Column: These Penguins can still fly … with wings

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Carl Hagelin, at right on ice, celebrates his overtime goal that put the Rangers in the second round. — GETTY

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

NEW YORK — “This team is going to be good. I mean good.”

No one wants to hear that tonight. Not after the Penguins’ lone defensive lapse of overtime cost them a 2-1 loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, as well as this Stanley Cup playoff series in five games and, of course, their season.

It stings, as much as ever.

And when the sting is accompanied by the same annual expectations of carrying two of the best players on the planet on the roster, and the most recent championship came way back in 2009, it might even multiply. That’s how it undoubtedly feels to much of the fan base, regardless of full context, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As Sidney Crosby himself put it after this, “The expectations in here are as high as ever, and they’re higher among ourselves than they are for anyone on the outside. That doesn’t change.”

It stings. It really does.

And sure, to an extent, it stinks, too. Because as valiantly as the visitors controlled play for the bulk of this Game 5, especially from the middle of the second period onward, that doesn’t excuse why they were — as with most of 2014-15 — maddeningly inconsistent in that regard, right through Carl Hagelin’s dagger at 10:52 of overtime.

Evgeni Malkin was bluntest of all on that count: “You want to win a championship. We played hard, but the series was still 4-1.”

No question. Not good enough.

But that quote way up there at the top, that came from Kris Letang, stuck in civvies for more than a month due to another concussion but openly optimistic that he’ll be back next fall.

“I’m feeling OK. I am,” he told me outside the locker room. “I’m looking forward to next season. And I’m proud of the way my teammates played without me, especially tonight. We gave everything we had out there. And that’s a really good team we played.”

Note the “we.” If No. 58 is part of it, that’s a big, big piece right there.

It’s also notable that not one participant took complete solace:

Certainly not Ben Lovejoy, who lost Hagelin coming off the end boards and stayed way too soft in allowing him a clean look at Fleury:

Lovejoy had a reason to release his man on New York’s overtime goal in Game 4, at least a systematic one. Not this time. Too soft is too soft.

I asked him about the sequence: “Hagelin came out of the corner cleanly with the puck. I’m trying to slow-play him so he can’t take it directly to the net. And he took it away from the net and was able to fire away a nice shot.”

Remarkably, Lovejoy was on for 10 of the Rangers’ 11 goals in the series. Even with an increased role on the top pairing due to injury, even with a career-high workload, it’s not good enough.

Crosby commanded play at times, but he had two goals in Game 2, none in the rest, and two assists. It’s OK for some, but for the player still seen by some as best in the world, it’s not enough.

Malkin had no goals, no assists and barely looked like he could move over the final two games.

I asked if he was hurting, and he acknowledged nothing major:

Maybe more will emerge. Maybe not. Either way, it’s not enough.

The list of players I’d rate as consistent contributors throughout the series, within the parameters of their roles, amounts to Marc-Andre Fleury, Patric Hornqvist, Maxim Lapierre, Ian Cole and Taylor Chorney. And having just a handful, of course, isn’t nearly enough.

So let’s get that out of the way upfront. The Penguins had their share of legit excuses to back into the playoffs as meekly as they did, and they had their share of legit excuses to lose to the team with the NHL’s best regular-season record. But those can’t and shouldn’t override other personnel, performance and strategic issues that brought yet another early exit. Those were very real.

All that said, man, I’m sorry, but I just can’t get down about the team’s immediate future. And I can’t and won’t nonsensically connect it to the past except for facets that directly apply.

Some acquisitions were good, and some weren’t. Some, like a first-round draft pick for David Perron, looked incredible for a while, then awful. I happen to think the ledger came out mostly in favor of Jim Rutherford, though I’m increasingly willing to accept that more should have been culled for Simon Despres — regardless of what one thinks of Despres — than Lovejoy. This GM also was responsible for three of the five names I singled out up there for playoff praise, and Cole-for-Robert Bortuzzo looks so promising it might already wash out Despres-Lovejoy.

I’m willing to give any executive more than one year to dig out of the hole — no, chasm — that Ray Shero created with a decade of indefensibly misguided drafting.

Some of Mike Johnston’s coaching was good, and some wasn’t. He entered his rookie season looking like a genius, with a breakout system — maybe the most critical area for hockey Xs and Os — that made Dan Bylsma’s look silly and a power play that scored almost at will. But the breakout soon bombed, in part because the Flyers figured out how to trap it and others soon followed, and in part because Letang, the very player for whom the system was designed, plus Olli Maatta, Christian Ehrhoff and Derrick Pouliot were lost, as well. No puck-moving defensemen means no moving in a pack, and that meant no breakout. And once Johnston had to adjust the breakout to longer passes, the Penguins’ glaring lack of speed on the wings was badly exposed.

