The Pittsburgh Penguins are back in action tonight against the Buffalo Sabres, but before we get to that we need to discuss the Rangers game.

The Penguins dropped Wednesday night’s game 1-0 to a good Rangers team. Losing to the Rangers isn’t isn’t problematic in a vaccuum. How they lost very much is. They let Jonathan Quick shut them out in the year 2023. They got shutout despite having five power plays. This is a totally unacceptable result. There is too much talent on the ice for the power play to not find a way to get a goal in a game like Wednesday night. I would love to assess the power play, but they aren’t committed enough to even get the thing set up in order to make any assessments. They continue to look like they are going through the motions rudderless. It is very frustrating to watch. This should be one of the team’s best weapons. This needs to be one of the team’s best weapons given the injuries in the top six. Yet, it remains a weakness. I was willing to give them some leeway early on in the season. They are a team who has one of the fewest power plays in the league. On a night where they have five opportunities and have three sure fire hall of fame players? C’mon. There are a lot of coaches who would kill to have that kind of talent available to work with on the power play. We might be looking at a situation where Todd Reirden needs to join Matt Canada.

As for tonight’s game, Bryan Rust was skating in a regular jersey earlier today at the morning skate. It was also an optional skate and he stayed on later. Usually a sign of a player not making his way into the lineup and Mike Sullivan confirmed so when he said Rust will be out this evening. He is listed day to day so in the big picture things are heading in the right direction even if it does nothing to help them out tonight.

I’ve beat this drum many times in the past and I’m going to bring it up again because of the current lineup issues. Mike Sullivan is going to have to get more creative in how he deploys Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin at 5v5. He needs to sneak some shifts with them together after TV timeouts, penalty kills, and at the ends of periods. He should also get Erik Karlsson out there as well. You can’t just roll the lines when your team is desperate for wins and now desperate for 5v5 goals.

Alex Nedeljkovic was the first goalie off the ice. He is coming off of a shutout over the Vegas Golden Knights and will take his .944 overall save percentage into tonight's contest. We’ve got a long way to go, but Nedeljkovic has given the Penguins solid work behind Tristan Jarry in his limited action this seasons.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and the Penguins are three points out of a playoff spot. Historically speaking the Penguins are on the wrong side of destiny at the moment

Of the 240 teams to find themselves in a playoff spot on U.S. Thanksgiving since the 2005-06 season*, 184 have gone on to make the post-season the following spring. That’s a 76.7 per cent success rate. Of the 56 teams that fell out of the picture after the Thanksgiving milestone, 31 were hovering within a single point of the final wild-card berth.

The playoffs are certainly still on the table for Pittsburgh, but games like tonight, they are must win. You need to string together standings points like they did earlier in the month. You can’t be dropping points to teams lower than you. A goose egg tonight would be a very disappointing outcome.

Thanks for reading!

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