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Penguins offense continues to sputter, lose to Coyotes, 4-1:  Crosby injured

by Tony on 10/31/08 at 12:51 AM ET
Comments (5)

The current four game road trip for the Penguins is quickly turning into a disaster.

With all due respect to the Phoenix Coyotes, this is a game the Penguins should win.  They’re a young team that’s still a couple of years away from contention.  But as it is quickly appearing, it doesn’t seem to matter who the Pens are playing nowadays.

The Coyotes took full advantage of more shoddy play by the Penguins to get the win 4-1.

The outcome was compounded by the loss of Pens’ captain Sidney Crosby, who left the ice early in the third period with an unspecified injury, although it’s not believed to be serious.  He’s listed as day-to-day.

The first period was pretty wide-open, with the Coyotes being the more aggressive team.  The Penguins, as mediocre as they were Tuesday night in San Jose, appeared to be skating somewhat better, but tangible results were nowhere to be found.

For as many line changes that HCMT made prior to the game, the Penguins must’ve flooded Coyotes’ goalie Ilya Bryzgalov with shots, right ??  Um, not exactly, unless you consider a deuce flooding the net.  The first shot on goal for the Penguins came an incredible 15:33 into the game, when Mike Zigomanis fired a slapshot on goal short-handed.  The other shot came from Brooks Orpik, and that was it.

The first tally of the game came about eight minutes into the second period just after a Phoenix powerplay on an interference penalty to Orpik had expired.  Just prior, the Pens penalty kill couldn’t get the puck out of their zone, and the Coyotes retained possession as the powerplay wound down.  As it expired, Zbynek Michalek fired a slapper from the center point that was wide of the net.  Shane Doan took the loose puck off the end boards and made a backhanded blind pass to Penguins torturer Olli Jokinen, who was there to one-time the puck past Fleury.  It was officially an even strength goal to give the Coyotes a 1-0 lead.

Their lead didn’t last long, though.  On the next shift, the Coyotes’ David Hale took an interference penalty, and the Penguins wasted no time knotting the game up at one.  The Pens controlled the faceoff in the Coyotes’ zone upon the start of the powerplay.  Alex Goligoski made a cross-ice pass for a one-timer on the right point by Evgeni Malkin, where it appeared that Bryzgalov deflected it to the glass.  However, the Pens got an extremely fortunate bounce of the puck off the glass, as it landed directly in front of the goal.  Miro Satan was there to make a nice baseball-ish swat at the bouncing puck and into the back of the net only 37 seconds after Jokinen’s goal.

HCMT most likely gave the Pens a good French Canadian-laced tongue lashing in the 1st intermission, because they certainly played with more intensity as the second period started.  The Pens went back on the powerplay late in the second period and had a couple of great scoring chances, both by Satan, but his first hit the post and the second was stopped by Bryzgalov to keep the game tied at one.

Jordan Staal was whistled for an iffy boarding call at the 17:12 mark, and the Coyotes took advantage of it to give them the lead back.  On the ensuing powerplay, Hal Gill grabbed the puck from a Coyotes’ dump-in, but unfortunately it deflected off Steven Reinprecht.  Reinprecht grabbed the loose puck in the crease and passed it to Doan for an easy one-timer past Fleury to make it 2-1 Coyotes with only 2:01 left in the period.

In the third period, the Pens got two more powerplay chances.  The first powerplay did nothing, and frankly the Coyotes got more scoring opportunities than the Penguins did.  The second powerplay started great for the Pens, as the Coyotes quickly took another penalty for delay of game, as the Coyotes hand-passed the puck over the glass.  However, the 5 on 3 was initially unsuccessful, then Satan took a hooking penalty (with a 10 minute misconduct) to make it a 4 on 3.  The Penguins couldn’t score on that powerplay either, as it was basically Goligoski and Malkin playing catch with each other, while the other two stood still.

The Coyotes put the game away late in the third period as Goligoski fanned a little on his outlet pass, which was stolen by Mikkel Boedker.  Boedker fed the puck in the Pens’ zone to Reinprecht, who made a nice move around Goligoski to get the puck towards the net.  Kevin Porter was there to poke the puck past Fleury for his 1st NHL goal and made it 3-1 Coyotes.

Doan closed out the scoring with an empty netter with 59 seconds left to make it 4-1.