I’m willing to give any coach more than a year in which he was forced to forfeit the very foundation of his system. Especially a smart guy like Johnston, who, even in the course of this series matched against a savvy veteran in Alain Vigneault, learned quickly from his early mistakes rather than staying stubborn.

To emphasize here, all five games were decided by one goal. If Johnston doesn’t have his short-handed, inexperienced team prepared strategically and mentally, this could have been hideous.

Oh, and to emphasize this again, too: Rutherford and Johnston are staying. Both of them.

I reported that in the Friday Insider, having heard it from the very top. I can report right here that I also was told that after this game, by David Morehouse, the team’s CEO. In emphatic terms.

The Penguins’ brass sees this season as one that was lost to injury and, even if adding up all the other deficiencies cited above, it’s absolutely true. Take Dan Girardi, Ryan McDonagh and Marc Staal off the Rangers’ blue line, and the series might well have been flipped. Take those three out for extra-long stretches, and Vigneault would be forced to switch up, too.

I get that most would probably rather pound their fists on something hard today. I appreciate that emotion and understand it. But it doesn’t lessen the magnitude of the injury factor one iota.

What the Penguins must add in the summer, above all else, is speed on the wings.

As one team official — not Morehouse — told me after this game, “You look at the Rangers and all the guys they had flying up the left side, and we don’t really have that. Especially with no red line and how the game is today, you’ve got to have it. We’ve got to get that.”

That’s No. 1 not with a bullet but a rocket. Free agency won’t offer much, but trades are always an option. So is promoting top prospect Kasperi Kapanen, who scored twice for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton last night in his first AHL playoff game and is almost sure to break camp with the big team this fall. All by himself, he’ll upgrade the speed significantly. Management also likes Scott Wilson, though I’m not nearly as sold as they sound. He did, at the least, play well in Game 5.

This will need to be addressed from the outside. Hornqvist is the only current winger on the top two lines who should be guaranteed a spot, and that’s glaring.

Center is Crosby, Malkin, Brandon Sutter and Lapierre. Don’t expect change.

And please, please don’t dive into any discussion about Malkin being traded. It won’t happen. That, too, comes right from the top. And the player himself — who has a full no-trade clause, by the way — echoed after the game his passion for the Penguins.

“The Rangers played one goal better than us the whole series,” Malkin said. “Just one goal.”

When asked about the state of the team: “Of course, injuries were bad luck. We lost our two best defensemen. It’s, you know, tough for the team. But I like what we do. We played hard the whole series. It’s so friendly in the locker room, so tight. But it’s … bad luck, I don’t know.”

Disappointed but hardly disenchanted, I’m sure you’d agree.

Same with Crosby when asked if the team needs big change this summer: “It’s only 20 minutes since we got off the ice, so it’s not like that’s what I’m thinking about. All those close games, all that little margin for error … it’s kind of hard to absorb right now, to be honest. We’ve been missing guys all year, and it’s hard to get into your rhythm and team identity. I’m not using that as an excuse, by any means. But yeah, usually, you just go through a span of injuries and then settle in. We never got through it. It never ended.”

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It’s funny that folks cite Crosby being 27 and Malkin being 28 as some sort of evidence that the Penguins’ window is closing, and yet no one — not in Pittsburgh, not anywhere in the hockey world — expresses anything similar about the Ducks’ duo of Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, both of whom are about to turn 30, both of whom haven’t won a Cup since 2007 and both of whom are playing great on a team that’s currently very much in line for another championship.

Crazy what the right supporting cast can do for a window.

On defense, the Penguins’ outlook couldn’t be brighter, especially since it doesn’t need to involve any external moves. Paul Martin and Ehrhoff almost surely will be allowed to leave through free agency. That’s $9 million off the cap, as well as roster space for some of the aforementioned young defensemen. Growing pains will come, no doubt. They always do with young defensemen, but the potential looks worth the pain.

What I’m describing there is the team’s actual plan, by the way.

So are buyouts. Heading that list are Chris Kunitz, who had one fine game and was otherwise invisible, including a shot-free Game 5, and Rob Scuderi, a bystander on New York’s first goal and well past his prime in general. There’s no reason for either to return or for the team to not capitalize on the cap space that results.

And in goal?

Well, suffice it to say here that the Fleury-flops-in-the-playoffs mythos can be buried once and for all, this following a second consecutive strong postseason since he’s found a more confident form with the help of goaltending coach Mike Bales. He just isn’t the same player anymore, and anyone doubting needs to update their hockey dialogue.

“It’s tough to think about anything positive right now,” Fleury told me. “But yeah, the whole playoff thing, that’s in the past.”

“Flower was awesome,” Hornqvist said. “Best player in the series, either team.”

Remember when that was the primary problem?

Should be a whole lot easier rounding up another few wingers who can fly.