Molinari: Penguins Must Stop Letting Teammates Be Pinatas (+)

LOS ANGELES — The Pittsburgh Penguins’ game at Crypto.com Arena Saturday night would not officially end for another 10 minutes or so, but it effectively had been over for quite a while as the middle of the third period approached.

They were trailing Los Angeles, 5-0, and had pretty much the same chance of taking a point or two back to their hotel as a snowball does of making it through a few hours in a blast furnace unscathed.

OK, probably a bit less.

That didn’t dissuade Sidney Crosby from staking out a spot near the Kings’ net, where he stayed until Los Angeles defenseman Mikey Anderson sent him flying — literally — with a cross-check to the back. Crosby eventually came in for a hard landing, and stayed down on the ice for a bit, clearly shaken by the nasty blow he had absorbed,

It was the kind of unprovoked, malicious assault on a star player that would provoke a response — a fierce and immediate one — from virtually every team in the league.

With at least one exception.