Penguins found ways to win despite imperfect play on road trip

The Penguins’ recently completed six-game road trip started off really well with a 6-2 thumping of their most enduring rivals, the Philadelphia Flyers, on Jan. 6.

It ended spectacularly with a rousing 5-3 comeback win against the powerful Vegas Golden Knights this past Monday.

And in between, there was a lot of … meh.

By their own admission, the Penguins did not play all that well during their sojourn all over the continent. Yet, they still came away with a 4-2 record during their journey.

“This road trip, a pretty good road trip points-wise for us,” Penguins forward Jeff Carter said to media in Las Vegas on Monday. “It probably wasn’t our best hockey, but we found ways to win hockey games. That’s what you need to do. You’re not going to have your best every night, but you have to find a way to get the job done. Definitely, something that we can build on.”

Arguably, their most complete game was the victory in Philadelphia. The Flyers entered the contest a wounded animal and the Penguins feasted.

With the Flyers missing nine players because of various medical maladies, the Penguins took full advantage of their hobbled nemesis to claim their 10th consecutive win.

“It’s a great thing right now,” Penguins forward Brian Boyle said that night to media in Philadelphia. “We’ve still got more than half the season to go. It tightens up quite a bit as it gets going. You don’t know what’s going to happen in terms of if you get injuries or if you get illness or whatever happens. So you just try to accumulate points and continue to focus on what you can do each night. We’ve done a pretty good job of that.”

The Penguins did not do a good job two days later in Dallas. Dressing an irregular lineup of 11 forwards and seven defensemen after forwards Brock McGinn and Bryan Rust tested positive for covid-19, they lost to the Stars, 3-2, despite holding a two-goal lead within the first seven minutes of regulation.

“It’s really tough,” Penguins defenseman Marcus Pettersson said to media in Dallas. “We’ve been playing some good hockey. We’ve got to look at what we can do better and move on.”

The Penguins did do better in Anaheim on Jan. 11 thanks to the return of superstar center Evgeni Malkin who, in his season debut after a lengthy recovery from offseason surgery to his right knee, collected three points (two goals and one assist) and led the Penguins to a 4-1 win against the Ducks.

This victory was a showcase for the organization’s depth as reserve forwards such as Kasper Bjorkqvist and Radim Zohorna stepped in after incumbents Zach Aston-Reese and Danton Heinen were sidelined after entering the NHL’s protocols for covid-19.

“We have a great group here,” Malkin said to media in Anaheim. “Before (the) game, we have a couple of guys, they have covid again, bad things. But we have a deep team. Our young guys, they jump and play so hard. We just focus on every game, play hard, play right.”

Nothing went right for the Penguins in Los Angeles two days later as they were stomped by the Kings, 6-2. Allowing a season-worst 45 shots, they bore little resemblance to the team that has thrived on defense for most of the season.

“We didn’t play the game that I know we’re capable of playing,” coach Mike Sullivan said to media in Los Angeles. “I don’t think we were as good defensively. We didn’t command the puck as much. I don’t think we played with team speed. Our structure broke down in a lot of areas.”

Their structure still seemed like it was in a bad way in San Jose on Saturday. But despite allowing 41 shots — their second-worst total of the season — they emerged with a 2-1 win against the Sharks thanks to an overtime goal by forward Jake Guentzel.

“It happens,” Guentzel said to media in San Jose in regards to the Penguins’ struggling defensive play. “It’s a long season. They’re going to happen in these 82-game seasons.”

Quite a bit happened in the first period of Game 38 and none of it was good for the Penguins. After allowing the Vegas Golden Knights to race out to a 3-0 lead in the first 20 minutes, the Penguins rebounded almost immediately at the start of the second period to claim one of their more impressive victories of 2021-22.

“One of the things that we talked about before the game was trying to recapture our identity,” Sullivan said to media in Las Vegas. “Even though we won a game in San Jose, we felt like we weren’t playing up to the expectation of ourselves, the standard of what it means to be a Pittsburgh Penguin. That was our challenge (Monday) was trying to recapture our identity. Everyone to a man has a contribution in that.

“My hope is that it gives our team a whole lot of confidence in what our capability is. If we’re down in games, we have the ability and the firepower. If something doesn’t go our way early in a game, we have to have a certain resolve to our mindset that we just continue to play the game. When we do that, we’re going to give ourselves a chance to win most nights.”

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