There are a couple of different ways you can look at the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators on Monday night.
You could take the charitable approach and say they have been playing spectacular hockey for more than a month now, and that after such a long, sustained run of excellent play they were probably due for a stinker and a regulation loss.
You could also rightfully acknowledge that the Senators are probably a better team than their record indicates, and with better goaltending would probably be closer to a playoff spot right now. They were nearly flawless on Monday and have been on a roll over the past week-and-a-half, beating quite a few playoff teams rather convincingly.
But I was not really in the mood to be overly charitable after that game. Not because the Penguins are not entitled to loss, or an off night, or because they should win every game. It was not about the result. It was about the way they played. It was about how much of a no-show performance it was in a game where two points were there for the taking against a team below them in the standings.
If the Penguins were still the team everybody expected them to be at the start of the season I think games like Monday become more tolerable, especially after a hot streak. But the Penguins are not that team. They have raised the bar for what should be expected of them this season, and they have done that through their own play.
They entered Monday’s game with the sixth-best points percentage in the NHL, the third-best points percentage in the Eastern Conference, the fifth-most regulation wins in the NHL and a top-10 goal differential. Their underlying numbers are strong, their defensive play has steadily improved, they are getting steady, winnable goaltending.
What anybody expected before the season does not matter at this point.
What you think of their roster on paper does not matter at this point.
What matters is what they are doing on the ice, the way they are playing and the results they are producing.
And those results are that of a good team. A very good team.
This is no longer a team that should be looking at this season as, “Hey, what if we make the playoffs?” This a team that should be looking at this season and expecting to make the playoffs.
The question should not be “can they make the playoffs?” It should be “what can they potentially do in the playoffs?”
That is the position the Penguins have put themselves in in the standings. We are getting down to under 25 games in the regular season, and they are not only in a good position to potentially have home ice in the first round of the playoffs, there is a gap forming between them and the teams on the outside of the playoff picture. Not only due to the gap in points, but also due to the fact the Penguins still have multiple games in hand on pretty much every team they are competing with for one of those playoff spots.
It is a good team, and our expectations for them should be that of a good team. Sometimes that means being disappointed with such a flat effort. Sometimes that means criticism for such a flat effort, even in the context of a larger sampling of good to great games.
That is what makes Monday so disappointing. They did not just lose. They did not lose a competitive, well-played game. They were dominated from start to finish. While Ottawa was excellent, a lot of the Penguins mistakes were also very self-inflicted. There was no crispness to their game, their best players were some of their worst players in the game and had it not been for starting goalie Arturs Silovs absolutely standing on his head that could have easily been a 6-2 or 7-2 game. The fact they were even in a position to potentially get a point with five minutes to play in regulation is a testament to the game Silovs played.
When the Penguins had that disastrous home stand against against the Minnesota Wild and Seattle Kraken back in late November, coming back from the Sweden trip, head coach Dan Muse fumed after one of the games that just playing well and not getting results was not acceptable, and that they should be beyond that point in their expectations.
At the time, when the Penguins were still very early in the season and had not yet developed a larger sampling of play, it was a pretty bold statement from a first-year head coach of a team that was thought to be in a rebuilding season. That mindset is even more true now. Even though this is a team in some sort of a rebuilding phase, and even though there are young players on the roster and players developing, it is still, in general an older more veteran team that now should have serious playoff expectations.
Generally speaking, I am not down on the Penguins based on yesterday’s game.
I am simply down on that performance because my expectations have changed on this season.
This is a good team. Part of me thinks it is a really good team, and perhaps even a better team than a lot of people in Pittsburgh think it is. With strong play comes expectations. The Penguins failed to meet those expectations on Monday. Not because they lost. The way they lost. They have a big opportunity on Tuesday in a big game against the New York Islanders to make up for it.
