The Pittsburgh Penguins are trying their best to throw the 2023-24 season away before it can even get off the ground. They found an excruciating way to lose 4-3 to the Anaheim Ducks in regulation and are now 3-6 on the season and dead last in the Eastern Conference.

There was a lot more good than bad in this game and yet it doesn’t matter. The Penguins are allergic to turning their positive play into tangible goals this year. They had every opportunity to put away the Ducks and were not able to score enough. A big problem is they have to outscore their own goaltender on most nights this year. Tristan Jarry was terrible again only stopping 23 out of 27 shots for an .858 save percentage. Every time this team needs a big save he is nowhere to be found. He’s allowed to make a great save once in a while and it just never comes. Every other team in this league gets saves in important moments and it sure feels like the Penguins never do. It must be extremely hard mentally for the players knowing that just around every corner there is a goal against waiting regardless of how they are playing. Get a big goal from your third line to take the lead? Sorry, that is going to last like a minute. Allow an unscreened shot from an angle, sorry that is going to go in. Add in the scoring woes and you have a lot of players who are going to start gripping their sticks even tighter. It isn’t like the Penguins have a true NHL backup goalie at the moment so they are stuck going back to the Tristan Jarry well again and again for the foreseeable future. Brutal. This is what people were worried about when he signed his more than generous and unearned extension.

I mean the only way you lose a game like this is goaltending play



I’m going to say some good things about the power play and then some bad. The power play started to find its legs in this game and found what I thought was a successful formula. I talked about it earlier in the week. Just let Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson bomb shots on one-timers and outwork the penalty killers for more chances to bomb some shots. They actually did this for a while and it led to a goal by… Erik Karlsson and Evgeni Malkin. Adding Reilly Smith to the power play was also looked like a good move as his mind and his hands are sharp enough to keep up with the other star players. He also has a willingness to shoot which keeps the killers honest. This has a chance for sustainable success. There is a blueprint now. This is good.

The bad? They stopped doing it at the absolute worst time possible. To get a 5v3 this late in a third period is a complete gift. NHL officials will bend over backwards to not give this kind of advantage. A puck over the glass is pretty close to the only path to get it. The Penguins did get this opportunity on a platter and they stopped feeding Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson and resorted to their cute nonsense. On a power play struggling to score goals you think they would lean into the method which earned them two power play goals in this game. Furthermore, they changed the personnel to add Rickard Rakell for some odd reason. This change added nothing positive to the dynamic. Rakell was just lost in space as far as an outlet and he did nothing to help screen the goaltender. This was a huge mistake and the lackluster 5v3 not only cost them a chance at the lead, but led to the breakaway out of the penalty box which iced the game for the Ducks. Just a brutal sequence after showing some signs of life they’ve been yearning for.

Speaking of Rakell he is off to a miserable start overall. I still think he is a gifted player with a lot to give the team. It hasn’t happened yet this season. He has one assist in nine games. It isn’t good enough. It isn’t his fault the team is top heavy. It is his fault he is being deployed favorably and hasn’t held up his end of the bargain. I would flip Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell in an effort to get him going. They need him. Rakell has a good track record with Crosby and Bryan Rust can certainly play with Evgeni Malkin. In fact, I would like to see how Rust would pair with the Malkin/Smith dynamic. Rust looks like he has his jump in his step again this year.

Fans and the team will have plenty of time to stew over this miserable loss. The team doesn’t play again until they face a really bad hockey team in the San Jose Sharks. It is a must win game. You won’t face a worse NHL team in this era than whatever the Sharks are at the moment.

Thanks for reading!

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