Tim Benz: Bryan Rust's comments about Rangers speak to a much bigger issue surrounding Penguins' failures

I’ve always been a fan of Bryan Rust. There are few Pittsburgh Penguins players that I’ve enjoyed covering more than him.

A clutch performer. A two-time Stanley Cup champion. A stand-up guy who owns every good game and bad game.

But I think he went off the grid on this one.

If the Penguins (88 points) had made the playoffs this season as the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, they would have played the New York Rangers (114 points) in Round 1. Instead, the Washington Capitals (91 points) were able to squeak in, and the Pens were left out.

New York swept the Caps in four games in the first round. It’s Rust’s contention that if the Pens had qualified as the last team into the postseason instead of Washington, they would’ve upset the Rangers.

“I think we would have beaten the Rangers,” Rust said this week while on Twitch with “Ninja.” “It would have depended on a couple of factors, but I think we would have beat them. … It is a matchup. You look across the league, and there are just teams you do well against and teams you don’t. I feel like the Rangers would have been good for us if we could have figured out our penalty kill against their power play, our special teams. If we could have figured out our special teams, we would have had a chance. Because our power play was absolute trash all year.”

Well, Rusty has one thing right. The Pens’ power play was, indeed, “trash” all year, finishing 30th in the NHL at 15.3%.

Aside from that, though, it’s tough to back any of Rust’s assertions. For instance, how could Rust possibly assume that the “trash” power play would have suddenly figured itself out against the Rangers’ third-ranked penalty kill at 84.5%?

And while the Pens’ PK wasn’t bad at 80.7% (tied for 10th in the NHL), the Rangers had the league’s third-best power play at 26.4%.

Furthermore, in terms of the matchup angle Rust advanced, this isn’t one of those things like the Steelers almost never lose to Lamar Jackson. The Pens lost two of three against the Rangers this year. Hence, I’m confused as to where Rust is coming from on that front.

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Pittsburgh beat the Rangers 5-2 in April. But before that, they dropped two — 7-4 and 1-0. So, the Rangers beat them in a low-scoring game and a high-scoring game.

I’m struggling to find this “matchup” calculus Rust is talking about.

Unfortunately, Rust’s comments just speak to a broader issue of who the Penguins think they are. They still see themselves as the team that won the Stanley Cup in 2016 and 2017 instead of the team that hasn’t won a playoff round in six seasons.

And if it weren’t for a bad break here, or a rough goalie performance there, or an awful power play, or an injury to Player X, the Penguins would have another silver chalice on the mantle as we speak.

Yada, yada, yada.

If the Penguins had a few more guys who play like Rust on a nightly basis, maybe that wouldn’t be the case. But in the wake of these comments, Rust’s quote embodies a mentality with this franchise that is more a part of the problem than the solution.

Ifs and buts. Candy and nuts. And oh, what a playoff season it would be.

Unfortunately, the Rangers are still alive in the Eastern Conference Final, and Rust is at home playing video games and doing interviews on Twitch.

The hypotheticals take care of themselves from there, don’t they?

Listen: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer talk Pens in this week’s hockey podcast