Penguins Blanked By Oilers, Lose Fourth Straight Sport

The Pittsburgh Penguins hoped to snap their three-game shedding streak – and six-game matchup skid – towards the Edmonton Oilers on Friday.

Sadly for them, it was a lot of the identical.

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The Penguins have been blanked by the Oilers, 4-0, in a very lopsided affair that noticed the Oilers register 50 photographs on objective compared to Pittsburgh’s 27. Rookie goaltender Joel Blomqvist was excellent and stored the Penguins within the recreation till the Oilers’ assault merely turned an excessive amount of within the latter half of the second interval.

When requested what the extent of concern about his crew is, head coach Mike Sullivan was fairly frank:

“Effectively, it is regarding as a result of we’re simply not adequate proper now,” he stated. “We did not play arduous sufficient, we did not play collectively as a bunch… we weren’t adequate.”

Listed here are some ideas and observations from final evening’s recreation:

– Blomqvist was good. Excellent. And I extremely imagine that he is the best goaltender on this roster.

Nedeljkovic is a gradual veteran presence who’s able to profitable some video games for the Penguins proper now, and I used to be prepared to present him the web. However Blomqvist simply continues to impress in almost each outing.

The Penguins are virtually definitely going to begin Nedeljkovic towards Vancouver within the second of the back-to-back on Saturday. However I have to see extra of Blomqvist. He is earned extra begins.

– The state of affairs with Tristan Jarry is so… odd. I can not say I can ever bear in mind anything prefer it.

He was despatched house halfway by way of the journey to work in a program with director of goaltending Jon Elkin. This occurred on Thursday. Then, lower than 48 hours later, it was introduced on Saturday morning that he was despatched to Pittsburgh’s AHL affiliate, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS), on a conditioning task.

Accounting for journey again from the West coast, this probably signifies that Jarry spent a couple of complete of 24 hours in Pittsburgh.

Only a actually unusual state of affairs. Hopefully, a profitable stint in WBS will assist him regain his type. He could be on his conditioning mortgage for as much as 14 days.

– The Penguins’ top-six is a significant issue proper now.

It is good that they are getting good goaltending from their rookie. It is good that their bottom-six has been producing within the early levels of the season. And, presumably, it is safer to financial institution on guys like Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, and Michael Bunting figuring issues out ultimately quite than the opposite two issues.

But I’ve never seen Crosby so noticeably off his game. Similar with Rust and Bunting. Even Evgeni Malkin, after registering 11 factors in 5 video games, has gone pointless in his final 4.

There’s an apparent scoring deficiency within the top-six, and I am undecided that is solely fixable. Rickard Rakell cannot do all of it himself. Nonetheless, I do suppose there are methods that the Penguins can optimize their lineup to place their gamers in a greater place to succeed.

That is how I’d think about deploying the lineup proper now to present it a lift:

Rakell-Crosby-Rust
Bunting-Malkin-Jesse Puljujarvi
Drew O’Connor-Lars Eller-Valtteri Puustinen/Anthony Beauvillier
Kevin Hayes-Cody Glass-Noel Acciari

That fourth line is without doubt one of the issues this crew has going for them. It ought to keep the way in which it’s. And the second line has gone chilly sufficient to the purpose the place I believe it is okay to shuffle some issues round to attempt to get the highest line going.

As a result of, as of proper now, the highest line is arguably primary on this crew’s listing of issues. Not solely is it not producing five-on-five, it is also been putrid defensively.

On the very least, Rakell brings a defensive acutely aware to the road. And he ought to definitely assist offensively.

– I’ll get into this in a separate piece at some point. However my intestine tells me there’s something very off about this room proper now.

They should do one thing about that quick as a way to salvage their season, whether or not that is a training change, a commerce, or one thing else to jolt this crew. As a result of it does not appear to be there may be at present sufficient intrinsically to get them to organically begin taking part in with a pulse.

Even when individuals wish to argue that they are in rebuild mode, I do not suppose they’re there but in a full-blown capability.

If they lose again in Vancouver, I might half-expect to see some adjustments very quickly.