3 takeaways: Another slow start plagues Penguins as dismal road trip trudges on

Three takeaways following the Penguins’ 5-1 loss at Vancouver on Friday night:

Another sluggish start

If the Penguins were hoping that facing the struggling Vancouver Canucks (who had a 1-5-2 record heading into Friday’s game) would offer a chance to salvage a road trip to Western Canada that has gotten ugly, those hopes were dashed promptly thanks to another sluggish start.

For the second straight game, the Penguins found themselves heading into the first intermission with a deficit.

After going down 2-0 Tuesday against the Oilers in an eventual 4-1 loss, the Penguins surrendered the game’s opening goal Friday, with Tanner Pearson scoring at even strength moments after the Penguins had killed a slashing penalty called on P.O Joseph.

Joseph’s was one of three penalties the Penguins committed in the first period alone.

Josh Archibald headed to the box for holding 7 minutes, 32 seconds into things, while later, with just 31 seconds left in the period, Evgeni Malkin got tangled up with Vancouver’s J.T. Miller.

As Malkin attempted to gain the zone, he and Miller collided near the blue line. Visibly angered by what he presumably thought should have been an interference penalty on Miller, Malkin tracked him down near the edge of Vancouver’s bench. Then, in direct frontal view of linesman Travis Toomey, Malkin retaliated, hooking Miller at the wrists and sending the Canucks to their third power-play of the first period with just over 30 seconds before intermission.

While the Penguins’ penalty killers fought off Vancouver’s man-advantage for the remainder of the period, a mere 32 seconds after play had resumed, Bo Horvat scored to make the score 2-0 early in the second.

Showing some fight

Rickard Rakell scored his fourth goal of the season late in the second period (16:03), with Malkin and Bryan Rust notching assists on the power play.

Before the end of the second period, the Penguins got another power-play try that produced three shots on goal and some action in front of the crease featuring Rust but came up empty.

The first whistle of the final period of regulation did not come until 7:21 of hockey had been played. During that stretch, the Penguins dominated, controlling the tempo of the game and carving out a considerable amount of time in the offensive zone.

But despite playing with some respectable energy late in the second period and into the third, things soon got out of hand.

With 9:32 to play, after Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson intercepted a pass in the neutral zone off the stick of Danton Heinen, Ilya Mikheyev took a shot and gathered his own rebound, passing up the ice to Luke Schenn at the right point.

Schenn rocketed a one-timer near the blue line and his shot found the stick of Andrei Kuzmenko, ricocheting into the back of the cage at an impossible angle for Tristan Jarry to have tracked.

As if it couldn’t get any worse, the Canucks scored a power-play goal with 3:18left following Archibald’s second penalty of the night (boarding).

During a defensive zone faceoff with Horvat, Ryan Poehling’s stick snapped. Attempting to discard it, Poehling also lost his right glove.

Undeterred, with one bare hand, he still put himself in the line of danger and tried to block a shot by Oliver Ekman-Larsson, whose shot beat Jarry, handing Vancouver a 4-1 edge.

Just over a minute later, Miller scored an empty netter, sealing the Canucks their first win at home this season.

Onward to Seattle

Losers of three in a row, having surrendered 15 goals through those games, the Penguins now prepare to conclude a five-game road trip with a Saturday night showdown in Seattle against the Kraken.

Needless to say, the euphoria surrounding the Penguins’ 4-0-1 start has evaporated, with the club getting outclassed by two likely Western Conference playoff teams in Edmonton and Calgary, followed by a beatdown at the hands of the lowly Canucks.

Jake Guentzel will be a player to watch for Saturday, as he was cleared for contact Friday but did not play in Vancouver. If he suits up vs. Seattle, it will mark his return to the ice since being sidelined on Oct. 20 by a puck to the head, an injury that ultimately required stitches.

Having won the opening game of their road trip in Columbus on Oct. 22, a win against the Kraken on Saturday would allow the Penguins to return to Pittsburgh having done some damage control on what’s turned into a brutal stretch of games.