PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – At a time where they put themselves in a position where they couldn’t take a period off, the Pens took the third period off Tuesday night ending in a 4-2 loss to the Islanders.
The Pens had given up shots, but were in control up 2-0 after the first 40 minutes. The breakdown started with a puck that got by Kris Letang and led to a breakaway goal by New York’s Kyle Palmieri 17 seconds into the third period.
“It hit the extension and went inside,” Letang explained. “I was taking the wall away. Trying to keep it on my foot and it kicked right to the middle.”
“They get a goal first shift of the third period, which is not a great time to give up a goal,” Sullivan said. “They win the faceoff at center ice, and it turns into a 2-on-0 down the other end.”
“It's just playing a game with not a whole lot of purpose. So, we give up an easy goal to start the third period, and it gives them life, it gives them juice.”
Islanders would tie it just over five minutes later as Noah Dobson dove in front of the net and flipped a rebound past Tristan Jarry. It would take a Pierre Engvall odd-man rush goal at 13:08 to give New York the lead and they would seal it with an empty-netter.
“We just beat ourselves,” said captain Sidney Crosby, who scored his 24th goal to make it 2-0. “We made some mistakes. Obviously, they’re going to push, it’s 2-0. But there just wasn’t a lot of pushback.”
Jarry stopped 35 shots and said the Islanders just kept coming and credited them with a consistent game all night.
It could also be the Pens were not the aggressor in the third period and let New York take the game to them.
“They were obviously putting a lot of pucks on net,” Jarry said. “They were putting a lot of traffic at the net. It’s hard to defend when they’re going to the net like that. So maybe it caught us on our heels. And I think we have to be better at that.”
“I just think it was the fact that we gave up that early goal,” Letang said. “After that kind of fall back on your heels. We basically let them come at us. They are a team that waits for mistakes and they take their chances.”
Bryan Rust called it a bunch of self-inflicted wounds, saying the team ‘fell flat’ in the third period.
It’s magnified because any miracle run at the end of the season requires winning nearly every game, especially those inside the division to a team then two points and now four points ahead of you.
After stewing about it for a couple of minutes, Sullivan went through a list of wrongs as the Pens dropped to 28-31-10 or also said no chance of being over .500 for the third straight season.
· “We didn't stay on the right side of people.”
· “We weren't physical enough in all three zones.”
· “We didn't close on people in the defensive zone.”
· “We just didn't play hard enough.”
· “We didn't compete hard enough.”
· “We didn’t play smart enough.”
· “We weren’t committed to play the game the right way.”
“When you give them a two-on-zero on the first goal, they got a four-on-two or something on one of the other goals – I mean, it's just easy offense. It's just easy offense.”
“It's hard to win that way.”
In one period it was a flashback to the reasons the Pens sit near the bottom of the Eastern Conference.