Penguins Fall to the Capitals In Last Game Before Trade Deadline

The Penguins fell to the Capitals, 6-0, on Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena. It was a difficult loss to say the least, as Pittsburgh is in a battle to keep its playoff hopes alive, which meant they could ill afford to lose a four-point swing against a division rival.

But these players are human, and there’s been a lot of noise around the Penguins leading into Friday’s NHL trade deadline (at 3 PM Eastern) – “probably more so than there’s been in a lot of years,” as Head Coach Mike Sullivan pointed out the other day – and rumors about Jake Guentzel’s situation started to heat up right before puck drop.

The trade became official at 11:40 PM, with the Penguins acquiring forwards Michael Bunting, Ville Koivunen, Vasily Ponomarev, Cruz Lucius and conditional 2024 first-round and fifth-round draft picks from the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for Guentzel and Ty Smith. The full details are here.

"Obviously, we didn't do a good enough job handling a lot of that noise around the team,” Sullivan said, who noted that nothing was official when he spoke to the media just before 10 PM. “Jake means an awful lot to these guys, and when you win championships together, there's a certain bond that’s hard to put into words.

“As much as we preach stay on task here and focus, obviously I have to believe some of that had an impact on what went on the ice tonight. It's not an excuse. We still need to do our jobs. That's our business. That's what we sign up for. We've got to be better moving forward."

Alex Nedeljkovic entered the game in relief with 11:10 left to go in the second period after Tristan Jarry gave up four goals on 22 shots. Charlie Lindgren made 39 saves to earn the shutout at the other end.

It was a less-than-ideal start for the Penguins, as they surrendered their league-leading 10^th shorthanded goal – scored by Tom Wilson – after Sidney Crosby drew a penalty on the opening faceoff. But Pittsburgh’s penalty kill came through after Ryan Graves got assessed a double minor for high sticking, keeping the Capitals off the board during their four minutes of power play time.

However, Washington broke through early in the second on the man-advantage, with Alex Ovechkin getting his 18^th goal of the year. The Capitals have been red-hot in that area of the game, as they’ve now converted five games in a row and in nine of their last 10.

The Capitals didn’t look back from there, going into the second intermission with a 5-0 lead. Nick Jensen, Hendrix Lapierre, and Ivan Miroshnichenko all found the back of the net. Sonny Milano then extended his goal-scoring streak to four games with a tally in the third period.

“That one's tough to explain,” Kris Letang said. “We had a chance to get on the board, get a power play right off the game. I don’t know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. I have to look at it again. There's nothing going on, no energy, no passion, nothing. As a group, we didn't show up."

The Penguins are scheduled to fly out to Boston on Friday afternoon after the trade deadline to face the Bruins on Saturday at 3 PM.

“I think the trade deadline time’s always tough, but I think given the circumstances, I would say that’s a little heavier,” Sidney Crosby said.

Watch below for what the Penguins captain had to say: