Tim Benz: For Penguins, sharpening their game is more important than playoff opponent

For the Pittsburgh Penguins, 16 straight playoff appearances is something to embrace. That’s the longest active streak in North American team sports.

Their other two active playoff streaks are ones the organization would desperately like to shake.

• Four consecutive series losses.

• Three straight years of the franchise losing in the first round.

After sewing up this year’s berth with a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders on Thursday, the coaches and players can now turn their attention to playoff positioning.

Or, more importantly, playing like a playoff team more often than they have the last month of the season.

Because, let’s be honest, whoever the Penguins (97 points) face in the playoffs, they’re going to be the underdog. They’ll probably finish third or fourth in the Metropolitan Division. They won’t have home ice advantage. They’ll most likely play either a New York Rangers club (102 points) that has beaten them three times in a row or one of two juggernauts that have led the Eastern Conference divisions most of the year: the Carolina Hurricanes (104 points) in the Metro or the Florida Panthers (110 points) in the Atlantic.

Sure, we can kick around potential playoff X’s and O’s advantages and disadvantages in each potential matchup. The Panthers lead the NHL with 4.14 goals per game. But goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is a perpetual playoff question mark. Their other goalie, Spencer Knight, is a 20-year-old in his first full NHL season.

The Rangers have stud goalie Igor Shesterkin. He has given the Penguins fits. So has the Rangers’ speed and forecheck. But that group doesn’t have much playoff experience. New York’s only postseason appearance in the past four years was a 3-0 qualifying round loss to the Hurricanes in the 2020 playoff bubble.

And the Hurricanes? Well, they are pretty well-balanced all around. Yet, the Penguins beat them once 4-2 and lost the other two games 3-2 (OT) and 4-3.

To me, parsing the minutiae of who the Penguins get as a first-round playoff opponent is far less important than how they are playing going into the postseason.

A sentiment that head coach Mike Sullivan appeared to echo Thursday night after the victory over the Islanders.

“We are trying to build a game that gives us the best chance to win regardless of who our opponent is,” Sullivan said. “A lot of it boils down to details and commitment and things we work on daily. We are going to continue to preach that message to our team. That’s where the focus needs to be, regardless of where the results are. Whether we win games or lose games, I think that’s the most important thing for us to focus on. If we do, results will follow.”

The Penguins have six games remaining to sharpen their swords. The next two are against the Boston Bruins (95 points) who are also on the brink of sewing up a playoff spot in the East. The Pens also host the Edmonton Oilers on April 26. The Oilers have 92 points, good for second place in the Pacific Division. They should soak up a Western Conference postseason slot soon, too.

After that, the next three games for Sullivan and company are against the Red Wings, Flyers and Blue Jackets. All Eastern Conference also-ran opponents, playing out the string.

In my opinion, the eventual final scores mean less than how the Penguins play in those games. I see the quality of their play over the last two weeks of the season being a much bigger point of scrutiny than how many games they win or lose along the way.

“If we continue to limit teams’ scoring chances and play a tight game and prepare ourselves that way, that’s the most important thing,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said of the last six regular season games. “Hopefully with that comes (winning) results.”

What are some things the Pens can tighten up? Well, they did a lot of them Thursday against the Islanders as opposed to how they barfed all over themselves on occasion Tuesday when the Islanders beat them 5-4 in a shootout on Long Island.

They avoided as many ghastly turnovers as they committed against the Islanders two days ago. And when mistakes were made, Tristan Jarry was usually able to keep them out of the net. The game was 5-2 with two minutes left until things got loose with the Islanders having pulled their goalie.

After five straight defeats for Jarry personally, his win Thursday was a significant side story. The Penguins netminder stopped 36 of 39 Islanders shots on the night.

The penalty kill was also five for five. Sullivan’s team had 11 takeaways and 19 blocked shots. Those were positives.

But the skaters can still allow fewer shots than they did Thursday (39), win a few more faceoffs (47%), take a few less penalties (four, including a double minor), and rely less on the stars to make up so much of the scoring. Crosby, Jake Guentzel and Kris Letang had six of the 10 goals in the two games agains the Islanders.

“If we focus on our own game and try to accomplish what we want, that’s going to give us the results to try to position ourselves better,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “But I think it’s a question of (how to) keep getting better every day. Trying to correct little things in our plans going into games, and feeling good about the playoffs coming up.”

From March 15 through April 14, the Penguins played 16 games and won seven of them. Ten of them were against other teams that are probably playoff-bound. So there is room for improvement.

With their own performance, I mean.

Perhaps not so much room for improvement in the standings. But given the strength of the Eastern Conference this season, the former is much more important heading into the postseason.