Nick Spaling, center, is congratulated on his first-period goal Tuesday night in St. Paul, Minn. — GETTY IMAGES
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Penguins wrapped up their Tuesday night at Xcel Energy Center barraged by pucks and, in a totally you-had-to-be-here-to-believe-it scene, a comparable barrage of debris from the typically docile Minnesota fans as the visitors mobbed Thomas Greiss’ crease to celebrate their 4-1 flattening of the Wild.
Ugly all around, right?
“Nah, not at all,” Thomas Greiss was saying after peeling off his pads from a sound 33-save performance. “We won the game, and it was no goal.”
Well, yeah. Count those as two more quality rejections, then.
Here are some more: Nick Spaling and Brandon Sutter scored always-welcome third-line goals in the opening 23 minutes, the power play struck yet again on the sweetest of setups from Evgeni Malkin to Chris Kunitz, and the Penguins at one stage had a mind-blowing streak of 18 unanswered goals as well as a 3-0 lead on the NHL’s stingiest outfit.
“I liked our first two periods tonight,” Mike Johnston said, “but …”
But an errant, ill-advised Kris Letang pass conceded a short-handed breakaway for Nino Niederreiter halfway through the third, and a Zach Parise shot that broke the plane behind Greiss appeared to pull Minnesota within one with 3:06 left.
It was waved off — more on that in a moment — but the Wild’s overall push was as real as the Penguins’ sudden passivity. Or complacency. Or whatever that was.
“… I didn’t like the third period,” Johnston continued, inevitably, with that quote above. “I thought we got ourselves in trouble when we got away from our game. We tried to over-pass the puck. We didn’t play as directly as we should have. We were playing against one of the top teams in the league, and we allowed them to put us back on our heels.”
No question on either statement. Minnesota entered with a 7-3 record, and it held a 15-4 edge in shots in the third until Patric Hornqvist’s empty-netter.
Don’t mean to go all negative here. The Penguins hardly deserve that, being 8-2-1 with a five-game winning streak and all manner of scoring superlatives. But the fact is, this happened in Detroit, it was close to happening elsewhere, and it nearly happened here. If failing to pounce on a wounded opponent — or worse, going all-out collapse — morphs into anything more than an anomaly, it’s way smarter to address that problem now than, say, mid-April.
So kudos to Johnston for not being satisfied. His were fair criticisms, legit concerns.
As for the other mess, that’s more challenging to explain but worth the interlude.
Parise did, in fact, backhand the puck into the net — well, far enough that Marcel Goc’s gallant attempt to rescue it was visibly an inside job — for what would have been ruled a goal, except that Mikael Granlund had fallen on top of Greiss and either couldn’t get up or had no urgency to do so. Either way, referee Francois St. Laurent emphatically signaled no goal.
“If the guy’s on top of me, I can’t make the save,” Greiss said of Granlund. “What the ref told me right away — and I heard him loud and clear — was that he was calling goalie interference.”
Exactly. That’s the only reason St. Laurent”s arms waved. Had nothing to do with the puck.
And yet, for reasons we might never know, the PA announcer at Xcel, Adam Abrams, almost immediately boomed into the microphone, “The play is under review!” Maybe it was because St. Laurent and partner Graham Skilliter skated together in the direction of the penalty timekeeper’s box — which they would do, anyway, to credit the goal and assists — or that the PA guy just basically took it upon himself to assume a review was coming.
Once St. Laurent arrived, he did the right thing and announced to the arena that there was no goal because of goalie interference and that there was no review because his call was not reviewable:
Good for St. Laurent.
But it evidently wasn’t good enough for the Wild crowd, which went … well, wild. The boos were as deafening as the place had been silent until then, and it took a far nastier turn when debris was thrown on the ice upon the ruling — prompting Abrams to warn fans that the Wild might be issued a minor penalty — then again at the final horn when even more rained down on the Penguins. As if they somehow were culpable in the call.
Got all that?
Wonderful, because the real area of emphasis for me, on this night and all through this season’s start, is that these Penguins enter every game they play — even against quality opponents like the Kings, Devils, Predators, Islanders and now the Wild — with a distinct upper hand thanks to that prodigious power play.
You know the numbers: They were 1 for 3 in this one, which remarkably lowered their ridiculous and NHL-best success rate to 41.3 percent. No other team is higher than the Capitals’ 29.3 percent, and no one else is above 25.
You also know how effortless they can make it look:
Sorry, that’s just evil. All five skaters touched the puck, including Kunitz, before it came back to Kunitz, just 11 seconds into the man-advantage. That’s Brazilian futbol, not hockey.
But what’s become fascinating — and very much worth further monitoring — is how teams are backing off the Penguins for fear of being sent to the box.
