Pens Beat Sens: Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow

Last night's win over an injury-depleted Ottawa Senators team was one of the year's most complete efforts for the suddenly un-depleted Penguins.  While most of the attention after the game has focused on Matt Cooke's did-he-or-didn't-he-mean-to stomp on Erik Karlsson's ankle, a more interesting subplot was the Penguins' handling of Kris Letang's reintegration into a power play unit that had played well in his absence.  Paul Martin took over Letang's spot at the point during the three games that Letang sat due to injury, and filled in admirably, exhibiting composure in high pressure situations and contributing to a power play that went a healthy 5-for-13.

With Letang returning to the lineup, it was unclear whether Martin would be bumped back down to the second unit, or if Bylsma would pair the two.  As it turns out, Bylsma stuck with Martin as the sole defenseman at the beginning of the power play, then subbed in Letang for Kunitz about a minute in, resulting in a Letang-Martin-Neal-Crosby-Malkin look that was moving the puck, creating scoring chances, and capitalizing.

I've been arguing against playing forwards at the point for a while now, but even I have to admit that the thought of Martin quarterbacking our power play would have given me the shakes before the season began.  For all the credit that Martin has garnered for his improved defensive play, it was his offensive instincts that worried me most last season.  Though he could make a decent breakout pass, he showed a serious tone-deafness when it came to pinching, jumping into the action just as the puck was being turned over, or already heading in the other direction.

Last night, however, we saw a completely different story.  Let's start with the Pens' first (and, technically, only) power play goal, which knotted the game at 2-2.  As you can see here, the Penguins set up with three men (Martin, Letang, Malkin) up high, and Crosby and Neal down low.  Malkin makes a cross-ice pass to Martin, who prepares to set up Letang for a one-timer from the blue line.

Martin's man hustles to cut off the pass between Martin and Letang, but overplays it, opening up a ton of room around the right faceoff circle, like so:

Martin recognizes the situation and pushes the puck past his man, skating hard toward the net before finding Crosby behind the goal line.  At the same time, James Neal drifts in the opposite direction, crossing from the left post to the right circle, and sits there waiting for the puck.

Rather than fading back to his point, Martin continues toward the net, eventually ending up behind the goaltender.  He crosses in front of Sergei Gonchar, who is fronting Crosby, causing just enough of a distraction to clear a passing lane for Sid.  Crosby finds Neal, who is just about automatic from the hash marks, especially with such a clear path in front of him.

Martin's aggressiveness sets the tone here; his pinch is well timed, catching the Sens out of position, creating space and - hey! - encouraging some much-needed movement on the power play. 

Perhaps emboldened by this success, Martin is even more aggressive on the Pens' fourth goal, which comes moments after a Sens penalty expires.  Malkin has the puck at the half boards, and three of the four Senators on the ice shade toward the right side of the ice.

Malkin and Crosby criss-cross in the corner and Martin, noticing that the left side of the ice has been effectively evacuated, drives to the net.  With Chris Phillips about to step out of the penalty box, Martin's pinch is something of a risk, but it's a calculated one:  all four penalty killers are down low, Letang is back to defend the pass up ice to Phillips, and, of course, Malkin is extremely hard to knock off the puck.

Malkin stops behind the net, and Martin and Neal both open up at opposite sides of the goal.  As you can see below, both Senators forwards are caught in no-man's-land, defending nobody in particular, and the front of the net is wide open:  

Malkin passes across the grain to Neal, who one-touches it across an empty crease to Martin, who redirects the puck right back to the crease, where Crosby has taken up position for an easy goal.  Compare the image below with the one above and one thing stands out: the Pens are moving around, and the Sens are standing in the exact same place.

In real time, it's a beautiful tic-tac-toe play, and it doesn't happen without Paul Martin putting pressure on the defense:

It's worth noting that if Letang wasn't on the ice here, Neal would likely be covering the right point, and Martin would be much less likely to pinch.  Letang's presence serves as a security blanket for Martin, who can take an offensive posture here with Letang's speed and sound defensive play as insurance.

I think, and I hope, that we'll get to see Martin and Letang together on the power play moving forward; according to Bylsma, the plan currently is for Letang to take the first player off the ice from the first power play unit, most likely Kunitz.  Bylsma might be stubbornly clinging to his dream of a four-forward power play unit to the detriment of the team, but I can see his reasoning: with such a drop off between our first and second power play teams, it makes sense to stagger the line changes.  Crosby and Malkin tend to stay on ice for a minute and a half anyway, so switching out a tired Kunitz for a fresh Letang breathes life into our most potent lineup, takes advantage of a potentially gassed penalty kill, and puts us in a good position to recover defensively in the event of a turnover.

