‘It’s Frustrating’: Penguins Blow Another Lead, Drop Heartbreaker To Lightning in OT, 3-2

They say it is certifiably insane to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.

And, unfortunately, for the Pittsburgh Penguins, that territory is being breached when it comes to blown leads.

The Penguins took a commanding 2-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday and dictated the first 40 minutes of play before surrendering two goals in the third period and, eventually, dropping the contest in overtime, 3-2. Brayden Point scored twice for Tampa Bay – including the overtime winner – in his return to the lineup after a lower-body injury, and Anthony Cirelli notched the tying goal at 12:49 of the third period.

It’s the eighth time in 21 games that the Penguins have blown a multi-goal lead.

“I don’t know,” defenseman Marcus Pettersson said. “It just feels like the same crap all over again. It’s frustrating.”

That’s probably an understatement by Pettersson. The sentiment was pretty much the same around the rest of the locker room, and it was easy to tell that mass frustration is seeping in.

“We talk about how we’ve got to stay positive on the bench and try to keep playing the same way that we have been, no matter what happens,” forward Rickard Rakell – who scored the game’s second goal on the power play for Pittsburgh – said after the game. “But, for some reason, it seems like we’re gripping our sticks a little bit too tight, and we give them too many good looks.”

Here are some thoughts and observations following Tuesday’s demoralizing loss:

– Granted, this is my first year on the Penguins beat. I have seen head coach Mike Sullivan angry-ish before, and I have seen him give short press conferences in the post-game following a loss.

This one takes the cake.

I can confidently say I have never seen Sullivan so angry and disgusted with his team. His presser was just one minute long. He was in and out of there as fast as humanly possible.

When asked why blowing leads has become a pattern, this is what he had to say firmly and angrily:

“Because we have to compete harder,” Sullivan said. “We need more guys to compete harder and pay more attention to detail. And we need to take more pride in playing defense.”

He’s justifiably angry. But, to me, this appeared to be just as much of a “nothing” kind of answer as Pettersson’s and Tristan Jarry’s, who played pretty well throughout the game until the stinker of the play he made in overtime to give up the winning goal.

Like those two who said they “didn’t know what to say,” Sullivan doesn’t either. It’s clear that he’s completely dumbfounded by what is happening this season.

There may not be any fix-all solutions for a team as defensively inept as the Penguins, but there may be one that could help, which I’ll discuss in a bit.

– The shame of this loss is that the Penguins played a clinical first 40 minutes in this game. They were generating offense, maintaining possession, playing pretty well defensively, and dictating the flow of the game.

Then, just like always, it seems, they blew yet another lead by playing atrocious net-front defense and completely caving in when things started shifting in Tampa’s favor.

“We just didn’t execute good enough,” Sidney Crosby said. “Couldn’t get the next one.”

When asked what they can do better, he added: “I think just handle that push. You know teams are going to push when they’re down, and we’ve got to find a way to get momentum at some points throughout that period.

When Rakell gave me the response from earlier, I had asked him about handling momentum swings. That seems to be the common denominator.

Simply put, this team has no idea how to handle pushback from an opposing team when they’re trying to hold a lead. It’s almost as if they’re walking on eggshells trying to play a certain way and then just completely fold at the slightest setback, such as one goal against.

The players keep talking about how they just need to keep playing the same way they do in the first 40 minutes. But, maybe, that’s the problem: If the Penguins feel like they can only play one way in order to win, that’s a fatal flaw.

A good team finds different ways to win. It’s adaptable. It has the ability to take back momentum after some is given and recover quickly from critical mistakes. If the Penguins can’t adapt to the opposition’s momentum pushes, it’s going to lead to failure.

They have to figure out how to have a more defensive posture in these situations without playing too careful and playing in fear of squandering a lead.

– I was getting ready to sound the alarm bells on this one, but coming into this game, Rakell had gone nine games without a goal and six games without a point.

Good to see him get one here, especially on a rocket like that. Because him not scoring in that stretch wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Rakell has always been a streaky player, and he always seems to be snakebitten when he hits streaks like this. He had 24 shots in those nine goalless games, and he is averaging 5.7 shot attempts per game, second only to Erik Karlsson’s 6.7. That’s not even accounting for a few posts and crossbars, too.

Also, Rakell is still doing a lot of good out there, even when he’s not scoring. The line of Rakell, Crosby, and Anthony Beauvillier is clicking on all cylinders, driving possession, and creating chances in the offensive zone, and Rakell has been a big part of that chance generation.

Now that he’s got one, I think they’ll start coming in droves.

– Vasily Ponomarev logged just 8:36 of ice time tonight, and he was frequently being supplanted by a double-shifting Drew O’Connor in defensive situations.

Simply put, I do not understand this at all.

I won’t spend a ton of time discussing how O’Connor has been largely ineffectual this season, and, at times, simply awful in the defensive zone at five-on-five. But it’s baffling to me that you replace a young guy who is known, first and foremost, for his defense – which was still pretty good tonight aside from one second-period misplay and a couple of missed clears between him and Nieto – with a guy who is not playing well at all defensively.

And, well, these are the kinds of results you get when you do that:

To be honest, this performance from Ponomarev wasn’t nearly as good as the one from Saturday against San Jose. He also led a two-on-one in the third period where he waited a bit too long to commit, and both the shot and the pass were taken away by the time he decided. A rookie mistake, there.

However, if a young player is already playing fourth line minutes, let him play those minutes and make a few mistakes, especially with the state of this team. Besides – again – he was, actually, one of the better players in this game:

In fact, three of the top-five guys in terms of average game score – Ponomarev, Sam Poulin, and Jesse Puljujarvi – were the three players who logged the least amount of minutes.

If this is who the Penguins are, let the young guys play through their minutes and their mistakes.

– Speaking of Puljujarvi – who scored the game’s first goal – I think he is playing well and deserves elevated ice time and, perhaps, an elevated role in the top-six somewhere.

Despite his shortcomings on the defensive side of the puck and wherever else, he can simply put the puck in the net, and he is driving the offense on that third line. The Penguins need more guys like that.

– Since I was ill for the last game against the Sharks, this is the first time I got to see Owen Pickering in person.

I like this guy’s game. He’s big, and he uses that size advantageously, especially in the defensive zone. He didn’t stand out in a huge way like he did on Saturday, but he was still good in this game.

I’m impressed by his work so far.

– Boston Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery was fired earlier on Tuesday after the team’s slow start. Boston is currently 8-9-3 and sits fourth in the Atlantic Division.

The Penguins are 7-10-4 and sit seventh in the Metropolitan Division. Sullivan still has his job.

Look, a coaching change isn’t a “fix-all” solution to anything. And if the Penguins are going to lose games this season, so be it.

But, they can’t keep losing games like this. Not in this way. If the Penguins were to consider replacing Sullivan, Montgomery is one of the best in the business.

And if there isn’t a coaching change, I would expect more moves in the coming days.