Kingerski: Penguins Defensemen Sabotaging Season; Are There Any Options?

NEW YORK — The Pittsburgh Penguins have a major problem, and it seems to be getting worse, not better, even through a four-game winning streak that collapsed under the weight of their own self-sabotage. The Penguins’ problem is their defensemen.

Penguins fans are currently angry at defenseman Matt Grzelcyk, and for good reason.

When he was in the lineup, Penguins fans bemoaned Ryan Graves’s performances. Fans were stating the obvious. Graves has been scratched for eight games this season and those press box nachos were earned.

For weeks, Erik Karlsson was the goat with uninspired and mistake-filled play. Add a few more mistakes by Kris Letang, and the smoke from the tire fire known as the Penguins’ blue line can be seen for miles.

In their hearts of hearts, I think the players know it, too.

A few weeks ago, after the Penguins’ inexcusable eighth blown multi-goal lead of the season–a feat which remarkably took only 21 games–Letang may have tossed a little dig toward some.

“I think, for the most part, the problem is individual. And I think it translates as a team performance,” Letang said on Nov. 21. “We play two good periods where (the opponent) goes one. It’s enough to lose you the game.”

In fairness, the Penguins didn’t really play one good period in their 4-2 loss to the New York Rangers Friday at Madison Square Garden. It was like a Penguins Greatest Hits collection, as they twice gave up a goal less than 90 seconds after scoring and yielded a goal in the final seconds of the second period.

Hey, people complain when bands play MSG and try to play the new stuff no one has ever heard, right?

“Everything we talked about before the game, we did the complete opposite. We talked about managing the points. We gave up six two-on-ones and a breakaway,” Sullivan lamented Friday night. “We talked about bringing physicality to the game. We didn’t touch anybody. You know, it’s hard to win when you do things like that.”

Read More: Penguins Report Card: Sullivan, Letang Rip Team for Awful Performance

Grzelcyk made a couple of horrendous mistakes on Friday. Early in the first period, he pinched on the left wall, but instead of keeping the puck until his replacement took the spot, he tried a cutesy between-the-legs backward pass toward the cycling forward. The resulting play was a Reilly Smith breakaway.

Seriously, Reilly Smith?

The second was more costly. He took the wrong angle when he pinched to keep a puck in the offensive zone. He missed the puck, and New York had a two-on-one in which they got three shots on goal. The third shot fluttered into the net and was the game-winner. Grzelcyk has 11 assists this season and is a minus-13.

Defensive mistakes were like leaving a big present under the tree at Rockefeller Center for New York. Filip Chytil walked Karlsson for an uncontested breakaway in the first period, too.

When PHN asked Sullivan about his thoughts on the blue line as a whole on Friday morning, the coach essentially gave them a participation trophy, but not much more.

“I think we’re competing hard. We’ve had some games better than others … I don’t think the blue line is any different than the rest of our team, for that matter, and they’re just a microcosm of it,” said Sullivan. “So what I will tell you is I like the group that we have. I think these guys are competitive guys. They’re invested. They want to win. And those are the types of guys that we want to go to work with every day. They battle hard, and we’re trying to help them through the process … not unlike the rest of the group, they have had moments of brilliance and played extremely well through stretches. But we’ve also had struggles.”

They try hard is a nice compliment for a youth team. The Penguin’s blue line is not well constructed, and the cratering players have a rippling effect.

Nine times this season, the Penguins have surrendered multiple-goal leads, including a three-goal give-away Tuesday against the Florida Panthers, which the Penguins won in overtime. It wasn’t soft goaltending or jaw-dropping gaffes that led to Florida’s three unanswered goals in just under five minutes; it was a lack of shutdown defensive prowess.

Under normal circumstances, Grzelcyk wouldn’t be in the lineup. He was on his way out before the four-game winning streak, but rookie Owen Pickering was out due to an illness, and Grzelcyk was thrust back into the lineup.

Under normal circumstances, Graves wouldn’t be a consideration, either, but that massive six-year contract tethers him and the Penguins in a relationship that has not worked since Day 1.

Coaches are doing their best to shelter and bring along Pickering slowly. Pickering is an amazingly quick study, but he’s also very hard on himself, and coaches have wisely decided that dunking him in the deep waters before he is ready would be a bad idea.

So, what are the other options?

There are none.

On the left, the cupboard is bare. Sebastian Aho, 28, has 190 games of NHL experience but was unimpressive during training camp and cleared waivers to join the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. In seven previous professional seasons, he didn’t establish himself as an NHL regular with the structured New  York Islanders, either. The situation is bad enough that he would be in Pittsburgh now but is currently injured.

Filip Kral, 24, has two NHL games of experience with the Toronto Maple Leafs but isn’t really an NHL’er.

Dan Renouf is a 30-year-old career minor leaguxer with 24 NHL games split between Detroit (5), Colorado (18), and Boston (1). The organization would need to convert his contract to an NHL deal, but he would be a Zach Trotman-level replacement, which is to say he would give it his all and look respectable in sheltered minutes but be exposed beyond that.

On the right side, Mac Hollowell, 26, might be able to be a short-term substitute. He has six games of NHL experience with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s very quick, fearless, and moves the puck well. However, he also has some defensive blind spots and is another career minor leaguer.

Perhaps Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas would be wise to pause his pursuit of failing forwards and add just a smidge of blue-line help. After 28 games for Grzelcyk and a season plus for Graves, it’s more than fair to say neither is a good fit with the Penguins, and the results have been overwhelmingly negative. The problem has begun to feed itself and get worse.

The only person who can put out the fire that is burning the Penguins’ season to the ground is Dubas, unless he actually doesn’t mind the losing for rebuilding purposes.  If a high draft pick were the goal, he couldn’t have done a better job of assembling the blue line.