PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It’s something Kris Letang said after the first game of the season that was a warning. He said the Pens played one hard period and then casually, didn’t play a north-south game in an opening loss to Chicago, who have only four points on the season.
It reared itself again on Saturday in St. Louis.
“We didn’t play the game with a sense of purpose that’s necessary to have success,” said Pens head coach Mike Sullivan. “I think the biggest case in point were the amount of chances we gave off the rush. I know this group is capable of more.”
Sullivan said they need to be hard to play against every night. They can’t continue to give teams free offense. He said they need to make teams work for their opportunities, too often this year, they haven’t.
“That has to be an important aspect of our team identity if we are going to become the team that we hope to become when we started training camp,” Sullivan said. “We have shown signs of it through the first five games. We need to bring it more consistently.”
Currently seventh in the Metropolitan Division, Sullivan said the answer isn’t to just switch up the lines. They’ve made the move with Radim Zohorna on the third line, but beyond that he doesn’t believe that’s the currently the right decision.
“If we just throw the lines in a blender every time we go through struggles, we are going to have a awful lot of line combinations if we don’t allow our guys to play through anything,” Sullivan said. “I think patience is an important aspect of coaching and allowing a little bit of a process to allow players to figure it out.”
Sullivan said the key is how long you go with these combinations. When is the time to continue your patience and when is the time to be proactive. They’ve studied film, looked at analytics and right now it’s about staying patient.
“We are still young in the season, we’ve had mixed results,” Sullivan said. “There’s been a lot of hockey that we’ve liked, there’s been some that we haven’t. Consistency is the operative work that we have to start to establish in our game. I’m not sure a line switch is the answer to that.”
PP change
While not ready to change the lines, the Pens are switching up the power play units. A group with three Hall of Famers and a 40-goal scorer is hitting at a 15% clip with an extra man. So out is Rickard Rakell and in is Bryan Rust.
“He’s really good at tracking down loose pucks, rebounds, 50/50 pucks that are up for grabs,” Sullivan said. “A big part of a successful power play is your ability to retrieve those so that you sustain zone time. A lot of times you can create opportunity out of them because teams are out of their structure when there is a 50/50 battle and you win that puck. Opportunity can present itself with a quick strike attack.”
“Go out there and work hard,” Rust said. “Get pucks back and get to the net. Work for those guys out there, those guys are world-class talents. Make plays when they are there.”