Jets Ground Penguins, 6-3, with a Little Help from Their Friends (Our ‘D’)
Back in the days of metal typesetting, newspapers and printers were loath to revise content unless they absolutely had to.
Well, our Penguins would’ve been a typesetter’s dream. The basic storylines never change. Indeed, the Pens’ 6-3 matinee loss to the Jets in Winnipeg was pretty much a case of the same old, same old.
- Pens take lead;
- Pens blow lead;
- Pens kill themselves with mistakes;
- Pens d-zone coverage is a shambles;
- Pens goalie is left to fend for himself.
The fact that these same tendencies keep repeating over and over and over again truly makes me wonder what the coaching staff is stressing to these guys. I’m sure there’s a lot of read-and-react inherent in Mike Sullivan’s system. But we keep reading and reacting the wrong way.
Heck, even in those rare instances when we make the right play, things go wrong. Just prior to the Jets’ second goal, Ryan Graves uncharacteristically flattened Mark Scheifele near the net before turning his back on the big forward. Scheifele promptly clambered to his skates, pounced on a loose puck and beat Alex Nedeljkovic from point-blank range.