blade, as if it's too much bother or beneath him ... I can't.
They're way too cozy. And without justification.
Replace both, buy Teddy a face-shield, and dress Carter in street clothes only.
1. TOUGHEN UP JARRY.
I don't make a habit of doubting the veracity of athletes' injuries. But I also don't make a habit of ignoring engulfing indications that Jarry hasn't needed to miss all the time he's missed since being left alone as the No. 1 goaltender in Pittsburgh.
Whether fair or not, a legit No. 1 comes with one trait above all, and that's reliability.
The 2022-23 NHL season's scarcely past the All-Star break, and he's already had three separate issues, two in the past month alone. I don't know what they are because that's how hockey rolls, but I've heard Sullivan downplay Jarry's current one, I've heard Ron Hextall downplay it, and I've now seen Jarry partake in a practice here in Anaheim and declare himself that he was "a limited participant," even though that didn't appear to be the case. When asked how he was limited, he answered, "I don't know."
And I'm not even repeating other injuries from the past, not least of which was the one that kept him out of all but Game 7 of the first-round series with the Rangers, and even then he'd say months later that he would've had to miss the entire following series had the Penguins advanced.
How could that've been known?
Guess we don't know that, either.
Whatever. What matters is this: Jarry needs to suit up. Next game in San Jose. That's Tuesday night, and he'll have a day off Sunday, a full practice Monday to prepare.
Make clear to him, in private, away from people like me, that his team's counting on him. Not in a week or two. Now.
Make clear to him, in private, away from people like me, that his chance of securing any semblance of a big-time contract before testing free agency next summer is a fat zero unless he logs X number of games down the stretch. Show him the money Connor Hellebuyck's making in Winnipeg, or what Andrei Vasilevskiy's making in Tampa, and ask him how he'd feel about settling for a fraction of that.
Horses get paid. Wounded animals not so much.
Once more with gusto: Hell of a hockey team. Hell of an opportunity. The best players have been the best players, and they're always the hardest to acquire. That's a blessing. As are so many other facets.
These three solutions, by comparison ... come on.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Crypto.com Arena:
1. Adrian Kempe, Kings LW
2. Anze Kopitar, Kings C
3. Pheonix Copley, Kings G
THE INJURIES
• Kris Letang, defenseman, returned after missing the game in Anaheim due to illness. I asked him after this game to confirm it wasn't serious, and he replied, "No, no. Got sick right before the game."
• Tristan Jarry, goaltender, has an upper-body injury and is practicing with the team.
• Jan Rutta, defenseman, has an upper-body injury and is practicing with the team.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan's lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Brock McGinn-Jeff Carter-Kasperi Kapanen
Ryan Poehling-Teddy Blueger-Josh Archibald
Brian Dumoulin-Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson-Jeff Petry
P.O Joseph-Mark Friedman
And for Todd McLellan's Kings:
Quinton Byfield-Anze Kopitar-Adrian Kempe
Trevor Moore-Phillip Danault-Viktor Arvidsson
Kevin Fiala-Blake Lizotte-Alex Iafallo
Jaret Anderson-Rasmus Kupari-Arthur Kaliyev
Mikey Anderson-Drew Doughty
Sean Durzy-Matt Roy
Alexander Edler-Sean Walker
THE SCHEDULE
It's Super Bowl Sunday, and the NHL's got a light four-game slate, all out of the way before kickoff and none involving the Penguins, who'll take the day down here in L.A. There's a practice at the Kings' facility Monday, then one last California game Tuesday night in San Jose. Danny and I have a rental car.
THE MULTIMEDIA
THE CONTENT
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