Sully Says: When We Don't Live Up To Expectations, We Take It To Heart
Here's what the Penguins head coach had to say after the team's winless streak went to seven games
By
Michelle Crechiolo
Penguins Team Reporter
After a scoreless first, Sidney Crosby got on the board 5:24 into the second period to put Pittsburgh up 1-0 before the Kraken evened the score.
Yanni Gourde gave Seattle a 2-1 lead in the final frame right as the Penguins got back to full strength. Technically, they were perfect on the PK, but couldn't convert any of their three power plays.
Jake Guentzel tied it in the third, but unfortunately, Brandon Tanev netted the winner with 3:39 left in regulation to give Seattle the victory.
Forwards Teddy Blueger and Jeff Carter remain out due to injury, and Josh Archibald was also sidelined for the game. That meant rookie Sam Poulin slotted back in. Here is the workflow they used…
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Rickard Rakell
Brock McGinn-Ryan Poehling-Kasperi Kapanen
Drew O'Connor-Sam Poulin-Danton Heinen
Brian Dumoulin-Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson-Jeff Petry
P.O Joseph-Jan Rutta
Tristan Jarry made 25 saves, including one on a shorthanded breakaway.
Here is what Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan had to say after the game.
Kris Letang talked about the group still being confident despite the streak. Is that your observation, and how do you maintain that confidence, and not let a lack of confidence creep into the room under these circumstances?
Well, it's not easy, because that's the human aspect of sports. When you go through a challenging time, it's not always easy to make sure that you play a confident game, and you play an assertive game. But I do think the solution is just making sure that we stay in the moment, and we don't get overwhelmed by all the noise around it. We just got to stay in the moment, focus on the process, and we got to dig our way out of it. That's what we're trying to do.
A lot of the losses have been tight. Losing leads in the third period; tonight, it gets tied late and Brandon Tanev scores. Does it make it more difficult on the team to have those close games? Or is it easier because they know that they're right there, and that it's just a matter of getting through?
I'm not sure I have a great answer for you. I think at the end of the day, you lose, and that stings. Because these guys are competitive guys, and they care. And when we don't live up to the expectations that we have for each other and we don't get the results more consistently than we have as of late, these guys take it to heart. We all do. I know how much they care, and like I said, we just got to dig in a little bit more. We've got to become more determined. We've got to, I think, be more vigilant in some of the critical moments in the game. I thought when we got the second goal to tie it up, it was a big boost on the bench. We had a fair amount of momentum off of that in the third period. I thought in the third period, we had a lot of momentum. So it's discouraging from that standpoint. But we've got to figure out what we're going to learn from it, and then we got to gather ourselves and get ready to win a game, the one right in front of us coming up here.
We saw you guys toying around with your forward lines and your combinations a little bit. Has there been any consideration to do the same on the back end as well?
We have. There's been lots of different combinations going over the boards on the blue line. You've seen a fair amount of P.O playing with Kris Letang; you've seen Dumo with Jeff Petry; you've seen Jan Rutta play with Marcus Pettersson. There's been a lot of that going on in the middle of the game, game-to-game. We're trying to figure out what we can do as a coaching staff to try to get a spark here, and moving people around throughout the course of the game is part of it.
Do you feel that the penalty kill (which ranked 28th in the league entering the game) was able to take any steps in the right direction tonight? Overall, how do you assess how that unit did?
I thought they did a real good job tonight. They had limited zone time. I thought we did a good job making the entries difficult. We were active down the ice. They score right as one expires, I guess you could consider it a 5-on-5 goal. It was a little bit of a broken play. But I thought overall, it was much better.