I brought this up with Johnston after the game, and he concurred: “Usually, nowadays, if you look at a game and say, ‘Do we need a tough guy in this game?’ or wonder how physically your team has to play … really, when you look at it, our power play is the best deterrent we have out there. Certainly, teams are intimidated to take penalties now. They want to be careful on us. And as a result, you get a little more space, you get more chances to take the puck to the net.”
I asked Hornqvist to try to describe the power play’s confidence level:
Be sure of this: Well before the Penguins’ plane was to land in Winnipeg overnight, Paul Maurice and the Jets’ coaching staff were concocting a bazillion ways to impress upon their players how to avoid penalties. And that alone benefits the Penguins from the drop of the puck.
I like the fact that Coach Johnston called it like it was about the 3rd period.
If this would have been Bylsma, he would have muttered something about his 'system', and then some gibberish.
.
I know it is early, but Rutherford appears to have made a very good coaching choice.
Alos wanted to point out that Johnston is working on things as the year progresses. We all know that the NHL regular season is 'meaningless', but if there is an area to work on, he addresses it.
.
Refreshing change this year.
Roughly the same talent, much better results.
The Wild while being a decent team cannot match up with the Pens unless the Pens let them. The call by the ref was the proper call and was confirmed by the analyst on NHL network.
Glad the Pens don't play this team and their boring style more than twice.
Pens are so much better in how they play over last year. Some very good additions and with a limited cap, not much room to add.Trade deadline? Nice to see a third line that can impact the game. BB will make a nice addition to the group. Borts adds a big body and has to play
I suspect JR. will not wait til the deadline but we shall see. Doubt Martin is here by then. Possibly some team has some injuries and may take Scuderi of our hands too. But I dream.
Game was going great until bad Letang decided to revert to last years form and had a horrible giveaway that led to their goal. That PP looked uninterested from the beginning. Wish the coaches would have yanked them off like they did a few games ago. Played great 1st 2 periods.
I couldn't believe it when you mentioned the 3 stars. But sure enough, you're right. Unbelievable, really. I agree with you because that is something you'd expect in Philly, but Minnesota? Come on. It's childish.
He absolutely has, did have one bad giveaway I remember last night. Martin has also stepped up from his horrible start. They are playing really good defensively. They just need to play the whole 60, they kind of got lazy the last 10-12 last night and it nearly cost them.
So I just looked at the standings and know it won't stay like this but there are only 2 from the Metro. in the top 8. Wouldn't you be po'd if you were in Atlantic and had more points than the 3rd Metro team and missed the playoffs? New system is dumb, need to go back to top 8.
Look at the 87-88 season where the Rangers and Pens with 82 and 81 points missed the playoffs, but the Whalers with 77 made it, in the old Wales Conference.
The two most impressive things about the penguins start are even with their up tempo style, they are 10th in goals against per game.
.
And with all the talk about special teams carrying them, they are 4th in even strength plus/minus.
Excellent point, Milo. They are excelling on special teams AND at even strength. This is what is leading them to so many multiple goal victories. The true greatness in any team, the thing that separates the best from the pack, is goal differential.
That statement from Johnson sounded like a variation of "we gotta get to our game" but it goes to show how true that statement can be. Bylsma liked stretch breakouts but ultimately he wanted zone time and his guys never worked for it.
Ultimately Johnson wants zone time as well and when they cycle they play well. When they get complacent and try to get fancy they look bad. Nothing has changed about that. Same story. The job of the new coach is to recapture the team and keep them playing the system.
And speaking of limited flexibility leftover from the previous regime, check out cap geek sometime & take a look at how many guys on the Pens have no trade clauses as compared to other teams. I think the Zamboni driver even has one. It's ridiculous.
The level of support, both physically and positionally, on the ice has been fantastic. That's the biggest difference. Credit to Johnston for the system and making sure an element of toughness is present on every line. I'm enjoying it, big time.
November 5, 2014
Column: Penguins on serious power trip
by Dejan Kovacevic • Columns • Penguins
Nick Spaling, center, is congratulated on his first-period goal Tuesday night in St. Paul, Minn. — GETTY IMAGES
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Penguins wrapped up their Tuesday night at Xcel Energy Center barraged by pucks and, in a totally you-had-to-be-here-to-believe-it scene, a comparable barrage of debris from the typically docile Minnesota fans as the visitors mobbed Thomas Greiss’ crease to celebrate their 4-1 flattening of the Wild.
Ugly all around, right?
“Nah, not at all,” Thomas Greiss was saying after peeling off his pads from a sound 33-save performance. “We won the game, and it was no goal.”
Well, yeah. Count those as two more quality rejections, then.