Other notes:

- According to the FSN ‘Burgh telecast, there were many empty seats in Phoenix tonight, unlike the Pens’ last visit a couple of years ago which was one of the few sellouts the Coyotes got.
- Malkin had 9 shots in 2nd period, which broke Mario Lemieux’s franchise record of 7, and had 10 shots for the game.
- Zigomanis continued his strong play on faceoffs, going 10 for 13 on faceoffs.
- Mark Eaton so far this year is not the Mark Eaton of old.  I don’t know if it’s a residual effect of the two major injuries the past couple of years, but his defensive play is not what it once was, so far.
- It seems like such an easy adjustment, but I can’t help but watch other team’s powerplays, and watch them constantly move to create additional lanes for scoring opportunities.  The Penguins simply do not do that, they entirely rely on the one-timers.

The Penguins finish up their road trip (thank goodness) on Saturday night at St. Louis.

Filed in: | The Confluence | Permalink
 Tags: NHL-Hockey, Phoenix+Coyotes, Pittsburgh+Penguins,

Comments

I’d like to see Letang take Goligoski’s position on the first PP. The last two or three games GoGo’s been making more and more mistakes, some with really bad results. They also would then have two potential one-timers on the point. What an idea!

I agree with you on Mark Eaton. I was very happy when Shero re-signed him, but something is just off with him this year. I’ve also seen him fall/get hit awkwardly into the boards five or six times already. I’ve never thought he was injury-prone, but he really seems awkward fall-prone.

I was watching the Coyotes feed on Gamecentre and they showed Crosby get cross-checked hard about three times on his wrist, then go to the bench in obvious pain. Obviously not-good if he wasn’t able to play the last half of the third.

Posted by Nathan B from Surrey on 10/31/08 at 12:14 AM ET

Congrats on your KK ‘relocation’ !

+100 on Eaton. I hate to single anyone out...but, his play is not up to NHL speed/standards right now....IF it will ever come back to the way we were used to seeing it pre-injury/injuries, is another story....I was surprised to see him in the lineup and Sydor in the pressbox tonight.

When was the last time an assistant coach got fired, without the HC getting the ax at the same time?
Either Yeo has to go OR change things up DRAMATICALLY on the PP.
Letang gets 30-45 seconds on the second unit?....but BOTH are out there on a 4 on 3? YIKES!....I’ll give Yeo the benefit of the doubt and see that Letang is logging his regular minutes plus some PK time, whereas GoGo has not been seeing much, if any, PK time....so, if Yeo’s thinking he doesn’t want to overload Letang, I guess the #1 PP unit is where he thinks GoGo can ‘fill in the gap’...[I’d rather see Letang on the #1 unit a few times a game, at least]
BTW, I heart the ‘pass/shot from the guy on the sideboards-redirected by guy in slot-on the PP’ play that DET seems to run quite a bit....that play appears it would have Sid’s [passer] and Geno’s [redirecter] names written all over it, eh?

Again, congrats on the move and here’s to continued success on your excellent posts!

Posted by dr. turkleton from Da Burgh on 10/31/08 at 01:10 AM ET

Those of you who are familiar with my articles know all too well that the Penguins’ powerplay is my pet peeve.

I’ve been saying for a couple years now that their powerplay is successful IN SPITE of HCMT and Yeo, rather than BECAUSE of them.

My primary objection on the powerplay is the assignment of skaters on the points.  This coaching staff seems to constantly ignore the value of having skaters on those points that can shoot one-timers.  I realize Yeo has Malkin on the right point now, and Gonchar has played on the right point, but then he puts lefties like Whitney or now Goligoski on the left point.  In previous games he’s also had Letang on the right point, which is entirely opposite of what I believe should be out there.  The only benefit of having those skaters assigned there, from what I can gather, is that it gives them a better chance to keep the puck in the zone, because it’s on their forehand.

However, as I mentioned in last night’s article, the other big thing is that they’re completely standing still.  I will give Goligoski props though, he seems to use his lateral skating much more than the other.

The fact of the matter is that the Penguins’ powerplay, even with it’s tremendous potential firepower, has become way too predictable.

Posted by Tony F from Virginia Beach, VA on 10/31/08 at 08:27 AM ET

Fan590 in Toronto saying Crosby injury is rib/cartilage related.

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 10/31/08 at 11:52 AM ET

Rib/cartilage ...

Isn’t that what rendered Joe Thornton completely useless in the playoffs for Boston a few years ago?  Something rib-related?

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/31/08 at 03:45 PM ET

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Welcome to The Confluence, a Pittsburgh Penguins blog since 2006.  Originally at Blogspot, then at MVN, The Confluence has over 1000 articles reporting Penguins news as well as jumping on my soapbox to opine constructive Penguins criticism.  My posts are regularly linked by hockey websites such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Empty Netters and Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy, and I’ve done guest blogger spots on such websites as the New York Times.  I invite you to spend a little time and peruse the archives at all of the sites for some of my better work.  I am a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, but don’t confuse me with my fellow Chief at A2Y.

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