If Paul Martin can keep up this level of play, he has the potential (as we saw last night) to make our power play that much more versatile, and to help fill the void left by Gonchar, which is what he was brought in to do in the first place.

Islanders 4, Pens 1: GRIPES

This jersey that I spotted at the game last night just about sums up my feelings.  It was a brutal loss that brought the boo-birds out in our second home game.  The forecheck yet again was nonexistent, we saw dozens of lazy passes, and the power play . . . LORD the power play.  The first unit couldn't generate anything - no open looks, no unexpected passes, no sustained possession - aside from a whole mess of supergreat SHOOOOOOOOT cheers from the fans (spoiler alert, when they did shoooooooot, it got blocked).  The second unit features Tyler Kennedy as the primary playmaker, so you go ahead and guess how that turned out.

The Penguins' woes with the man-advantage were exacerbated by the Islanders' own power play, which basically set up a couch, a coffee table, and a couple of Barcaloungers in the Pens' zone and made themselves at home.  The Penguins penalty kill, ever the gracious host, welcomed them in with open arms and stationary legs.  And this:

That's John Tavares in the circle, by far the Islanders' most dangerous scorer.  Somehow, he was open for this shot at least three times over the course of two second-period power plays, both of which resulted in goals.  And when I say open, I mean, there isn't a Penguin on his side of the ice.  And I used my Photoshop diagramming skills to illustrate that he had approximately 85% of the net to shoot at.  In this case, Tavares chose to rocket a one-timer directly at Marc-Andre Fleury's face, and Fleury ducked the hell out the way.

Apparently the boos that rained down as the Penguins steadfastly refused to take advantage of a five-minute major penalty to Colin MacDonald (who was handed a two game suspension today) did not fall on deaf ears.  Word out of Penguins practice today is that Byslma will be moving Malkin to the point and shifting Neal down low, which is all well and good except for the fact that it takes our best scorer (Malkin) away from his favorite spot (on the right half-boards).  I guess we'll have to hope that Malkin will be able to create space at the point and eventually fade toward his spot, and that we won't just give up infinite short-handed goals.

Problematizing things even further is the fact that Matt Niskanen is out for 2-4 weeks with a "lower body injury," eliminating one of our top offensive defensemen from the power play discussion.  While I'm on it, the whole vague, cheeky "lower/upper body injury" thing is truly frustrating.  The fans would like to know what is actually ailing injured players, but coaches find it strategically beneficial to give out the bare minimum, only disclosing where the injury occured vis-a-vis some imaginary bodily equator.  Why?  Because if they said "so-and-so has a fractured ankle," they fear that opposing players will target those areas.  In which case, what is wrong with us?  Don't get me wrong, I love hockey, but when coaches have to withhold information for fear that other players will use that information to willfully reinjure another human being?  Yikes.

Perhaps the most worrisome thing to take from the Islanders game is the Penguins' inability to bounce back.  After struggling to find a rhythm and falling behind, the game quickly devolved into "Geno or Sid need to save the team, let's have them try to bust into the zone 1-on-2 and do something magical."  Sure, sometimes they are going to do something magical and score an unbelievable goal, but the majority of the time the puck is going to drift harmlessly into the corner boards, and the Pens wingers won't be close enough to put pressure on the opposing defense.  The flip side of Sid and Geno putting the scoring burden on their own shoulders is the feeling that, if those two can't create a goal, no one will.  That's what we call in the blogging world a self-fulfilling prophecy.  We need to go back to generating scoring by attrition, by sending forecheckers in waves and wearing down the opposition.  Until that happens, we're a two-headed monster without a leg to stand on.

Anyway, long story short, this game sucked.  The Penguins have a lot to work on, and Pens fans will just have to keep on hoping that this is all due to "lockout rust," as opposed to "systemic flaws in the make up of the team."

A few bright spots from last night: Dustin Jeffrey, who my girlfriend's dad told me played really well in Croatia (above), was finally active, and got a lot of run on the wing with Malkin and Neal.  He's going to get the chance to stick on that line, especially if he keeps playing like he did last night.  He made a lot of solid plays, and no jaw-droppingly bad plays (which can't be said about, for instance, Malkin and Crosby), and overall looked good - ZAGREB good.

