Penguins
Penguins Postgame: The Big Issues, Erik Karlsson, & Differences
The Pittsburgh Penguins won a game. Yes, they needed a four-goal cushion to hang on against the Vancouver Canucks, but there were significant differences between the Penguins’ performance on Wednesday and the downtrodden affairs of the past couple of weeks. Pittsburgh Hockey Now’s Dan Kingerski got into the significant differences, as well as a few of the important performances.
But he also laid out the importance of the next few days as the Penguins practice Thursday and play in Boston on Friday before returning home to host Calgary on Saturday. Lose the next couple of games, and Wednesday’s confidence boost will be for naught.
Coach Mike Sullivan used the two days of practice leading up to the game to make a few “tweaks” to the system and was not shy about scratching several veteran players, though rookie Owen Pickering was unable to play due to illness.
“We felt like we had two productive days. It’s not that we changed a whole lot, but we made some tweaks to our respective game in different zones,” Sullivan said. “We tried to simplify it a little bit so we could take some of the thinking out of it and hopefully get our guys playing on their toes a little bit more and a little bit more of an instinctive mode.”
The Penguins finally snapped their skid.
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K.I.S.S.!
I’m soundly convinced the key to winning in the modern NHL will take between 4-6 goals, per game. If you look around the league the winning club will generally score between 4-6 goals, sometimes it takes more. The league has pushed for more goal scoring and it’s definitely here. You’ll see the 1-0 or 2-1 victory, but that is becoming the less likely outcome, at least during the regular season. So Mike Sullivan’s “Good-Ice” philosophy, which seems to be adopted around the league, and at the lower levels, seems to be the right path. Again, the problem with the Pens… Read more »
Thanks, Dan….save travels over the holiday !…always look forward to your work…imo, this Boston game is a must win…we did so many things better this game, it has to be carried forward…on the road, against a team we can never beat, a real gut check game
Unbelievably frustrating team. The young guys look promising, however the team performance is lackluster at best!
Agree. Boring to watch and frustrating as well. The fab 3 of Crosby Malkin Letang seem to me the older they get the more stupid plays them commit. Both do the back dump pass to nobody there.
So you say there’s a chance.
Love the upbeat attitude….I’m in
Happy Thanksgiving 🦃
EK65 was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Has there ever been a better outlet passer on the back line in team history? Too bad Sullivan and his staff never allowed us to see him at this best.
As I responded to you in a previous article, he can pass, only problem, he’s clueless on how to defend to avoid GA. No, don’t worry, he’s going nowhere because of his outlet passes. So in order to keep EK, at least one or two Dmen who have zero defensive capabilities must be moved out. Petterson for sure and one other, Letang or Gryzlick maybe, hopefully.
Yes I agree Sullivan and his mediocre coaching staff hold these players that get traded to the Pens and they turn into crap. Sullivan complicate things
EK is the worst investment this club ever made…PERIOD. For $11.5M, you better be more than a brilliant outlet passer and hes not. The ROI is abysmal. His been an albatross on this team. I hope this doesn’t effect the club years down the line.
It’s very sad that we were barley able to hold onto a 4 goal lead. That said, I loved watching Malkin buzzing, in my opinion he dragged the team into the fight. As he gets older (in hockey years 38 is young) I’m trying to enjoy what he, sid and tang have done for this team before they retire.
Happy Thanksgiving, Dan. Thanks for covering the Pens the way you do!