The New York Rangers won Game 3 by a score of 2-1 and now have a 2-1 series lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins.
New York was able to shut down the Penguins ability for both controlled zone exits as well as their entries. In other words New York owned the neutral zone. This made life extra difficult for Pittsburgh and they were not able to sustain any kind of offensive attack. The Rangers were content on letting the Penguins play a glorified version of ping pong with them.
So are the Penguins not trying hard enough? Does Mike Johnston need to do a better job on the X’s and O’s front? What’s the deal?
Maatta-Letang
Pouliot-Ehrhoff
Despres
Just saying.
Pittsburgh’s defensemen that are available to them in this series aren’t skilled enough.
Jonathan Willis of Sportsnet
broke down Pittsburgh’s ability to exit the zone in control last night. He specifically paid attention the defensemen and tracked how many times they were able to break out of the zone clean and how many times it was either chipped out, bad pass, etc…
In the third period, I tracked outlet passes by the Pens defence. I ignored the short five-foot passes that came from forwards hanging way back and instead looked at defensive-zone passes which advanced the puck further than that.
Pittsburgh’s defence managed just seven tape-to-tape outlet passes in the third period on 19 tries. The other 12 were fumbled, turned into chips or just flat-out turned over to a New York team that settled into a defensive shell in the game’s final frame.
Six of the Penguins’ seven successful passes came off the stick of Paul Martin or Taylor Chorney. The team’s other four defenceman were basically incapable of making outlet passes under minimal pressure in the third frame.
Boring hockey was thus guaranteed.
The bad news in this is that Christian Ehrhoff no longer looks to be an option for postseason play due to concussion related issues. His skill set is exactly what is missing from the current roster.
Ehrhoff’s tenure with the Penguins has not come close to reaching its potential ceiling. Injuries have derailed his season. Any time you can get a legitimate top four defenseman for short term and ~4.0M you do it, no questions asked. It wasn’t a bad signing, it was an unfortunate result.
Now the Penguins are left with hoping that rookie Derrick Pouliot can somehow make his way back into the lineup. He isn’t a sure thing by any stretch but his skating and puck skills are something that are extremely lacking right now on Pittsburgh’s back end.
If Pouliot can’t return and Pittsburgh cannot win back the neutral zone there will be a lot of reasons that get thrown around for why that is. Don’t make it complicated, the reason is obvious:
Again from Jonathan Willis:
•Cole, formerly a No. 6/7 defenceman with St. Louis, saw 23 minutes and 22 seconds of action.
•Paul Martin, a real NHL defenceman, logged 20:41.
•Chorney, who played a career-high 42 games with the 2009-10 Edmonton Oilers—going minus-21 in the process—played 19:36.
•Rob Scuderi, a 36-year-old who had the worst on-ice Corsi rating on the Pittsburgh blue line this year despite favourable zone starts and low-end quality of competition, ended the night with 19:11 of ice time.
•Ben Lovejoy, who was somehow traded for up-and-comer Simon Despres this very season, played 18:32.
•Brian Dumoulin, a veteran of 14 career regular-season NHL games, logged 16:31.
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If Derrick Pouliot comes back who leave the lineup? Would they roll with seven defensemen? If not which defenseman would come out of the lineup? For me there is an incredibly obvious candidate to sit on defense, but they would never do it.
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Mike Johnston can’t do anything about the defense issues right now because injuries are out of his control but he does have total control over his game management.
Late in the third period I thought that there was a blown opportunity for Coach Johnston to maximize the four on four situation late in the game.
Given that the Penguins had literally no room to skate the entire game a four on four situation while down one goal late in the game is about as welcoming a situation as you could ask for.
The four on four started fine with Sidney Crosby getting the first good chunk of ice time. Then he changed and opportunity was lost. Mike Johnston should have utilized his team timeout at around the half way point of the four on four. He should have rested the best player in the world and put him back out into an advantageous situation.
Obstruction is back as a regular part of NHL hockey. Pittsburgh found themselves in a situation where obstruction would be minimized. Mike Johnston should have manipulated this game situation to give his best player more opportunity with the time and space that was available. I like my odds with Crosby getting an extra 45 seconds of four on four play
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Don’t try to dig too deep in trying to figure out Evgeni Malkin right now. He is hurt. Anybody who watches him on a regular basis can see that.
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I wrote yesterday how the Penguins are fine matching up Crosby and Malkin against the Rangers top four defensemen and I still feel that is how they should start the games out. Crosby and Malkin taking the hard matchups is how you get the other weaker lines looking competent against weaker competition.
However, Sam’s tweet has merit as well. When you are down two goals (or one goal late in the game) you need create more advantageous situations to get back into the game. Getting Crosby or Malkin some more time against that bottom pairing would have made some sense. Sure the other lines will probably lose their matchup but at some point it can’t be a two line show if you’re going to win.
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Officials aren’t biased. They don’t care who wins or loses. The league obviously needs to comb through what their standards should be and make changes. Right now the officials are slaves to how the league wants things called. In addition to that they are victim to their own human error as well. Doesn’t make for an entertaining or fair product but that is how it is in every single NHL game that is played.
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The General Manager swearing at a columnist who has attempted to make the story about himself isn't the big Jim Rutherford news last night. Hell, it wasn't even the best obscenity laced tirade in sports last night (for that you can Google Bryan Price).
No the Rutherford story from last night might be this very interesting rumor from The Pensblog:
Thanks for reading!
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