Kris Letang was the team's most dynamic player.  He looks good.  This is an ongoing theme.

I - and the rest of the ticketholders who stuck around for the final horn - appreciated the urgency the Penguins showed to spoil Nabokov's shutout.  Dupuis' put back was a hollow goal par excellence, but it was nice to cheer for something.  This is what we've been reduced to.

Game 5: Ottawa. Do You Like Dan Bylsma?

Friday night, with the Penguins in the process of blowing a two-goal lead on the Winnipeg Jets en route to a 5-2 loss, I sat watching the game with my brother at a Bloomfield bar.  A guy standing in front of us turned around and said, apropos of nothing: "Can I ask you guys a question?  Do you like Dan Bylsma?"

Before either of us could answer, he added, "Because I fucking hate him."  To be honest, as I told him, it was a hard question to answer.  You can begin, as did Bylsma's career, by dropping the hammer: he won us a Cup.  You do that, and you're almost untouchable.  Almost.

But with three consecutive disappointing showings in the playoffs, Bylsma's post-championship grace period might be coming to an end.  

So, do we like him?  It can be extremely difficult to assess a hockey coach's influence on the on-ice-product.  If we look at the record alone, Bylsma comes out smelling like roses; the Penguins have made the playoffs in every year of his tenure, and perennially challenge for the top spot in the conference.  Then again, having Crosby and Malkin on your team will cover up a lot of mistakes.  I get the feeling that this squad could make the playoffs with that Watson robot from Jeopardy! calling the shots (seriously, this is an idea that would probably work).

Beyond the wins, Bylsma's got a lot to recommend him.  He's well-liked by players, and seems to have contributed considerably to secondary players like Chris Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, Matt Cooke, and Matt Niskanen performing beyond expectations.  He's instilled in his team some of the trademarks for which they are known: tenacious forechecking, quick breakout passes from the blue line, a swarming penalty kill and a dump-and-chase, puck-possession game on the other end.

And on the other hand, we've seen Bylsma fall in love with his system, and show a reluctance (if not an inability) to adapt to opposing schemes.  He can be predictable, down to his vague, constant dictate to "Get To Our Game," and as a result the Penguins are susceptible to the kind of teams that can throw a lot of looks at you.  This is especially an issue with fast, young teams like the Maple Leafs and Jets, who overwhelmed the Pens in consecutive contests.

Worst of all is the feeling of watching an opponent adjust to the Pens as a game progresses.  They are a force in the first period, often looking like they are going to bowl over the other team, but that dominance is almost never sustained through the entire game (the win against the Rangers in our second game came close).  No lead feels safe with this team, particularly in the wake of the Flyers series last playoffs.  In those situations, like our last game against the Jets, the calm, collected mien that we've come to appreciate from Bylsma instead can read as frozen and ineffectual.

Finally, there's the goatee that has sprung up on his face this season.  Look at the photo up top: it's an unfortunate rhombus of hair surrounding his mouth, calling into question anything that comes out of it.  Oddly enough, it looks like he's channeling another goateed Pittsburgh coach who went from universally loved to somewhat divisive - Bill Cowher.  Cowher was an institution in the city, who positioned the Steelers as a Super Bowl favorite year after year, but those teams all too often fell short against teams who challenged them to adapt to different styles.  Of course, Cowher's reputation was forever validated with a late-career Super Bowl win, while Bylsma's career was, from the first, christened with that "CHAMPION" seal which never fades.

All of this is to say, I don't really know how I feel about Dan Bylsma.  What I DO know is that it will be interesting to see what he does this season, and how it will affect fans' opinions of him.  This team is not without flaws (*cough* third defensive pairing and offensive depth *cough*), but when you have the two best players in the world in their prime, the expectation is to win now.

It's not fair to Byslma to be held to such standards, but when you have early success (and his was really the earliest and most successful), the challenge is to find ways to continue to improve.  If the Pens lose tonight in Ottawa, the fans will certainly be in three-game-losing-streak burn-down-the-team-and-piss-on-the-ashes meltdown mode.  Fair or not, with such a razor-thin margin of error, Bylsma will be hard-pressed to find new ways to prove himself.   According to the guy at the bar, everyone (except for him) loves Byslma.  But in Pittsburgh, where the fans are as passionate as we are spoiled, nothing is guaranteed.