Here are some more: Nick Spaling and Brandon Sutter scored always-welcome third-line goals in the opening 23 minutes, the power play struck yet again on the sweetest of setups from Evgeni Malkin to Chris Kunitz, and the Penguins at one stage had a mind-blowing streak of 18 unanswered goals as well as a 3-0 lead on the NHL’s stingiest outfit.
“I liked our first two periods tonight,” Mike Johnston said, “but …”
But an errant, ill-advised Kris Letang pass conceded a short-handed breakaway for Nino Niederreiter halfway through the third, and a Zach Parise shot that broke the plane behind Greiss appeared to pull Minnesota within one with 3:06 left.
It was waved off — more on that in a moment — but the Wild’s overall push was as real as the Penguins’ sudden passivity. Or complacency. Or whatever that was.
“… I didn’t like the third period,” Johnston continued, inevitably, with that quote above. “I thought we got ourselves in trouble when we got away from our game. We tried to over-pass the puck. We didn’t play as directly as we should have. We were playing against one of the top teams in the league, and we allowed them to put us back on our heels.”
No question on either statement. Minnesota entered with a 7-3 record, and it held a 15-4 edge in shots in the third until Patric Hornqvist’s empty-netter.
Don’t mean to go all negative here. The Penguins hardly deserve that, being 8-2-1 with a five-game winning streak and all manner of scoring superlatives. But the fact is, this happened in Detroit, it was close to happening elsewhere, and it nearly happened here. If failing to pounce on a wounded opponent — or worse, going all-out collapse — morphs into anything more than an anomaly, it’s way smarter to address that problem now than, say, mid-April.
So kudos to Johnston for not being satisfied. His were fair criticisms, legit concerns.
As for the other mess, that’s more challenging to explain but worth the interlude.
Parise did, in fact, backhand the puck into the net — well, far enough that Marcel Goc’s gallant attempt to rescue it was visibly an inside job — for what would have been ruled a goal, except that Mikael Granlund had fallen on top of Greiss and either couldn’t get up or had no urgency to do so. Either way, referee Francois St. Laurent emphatically signaled no goal.
“If the guy’s on top of me, I can’t make the save,” Greiss said of Granlund. “What the ref told me right away — and I heard him loud and clear — was that he was calling goalie interference.”
Exactly. That’s the only reason St. Laurent”s arms waved. Had nothing to do with the puck.
And yet, for reasons we might never know, the PA announcer at Xcel, Adam Abrams, almost immediately boomed into the microphone, “The play is under review!” Maybe it was because St. Laurent and partner Graham Skilliter skated together in the direction of the penalty timekeeper’s box — which they would do, anyway, to credit the goal and assists — or that the PA guy just basically took it upon himself to assume a review was coming.
Once St. Laurent arrived, he did the right thing and announced to the arena that there was no goal because of goalie interference and that there was no review because his call was not reviewable:
Good for St. Laurent.
But it evidently wasn’t good enough for the Wild crowd, which went … well, wild. The boos were as deafening as the place had been silent until then, and it took a far nastier turn when debris was thrown on the ice upon the ruling — prompting Abrams to warn fans that the Wild might be issued a minor penalty — then again at the final horn when even more rained down on the Penguins. As if they somehow were culpable in the call.
Got all that?
Wonderful, because the real area of emphasis for me, on this night and all through this season’s start, is that these Penguins enter every game they play — even against quality opponents like the Kings, Devils, Predators, Islanders and now the Wild — with a distinct upper hand thanks to that prodigious power play.
You know the numbers: They were 1 for 3 in this one, which remarkably lowered their ridiculous and NHL-best success rate to 41.3 percent. No other team is higher than the Capitals’ 29.3 percent, and no one else is above 25.
You also know how effortless they can make it look:
Sorry, that’s just evil. All five skaters touched the puck, including Kunitz, before it came back to Kunitz, just 11 seconds into the man-advantage. That’s Brazilian futbol, not hockey.
But what’s become fascinating — and very much worth further monitoring — is how teams are backing off the Penguins for fear of being sent to the box.
I brought this up with Johnston after the game, and he concurred: “Usually, nowadays, if you look at a game and say, ‘Do we need a tough guy in this game?’ or wonder how physically your team has to play … really, when you look at it, our power play is the best deterrent we have out there. Certainly, teams are intimidated to take penalties now. They want to be careful on us. And as a result, you get a little more space, you get more chances to take the puck to the net.”
I asked Hornqvist to try to describe the power play’s confidence level:
Be sure of this: Well before the Penguins’ plane was to land in Winnipeg overnight, Paul Maurice and the Jets’ coaching staff were concocting a bazillion ways to impress upon their players how to avoid penalties. And that alone benefits the Penguins from the drop of the puck.
Just need to tidy up those finishes now.