Malkin bails out 1-for-8 power play, secures point before shootout loss

Evgeni Malkin admitted to "not feeling great" about his play earlier this week in Tempe, Ariz. He was speaking after the practice that followed a loss to the Golden Knights, a game in which he was on the ice for the tying and winning goals against. He spoke of wanting to bring more consistency, rather than following a good game with another bad one. 

If his confidence was already down, he didn't do himself any favors the following night against the Coyotes when he and Kris Letang teamed up for an own-goal on a delayed penalty call, with Malkin inadvertently batting the puck into the open net.

Malkin found himself a little redemption in the Penguins' 3-2 shootout loss to the Panthers at PPG Paints Arena as he scored the tying goal in the final minute to force overtime. But what happened in the 59 minutes before that goal is an example of why the Penguins still need more out of Malkin ... and everyone else on their struggling power play.

Monday's own-goal had been weighing on him. He wasn't in any mood to talk about it that night after the game, and he again declined to speak after Thursday's practice. Malkin addressed the own-goal after Friday's game, calling it "down for my confidence."

"Everybody showed me this video when I scored on my own net," Malkin said. "It's bad luck. Sometimes it happens."

Malkin said that coming into this game against the Panthers, he "needed a goal, for sure." He got it, and it couldn't have come at a better time for the Penguins. They trailed the Panthers 2-1 late in the third period, and Alex Nedeljkovic headed to the bench for the extra attacker. Malkin scored with 41.5 seconds remaining to tie the game and ultimately force overtime:

"Now, I feel so much better," Malkin said. "Every goal is important for me. But after last game, it's huge for sure."

Mike Sullivan said that "nobody's harder on himself than Geno himself," and said that he thinks a goal like that one could help Malkin's confidence.

"He understands that we rely on him to produce offense for us," Sullivan said of Malkin. "And when he doesn't, nobody feels it more than he does. So it's never from a lack of effort with G, He's a hard-working guy, a real competitive guy. That goal at the end, that's a huge goal that helps us get a hard-earned point. Hopefully he'll gain a bit of confidence from that."

The goal secured a point in the standings, but that would be all the Penguins got. After a scoreless extra frame, the game went into a shootout. Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell failed to score on their attempts and Jake Guentzel ended up with Penguins' lone shootout goal. The Panthers scored on two of their three attempts to secure the win.

It was a valuable point, a needed point. It's a point that has the Penguins six points back of the Red Wings last wild card spot in the Eastern Conference with three games in hand. Win those games in hand, and they can tie the Red Wings. 

But the Penguins shouldn't have been in a situation in the final minute where they were down a goal and looking to force overtime. They had eight power plays in the game and scored on just the very first one, when Jake Guentzel redirected a Bryan Rust pass past Sergei Bobrovsky:

The Penguins spent a total of 15:07 on the man advantage in the game. In that time they attempted 31 shots. Nine of those attempts were blocked, four missed the net entirely, and 18 still registered as shots on goal. They had seven high-danger chances alone, including Guentzel's tally from right on the doorstep. That's a lot of chances, and some good chances too. Look at where those unblocked attempts were coming from, and they were getting chances off from around the net:

The stat "expected goals" simply recognizes that not all scoring chances are created equally. It takes different factors that go into a scoring chance -- like distance, or whether it was off a rush or a rebound, and assigns the chance a value based on the league-average probability that a scoring chance of that type becomes a goal. The end result is a total number to represent the number of goals that would be expected on league average. Based on the quality of chances the Penguins were getting on the power play in this game, their expected goals on the power play alone was 2.31. 

The Penguins got off good chances on the power play, albeit not as many as they would have liked given how long they were on the power play. But the story was the same as it's been all season -- the Penguins just can't finish on the chances they do get. If the Penguins got the one or two extra power play goals, maybe this game ends in a regulation win.

“I thought there were moments when they looked pretty good," Sullivan said. "There were others where we were a little bit disconnected. Obviously, it's disappointing we didn't score more. I thought we had some looks that we didn’t necessarily finish on. I just think we got to stick with it."

"Stick with it" doesn't mean "change nothing." The Penguins did make adjustments to the personnel groups as the game went on. Letang skated on a first unit with Crosby, Guentzel, Rust and Valtteri Puustinen, while Erik Karlsson led a second unit of Malkin, Jeff Carter, Rickard Rakell and Eller. The result stayed the same. No goals.

Malkin said he understood the switch of the personnel on the units. What they had wasn't working. And he thinks that post-switch, the Penguins did get a couple of good looks on the power play. But coaching decisions aside, it's on the players to execute and actually finish.

"We should play better," Malkin said. "I mean, we should help the team to win. We had so many power plays tonight, a 5 on 3 for like 20 seconds. It's not great. ... If you're not scoring, you lose your confidence. Maybe right now, we're not feeling it. But we need one goal and maybe it helps us tomorrow."

The Penguins' power play dropped to 13.3% conversion rate Friday, tied for 31st in the league. That's a lot of goals, a lot of wins, and a lot of points in the standings just wasted through the first half of the season. It would probably be fair to say that the power play was expected to be a major factor for the Penguins coming into the season ... just not quite in this way. This has been the No. 1 problem all season. Nothing else comes close.

The Penguins could make things a whole lot easier on themselves and lessen the need for these late-game heroics by finally finding a solution to that problem.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG Paints Arena:

1. Sam Reinhart, Panthers C
2. Sergei Bobrovsky, Panthers G
3. Evgeni Malkin, Penguins C

THE IN-GAME INJURIES

• Penguins: None

• Panthers: Aleksander Barkov left briefly in the second period after a collision with Letang but returned to the game.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust
Drew O'Connor - Evgeni Malkin - Colin White
Rickard Rakell - Lars Eller - Valtteri Puustinen
Jansen Harkins - Noel Acciari - Jeff Carter

Marcus Pettersson - Kris Letang
Ryan Graves - Erik Karlsson
P.O Joseph - Chad Ruhwedel

And for Paul Maurice's Panthers:

Eetu Luostarinen - Anton Lundell - Sam Reinhart
Carter Verhaeghe - Sam Bennett - Matthew Tkachuk
Evan Rodrigues - Aleksander Barkov - Mackie Samoskevich
Jonah Gadjovich - Kevin Stenlund - Ryan Lomberg

Gustav Forsling - Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola - Brandon Montour
Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Dmitry Kulikov

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins play the Canadiens on Saturday at 7:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena, the last thing they do before the combined bye week/All Star break starts.

THE FEED

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