Penguins Blown Leads Causes & Fixes; Locker Room and Sullivan Respond

Six times in 12 games, the Pittsburgh Penguins have earned a two-goal lead and promptly yielded at least two unanswered goals. They’ve bookended the sextuplet of games with wins over the Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals, but the in-between has been uglier than any other team in the league.

The Penguins have lost four games while leading by two goals (2-2-2), which is double the next worst team, the LA Kings, which has lost two games while leading by two games. No other team—that’s 30 other teams—has lost more than once this season.

While many around the Penguins have cited the league-wide pandemic of punting leads, it is almost exclusively a Penguins problem. Other teams share the Penguins’ penchant for giving up goals quickly after scoring, such as the San Jose Sharks, which have allowed a goal immediately after scoring six times and have those leads an average of only 1:10. Not even San Jose has coughed up more than one two-goal lead.

The Penguins have lost two or more goal leads 14 times in the last two seasons combined, ranking among the worst in the league each season. Given the start to this season, the trend is doubly troubling, as coach Mike Sullivan stated that reversing it was a point of emphasis when he spoke at the draft in June.

“Our five-on-five play was pretty solid. Now, that’s not to suggest that we don’t have areas for improvement. I think we can do a better job defending leads, for example,” said Sullivan in June.

Perhaps the team finally turned the corner Friday when they tamped down the Washington attack in the third period, allowing only six shots in the third period. Washington rallied to tie the game 2-2 in the second period, but it was the Penguins that scored the next two while limiting Washington to just six shots in the third period, including just one shot on goal in the final 3:07 while Washington had an extra attacker.

It was a determined and solid defensive effort.

Why couldn’t the team do that before?

Before the Penguins did what they needed to do against Washington, we asked a couple of defensemen and coach Mike Sullivan very specific questions about holding a lead. It’s a legitimate question–Does it become a mental block?

“I wouldn’t say it’s a mental thing with the team, but there’s definitely a mental aspect to it. We do need to learn to play with leads. It’s something the good teams.–you can’t expect to win every game by multiple goals or to run away it,” said Ryan Graves. “Especially late in the year, you have to win the one-goal game (even) when the whole team is off. So it’s just learning to continue to play with your structure and to play with the same system and the same scheme as you did for the first couple of periods that got you the lead. It’s being able to stick with that and be able to be responsible within that system, but still being able to play on your toes.”

The forwards’ chaotic backtracking hasn’t helped, either. The number of open shooters who have been able to dissect Penguins goalies has been far too many for any team with even a smidge of playoff hope, and more often, the blame has not been on the defensemen. Still, why have the mistakes happened more often with a comfortable lead than without?

Why is the team better in a tight game than with a two-goal lead?

“(No), we kind of don’t get excited by it. We kind of sit back and let teams in. We’re trying to kill the clock and not play our toes,” surmised Marcus Pettersson. “When we’re at our best, we can play (on our toes). Yeah, (we need to play) just a little smarter and a little more … Yeah … like, guys lean forward, not back so much.”

Are we sure it’s not a mental block?

“Not so much that we become conservative, but you just have to gather and grow your confidence to play the same way,” Graves responded. “And that’s just what I mean by ‘you learn to do that.’ You just continue to grow into being confident doing that.”

Sullivan pointed out that each game and each gaffe have been different. There are no common themes other than the existence or absence of the leads. A power-play goal sparks the opponent in one game while getting conservative in another and getting sloppy costs them in others.

“I don’t know if I have an answer for you at this point. You know, if you look at each game as it comes, they all take on their own story. They’re all different. You know, if there was one common theme that would be easy to solve, right,” Sullivan said. “If you look at the (Islanders game), we had people in position. We had numbers in the good ice–structurally, we were in the right spots.

“So, can we solve certain things and get better? Yes. We had a video session (the morning after the game), and we looked at some of those things, how we can get better, and how we can avoid those circumstances. We’ve got to defend our slot area better so we don’t fall victim to those things.”

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll learn if the Penguins have learned or if the Washington win was a blip, like so many false starts for this team over the last two seasons.