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Panthers Outclass Penguins, Record Home Winning Streak Over

January 21, 2014, 9:24 AM ET [147 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
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The Pittsburgh Penguins returned to game action but nobody informed the players and the Florida Panthers cruised to a 5-1 victory on Monday night. The loss ends the Penguins franchise record 13 game home winning streak.

Here are the game highlights:





There were plenty of variables at play on why a team could come out flat like the Penguins did. The main three variables was the fact the Penguins have been off since last Wednesday and the second is that they had 4 players returning from injury (Neal, Martin, Megna, Kobasew).

The third is that the Panthers aren’t a team that is as bad as their record. Since their coaching change they have become a much better possession team. They currently rank 13th overall at 50.5%. The Panthers were the unluckiest team in hockey earlier in the year when their PDO ranking was 30th overall. That PDO is regressing back to the mean and they are now 22nd overall. The result has been more victories for Florida.

Last night was the first full game this year in which the Penguins defense corp. played together from start to finish. The results were obviously less than desirable but it’s not panic time either.

The Penguins were not going to run the table at home for the rest of the year, they were eventually going to lose a game, that game was last night.

Should the Penguins be free of all criticism and concern? No, the Penguins have been propped up by the incredible talents of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, James Neal, and Chris Kunitz for the past month or so.

The stars for Pittsburgh were quiet on Monday and when that occurs the Penguins don’t really have much of a chance to win. They continue to get nothing from the bottom 6, that won’t change until Beau Bennett is back in the lineup, or a trade is made.

Sidney Crosby had a poor game on all fronts and his ability (or lack thereof) to find the scoresheet did not bail him out on this occasion. Even the best can have an off night.

The Penguins may not have given up a power play goal to the Panthers but they did kill 6 minutes worth of penalties from 14:28 mark of the 2nd period to the 9:18 mark. This is time that the Penguins do not have their star players on the ice and the Penguins are not in a position to attack offensively.

Top PK unit in the league or not the Penguins cannot take penalties which keep the top two lines off the ice right now given the depth concerns at the forward position.


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In the past 6 games the Penguins have allowed 22 goals. This works out to be 3.66 goals per game. That rate of giving up goals would place them 30th overall in the league (Oilers are 30th with 3.51 GA/game).

The past 6 games also represents Letang’s return to the lineup.

During Letang’s absence from injury the Penguins allowed 25 goals in 10 games for a goals against per game mark of 2.5.

Letang IS NOT solely responsible for these numbers but I thought that it is worth mentioning considering the Penguins are giving up a full goal per game more since his return.

Last night I thought that Letang played a solid game. Outside of an interesting cross crease pass in his defensive zone he didn’t really do anything questionable. Sidney Crosby’s blue line turnover deserves the blame for the Huberdeau goal, not Letang who was caught flat footed because of the turnover.

It was Letang's pass into Niskanen's wheelhouse that generated the lone Penguins goal on the night.

Pittsburgh's poor effort was not lost on one Penguins player. Here are Matt Niskanen’s thought about the game last night:

We were piss poor. Not a lot of compete out there. They were willing to play a harder game than we were and it showed. Uncharacterstic for us to be that sloppy and not care about playing a hard game. That’s not like us but needs to stop at one [game].

Sometime in the first you just got sense it wasn’t going to be one of those games where we were flying on all cylinders. But, I think when you recognize that as a group, you just need to play really simple and really hard. Even if you oversimplify it, at least you’re making hard plays. You gotta check to work your way out of it We didn’t do it, we didn’t have much of a push at all.

Tonight throughout ‘our group’ we were just awful. Bad execution, bad work ethic, we just weren’t hungry enough to win a loose puck, win a battle. They came in here tonight and beat the crap out of us.”



Some strong words from Matt Niskanen. Its nice to see another player in the locker room willing to make strong statements about the team’s play. With the emergence of Scuderi and now Niskanen it could further add fuel to the fire that Orpik’s days as a Penguin will be over after this season.

Thanks for reading!

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