PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Pens are now through 16 games and have only five wins and 12 points after a disheartening 6-2 loss to Boston Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena where their warts just continued to show.
“We can keep talking about it all we want, it’s up to us to correct it,” said Pens captain Sidney Crosby.
‘It’ in this case are a laundry list of details spelled out by head coach Dan Muse after falling to the Bruins and remaining in last place.
- Puck play
- Defensive positioning
- Box outs
- Coming off the wall
- Wall and other battles
- The number of breakaways is not sustainable
“I think right now for us it’s a number of things, it crept in tonight,” Muse added. “We are not going to fix them all overnight, but we have to start making those corrections. The biggest thing for me are the things that are totally preventable.”
There is the killer line, the ‘totally preventable’, self-inflicted mistakes.
“Lack of attention to detail, we play into their hands,” said Pens alternate captain Kris Letang. “They play a condensed neutral zone and we just play into their hands and that’s what happens.”
“Consistency is not there at all, it’s not one game we are talking about. We are on for 20. We are off for 20. You cannot win games consistently in this league if you are doing that. You have to be able to play 60 minutes and stack them up game after game."
Goalie Arturs Silovs had a similar spin on it postgame after he was under siege again. He echoed Muse in simplifying and doing the things that don’t require much skill. Silovs said they need to come into a game with a ‘competitive mindset’.
“There’s a lot of loud chances right now,” Silovs said. “We just need to find playing the right way. If we play the right way, we are going to get rewarded. If we sustain that for 60 minutes, we will have a positive result.”
Muse pointed out they are not going to win games in the NHL by allowing the types of chances they allowed against the Bruins on Thursday. They only gave up 24 shots, but many of those were great chances because of Pens breakdowns.
“It’s on the D at times, but it’s also on the forwards,” Muse said. “The forwards, there are times where they are going to need to cover for the defensemen. They have to do that job. They have to have that awareness.”
“When you are struggling, you got to simplify,” Crosby said. “Whether it’s little things, habits, winning wall battles. You are not going to fix everything overnight. When it comes to the details of the game, they just haven’t been there consistently and we are playing catchup because of it.”
The previous four Pens losses were all by one goal where the Pens held a lead at some point in the game. Thursday night, the Pens held a brief lead and then it fell apart. This franchise looking to build on a playoff berth last season, is far from that right now.
“The focus is going to be entirely playing a better brand of hockey in Los Angeles,” Muse said. “Within that is just getting the right start, putting together shifts, building some momentum and go from there. We got to get back to the details of the game. We got to go back to the puck recovery. The 50-50 pucks, the details that I’ve seen this group play with, so I’m not guessing they are capable of it, but we have to get way more consistency.”
“You got to just try to win a game,” Crosby said. “You can’t get too ahead of yourself. You can’t think about the past. You got to go in there with the mindset of putting a good team effort together, understanding it might not be pretty, but you just got to find a way to win a game.”
“It’s got to come quick,” Muse added. “It’s got to be corrected.”
LISTEN to postgame reaction as team describes issues & what it needed to fix them
LISTEN to postgame reaction as team describes issues & what it needed to fix them
