The Penguins’ defensive struggles continued on Thursday night as they lost their fourth-straight game to the Boston Bruins, 6-2.
“We’re just not executing consistently enough, whether it’s with the puck or without it,” Captain Sidney Crosby said. “You play a team like Boston that’s got a lot of structure, and they’re going to make you pay. They did that a number of times.”
The Penguins were able to open the scoring just under halfway through the opening period when Justin Brazeau scored his first goal of the season after missing the team’s first 13 games with a lower-body injury.
However, the Bruins, who sit atop of the Atlantic Division, were able to come to life offensively and scored three unanswered goals from Pavel Zacha, Mark Kastellic, and Elias Lindholm.
In terms of the odd-man rushes that the team has been giving up, Kris Letang said that it comes down to commitment.
“We had their neutral zone forecheck on display yesterday, and we had it this morning, and we still got stubborn,” Letang said. “And we just played into their hands, and they made us pay. They have skill. They have guys that can put it in the net.”
Coming out for the second period, Pittsburgh generated much more offensively and got rewarded with Nick Robertson’s team-leading seventh goal of the season, cutting the deficit to one.
“There's that moment, that 10-15 minutes we did in the second period of putting pucks deep in the neutral zone, and our forecheck was good,” Letang said. “They allowed us to get to our game and create chances, create a couple of goals. But at the end of the day, if you don't do it for 60, that team's gonna make you pay every time.”
From there, the Bruins continued to capitalize on the Penguins’ mistakes with two goals in less than three minutes from Zacha and Morgan Geekie before Fraser Minten iced the game in the third period to make it 6-2.
“When you’re struggling, you just gotta simplify it,” Crosby said. “Whether it’s little things, habits, winning wall battles. You’re not going to fix everything overnight. When it comes to the details of the game, they just haven’t been there consistently, and we’re playing catch-up because of it. So, we can keep talking all we want, (but) it’s up to us to correct it.”
The Penguins will now head to California for a three-game road trip starting on Saturday in Los Angeles.
“I think you just got to go in there with the mindset of putting a good team effort together and understanding that it might not be pretty, but you just got to find a way to win a game, however you can do that,” Crosby said. “That’s got to be our focus.”
More from Head Coach Dan Muse following Thursday's performance:
What went wrong tonight? What’s ground zero for correcting this? Going off tonight, it was a lot. It was puck play. It was defensive positioning. Some of it was coming off the wall, battles. So, I think right now for us, obviously, there's a number of things that crept in tonight and I think we're not going to fix them all overnight, but we have to start making those corrections. I think the big one for me is the stuff that's totally preventable and just making sure that the structure is there, but then also, just the defensive positioning, the box outs, the getting sticks. The number of breakways that we gave up tonight, we can't expect our goalies to come up with those saves. There's nothing sustainable there, so I've said it before, and now we're going to key in on a couple of areas and continue to work on them. We have to chip away. But it's got to come quick. I think the big one for me tonight is in those battles, you know, at the net front. The numbers against. So, it's got to be corrected.
How do you prevent breakaways? I think if you look at it tonight, some of it's coming off of the puck play. Sometimes it's the high-zone play. Boston comes about as advertised as any team in the league. You know exactly what you're going to get. They've been doing this since last year. It's a credit to them. You know exactly what you're going to get. You know they're going to be sitting back in the neutral zone and they're going to be waiting and hoping for you to turn the puck over. When you do, they're going to go. And when they recover a puck, they're probably going to be rolling out of the zone. So, that's on us. Again, I'll say it's on all of us, I include myself when I say 'us.' But that's on us. Like, we have to correct it because you're not going to win games in this league by allowing these types of chances against. So, it's both pieces. It's on the D at times, but it's also on the forwards. The forwards, there's times where the forwards are going to have to cover for the defensemen. They have to do that job. They have to have that awareness. So, it's those moments where maybe it could go our way, maybe. We hope that we edge all on the offensive side and when that happens, if it doesn't go our way, in terms of recovering the puck, now there's a lot of room and there's a lot of space. And that's where some of those plays are coming up.
Why do you think the team gets away from playing the simple game? How do you as a group get back to that? I think the second period is a good example of that in the sense that I thought for the first, I don't know what it was, 13, 14, 15 minutes of it, I thought we were committed to it. There were a couple they might get a stick on at the last second, but we're working to do the right things and the support was there and the options were there. And I thought we were recovering pucks and I actually really liked some of the looks in the O-zone we were getting and the types of looks. And then, we stopped it. Maybe it's because not enough were going in. I don't know the answer. But we have to have, against everybody really, but especially against teams like this, you have to be patient. You don't have to force anything because that's what they want. When you do that, now we're hoping that something will happen and it's not how you play the game.
The team had a long losing streak last season – What got you out of that? I mean, I think right now the focus is going to be entirely on playing a better brand of hockey here in Los Angeles and that's it. Even within that, it's just getting the right start, putting together shifts, building some momentum and from there. I don't think you can get too far ahead. I think you've got to get back to the details of the game. You've got to go back to just the puck recoveries, the 50-50 pucks, the details that I've seen this group play with, so I'm not guessing that they're capable of it, but we've got to get way more consistency. That's going to be the starting point. From there, you build some momentum. But focus on this next game and that's it.
Is the team physical enough? We have room to grow there. I'm not saying that on everybody on every night, but I think there's room to improve in that area, for sure.
Can you learn from playing Boston? "Every team is different. Every team in the league isn't going to play the exact same. So, I'm not going to sit here and say, like, 'We have to play just like Boston.' I would say that about everybody. We have to, you know, have our own way of playing and own identity that we play to. I think what you can take from that, though, is that they are consistent. Like, you do know what you're going to get. Played them three times last year, played them this year, it's the same exact thing. Can we be better structurally, can we be more consistent structurally? Yes. And so, that piece is there. When you are doing that, if you're defending the right way, defense to offense, it will. So, that's not something that's a revelation from playing Boston. It's just something that we need to do on a more consistent basis.
Are you satisfied with the level of push-back from the team? I mean, tonight, again, I thought from the last five minutes of the second period on, like you could've had more of it. I wouldn't say that's something where I felt that throughout the course of the year, that there's not a pushback. I mean, there's plenty that we can work on. I don't think it's something with the guys where the guys have quit playing during a game or have not been pushing. The way we go about it at times, I think we could be better, but at the same time, I wouldn't say that's necessarily something I've been seeing throughout the course of the year.
