Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan was asked his assessment of how the power play looked during Monday’s practice.
“Well… it’s, uhh… I don’t know how to respond to that,” Sullivan said after the session at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry. “We scored some goals. So that’s progress, you know?”
It sure is, even at practice, for this group. Even if the Penguins get a power-play goal during Tuesday’s game at the New York Rangers, it will be – at least – one day short of a full month between such tallies. The Penguins have gone more than 10 games and 25 opportunities without one.
Sullivan said that early in that streak, the unit was doing all the right things; they just simply were not finishing. In recent games, though, the power play has deteriorated.
“It’s only been most recently that the power play has struggled in the sense that there hasn’t been execution,” Sullivan said. “There was a long time there that we felt the power play was doing everything except put the puck in the net, and so as that starts to evolve, if you don’t start to score, I think it’s a natural inclination to start to squeeze your stick and press a little bit, and that’s a whole different challenge, and so these are some of the dynamics that we are trying to work through as a group.
“But I do believe that part of the solution has to be just simplifying everything we do, and it starts with just shooting the puck more and getting more pucks and people to the net.”
With Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang out, the power-play unit at practice Monday was Nick Bjugstad, Evegin Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Alex Galchenyuk and Justin Schultz.
No break for Murray… yet
Matt Muarry has started 14 of the Penguins’ first 17 games, and he’s finished 13 of those. He’s expected to start his seventh consecutive Penguins game Tuesday, and backup Tristan Jarry hasn’t started a game in almost three weeks.
Sullivan said there has not been a change in philosophy regarding his preference to ease the workload on Murray.
“We have numbers in mind that we are trying to hit both short term and in the big picture,” Sullivan said in regard to Murray’s starts, “and there are always going to be circumstances that weight into those decisions. But we are watching the amount of games played and we are looking at our schedule, what’s right in front of us, but also in a longer term as well, so we are trying to manage the workload which we think will give our goalies the best chance to be at their best in the longterm.”
