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It’s Over for Tired Penguins; Let the Great Transition Begin

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Pittsburgh Penguins, Mike Sullivan. Penguins rebuild and retool

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The lifeless loss against a team they should have beaten, and everyone else has, was the window into a team losing its belief in the mission.



The San Jose Sharks beat the Penguins 2-1 Monday at the SAP Center, and with a bad loss to one of the worst teams in the league went even the most strident vestiges of hope. Barring a miracle, the Penguins’ aspirations of a better ending to this season than last are over. Any realistic shot at the playoffs is gone.

It’s over for the Penguins.

They trail the Columbus Blue Jackets and Tampa Bay Lightning by seven points and the Boston Bruins by eight. All of those teams have games in hand; Tampa Bay (4) and Columbus (2) have multiple games in hand. With 60 possible Penguins points remaining (30 games), that means the Penguins must garner about 42 of those 60 points–a .700 winning percentage–just to get to 90 points while hoping six other teams chug along at .500.

The Penguins have sunk so far that, barring some lottery swaps, they are currently in line for the seventh overall pick. A few more losses, and they could easily land a top-five pick. However, a few more wins in service to an unattainable goal will only hurt hopes of a quick retool.

Now it is time for general manager Kyle Dubas to take center stage.

In ordinary seasons, late January would be about the halfway point, but this season’s compressed schedule means the team has already played 52 games. This is more than enough of a sample size to reach well-informed conclusions, and there is simply no reason to expect anything will change.

Inconsistency is the consistency. The Penguins need everything to go right in order to win. It takes only a couple of things to go wrong in order to lose.

Read More: Penguins One-Timers: Problems Bottom to Top; Real Reasons for Inconsistency

Having sat through another sad performance, it seems the Penguins no longer have the gumption for the fight. Perhaps they know it, too. After clawing their way back into playoff contention by late December, they’ve scored just one goal in each of four of their last five games, losing those four and 12 of their last 16 games since the season restarted on Dec. 28.

The hapless Sharks began the game with the NHL’s worst goal differential (-52), yet the Penguins played some of the most uninspired hockey of the season. San Jose rarely outshoots opponents and was just 4-7-0 when doing so. Yet for just the 12th time in 53 games, the Sharks outshot their opponent, and for just the fifth time this season, they won a game when doing so.

The increasingly dispirited Penguins engaged in a terrible game against a terrible team and got an equally terrible result, which they fully deserved.

“I’m not sure how many good things we did tonight. I don’t think we were nearly as good tonight as we’ve been, at least that was my observation from behind the bench,” said coach Mike Sullivan, whose disgust seemed to be cut with a bit of acceptance. “But having said that, it’s hard to win when you score one goal.”

It’s harder still with a roster that lacks the necessary talent or offensive finishing ability to support the top line with Rickard Rakell, Sidney Crosby, and Bryan Rust.

Monday, for the second straight game, Crosby scored a goal, but no other Penguins did.

It’s time for Dubas to further the construction process for what comes next. It will be nothing close to a firesale, but there will be some painful goodbyes. In fact, Dubas assembled this team with short-term contracts so that he could maximize his opportunities on the trade market.

The Penguins GM learned his lesson last season when he was stuck with veterans such as Reilly Smith because their contracts had term. So, this season Dubas added veterans Matt Grzelcyk and Anthony Beauvillier on one-year deals to join other rental trade chips Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor.

Perhaps the defensemen will bring some nice returns. It’s time to find out.

The Penguins have one more game remaining on this seven-game road trip. When they arrive home to host the Nashville Predators on Saturday, it’s hard to imagine a large or enthusiastic crowd to greet them.

The longer Dubas waits, the longer the team is stuck in this unwatchable hockey netherworld of mediocre results and hopeless meandering toward unattainable goals. Perhaps Dubas will indeed land the young players he’s seeking on the trade market, and some optimism will replace the current frustration in both the organization and fanbase.

The team has tried. They turned the ship around in November, but they remain reliant on just a few players for the bulk of their offensive production. Not scoring is one problem. Lacking energy and hunger is a defining characteristic in so many bad ways.

The big trades have begun as the Four Nations Face-Off looms, creating an unofficial trade deadline before the actual March 7 trade deadline. The team’s last game before the tournament is Feb. 8. So the sooner Dubas begins the process, the more time and options he will have to use the salary cap space created by moving veterans. The more time he will have to participate in such endeavors as helping cap-strapped Stanley Cup contenders by holding salary in exchange for draft picks or prospects as the third team in larger trades.

There’s no way players will admit that their chase is over. After all, they almost erased a record deficit in the final weeks of last season. Yet their actions on this road trip scream dead-team walking. They’ve lost meekly to some of the worst teams in the league, including three behind them in the standings.

It’s unlikely Dubas will be as patient as he was last season. This team will not and should not get the benefit of the doubt this time. It’s go time.

As this season comes toward the end of Dubas’s second year at the helm, his third will be pivotal in his seven-year contract. He gave the team a chance, but now it’s time to aggressively begin the great transition.