Madden Monday: Loss to Boston was 'chickens coming home to roost' for Penguins

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ recent charge back into playoff contention was fun and unexpected. But the reality check provided by their first loss without a point in three weeks has certainly exposed how wobbly that status truly was.

By going 7-0-3 in their previous 10 games, the Penguins woke up Saturday morning in a playoff spot with a game looming that night against the Boston Bruins. By Sunday morning, they were in 11th place with just a 12% chance of making the postseason.

That’s because the Pens lost 6-4, and the other three teams vying for that final Eastern Conference playoff spot — Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington — all won. So now the Penguins begin the week with just 86 points, a point behind all three of those teams with two games left.

Those games are against the Nashville Predators (99 points) on Monday and the New York Islanders (90 points) on Wednesday.

During this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of 105.9 The X and TribLive says season-long failures that have haunted the Pens were merely masked during the 10-game point streak and were simply too much to overcome against a good team like the Atlantic Division-leading Bruins.

“The Bruins are a real quality team, and I think they kept making the same mistakes they always make,” Madden said. “They let up two goals in 14 seconds. Tristan Jarry is worthy of special criticism because he hasn’t played (since March 24), and he gets in there and immediately makes a puck-handling mistake to cough up a short-handed goal. Erik Karlsson, on the occasion of his 1,000th game, was minus-4, with a bad penalty. It’s like being on repeat. The same bad things keep happening over and over again, and the loss to Boston was no exception. During the 10-game point streak, they got away with some of the stuff we’re talking about — most notably in the 6-5 overtime win against Detroit. But now, look, that loser point that they gave Detroit may prove to be fatal.”

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After that overtime win against the Red Wings on Thursday, head coach Mike Sullivan, Karlsson and goalie Alex Nedeljkovic all talked about potentially learning from some of the mistakes that allowed Detroit to storm back from two goals down and force overtime in that contest. But 79 games in, were the Penguins really going to suddenly learn from previous miscues?

Mistakes such as gambling with unnecessary offensive zone pinches with a late third-period lead? Giving up goals on the final few shifts of a period? Losing focus after scoring a goal so the opposition gets a goal back within the next five minutes?

All those things happened against the Red Wings, as they have all season, yet the Penguins were prattling on about “learning lessons” that they could apply for the last three games of the year.

“This is chickens coming home to roost,” Madden said. “Let’s be honest; they are not a really good hockey team. And they do make the same mistakes over and over again. I hate this stuff about learning opportunities. Here we are, with two games left in the season. Shut up. We know what you are. We believe our eyes.”

Also, in the podcast, Madden and I have some offseason Steelers conversation and discuss Tiger Woods at the Masters and Andrew McCutchen’s legacy with the Pirates.