Tim Benz: Penguins find comically fitting way in Columbus to end 'failure of a season'

There was a macabre fascination to the way the Pittsburgh Penguins regular season finale played out in Columbus.

The Pens lost to the awful Blue Jackets 3-2.

In overtime.

After blowing a third period lead.

To a significantly inferior foe.

While outshooting the opponent and making a journeyman goalie in the other net (Michael Hutchinson) look like Patrick Roy.

Does it get any more fitting than that? That’s been the Penguins story throughout 2022-23 — following game scripts just like that all year long.

That game Thursday night was played under utterly bizarre circumstances. The Penguins were playing their first regular season game as an eliminated team since 2006.

The Blue Jackets were probably better served to lose, in order to give themselves the best possible chance of winning the draft lottery for the rights to draft highly touted prospect Connor Bedard. They entered the game with 57 points. They left with 59. Meanwhile, after their results Thursday, the Anaheim Ducks have 58 points, and the Chicago Blackhawks have 59. The Blue Jackets still have one game left against Buffalo on Friday night.

So Anaheim clinched last place in the NHL, and the best chance to win the lottery at 25.5%. As a result, in a way, neither team won in Columbus, right?

Then again, the Penguins had just barfed up two points to the Blackhawks on Tuesday night during a 5-2 loss in what amounted to the club’s elimination effort at PPG Paints Arena.

So the Pens ended the season as an equal opportunity doormat.

Good for them. Spread the love.

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“It’s a hard game even to assess, just under the circumstances,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said after the defeat. “It’s been a long time since this group has been in this type of a game. I always believe there is something to play for. But obviously when you are eliminated from the playoffs, it’s a whole different experience.”

I think my favorite part of the game was when Tristan Jarry — a goalie who was so frequently the second-best netminder on the ice on a nightly basis — made a really nice save at the horn of the third period to keep the game tied at 2-2 and force overtime.

Sure. Extend that beauty of a contest to overtime after blowing the 10th (10th!) third period lead of the season by coming up with a clutch stop at 59:59 of Game 82. Perfect!

Chef’s kiss, indeed, Tristan.

“The points and leads and games we gave away—we didn’t have the consistency that we needed night in, night out. Ultimately that hurt us,” winger Jason Zucker said after the season-ending loss.

The inevitable happened in overtime. Columbus’ Johnny Gaudreau scored one minute into the extra frame.

Johnny with some OT magic pic.twitter.com/3kz9tWAAJX

— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) April 14, 2023

“Overall, it was a failure of a season,” Zucker said. “I have a lot of belief in this group. Obviously, we didn’t do enough to have success this year. That’s on us. It’s nobody else’s fault but our own. It’s a very disappointing season. And … yeah … very disappointing.”

Indeed. The Penguins went from 46-25-11 (103) points in 2021-22 to 40-31-11 (91 points) this season.

Wait? So that technically amounts to 40 wins and 42 losses. Does that mean we can no longer say, “Yeah but, yinz know, Mike Tomli— oops … Mike Sullivan has never had a losing season?”

In my opinion it does.

“We had moments, stretches during the course of the year where I thought we played the game that set us up for success,” Sullivan said. “But the inconsistency of it was the challenge. And we weren’t able to solve that as a group. And we all have to be responsible for that.”

No, they don’t.

Maybe general manager Ron Hextall and his … um … “boss” Brian Burke get fired. Maybe Jarry, Zucker and defenseman Brian Dumoulin depart via free agency. A bad contract or two might result in buyouts.

But Sullivan is signed through 2027. Via CapFriendly.com, 14 of these Penguins are signed through next year. Eleven of them have multiple years remaining on their contracts. Kris Letang, Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell are signed through 2028. Eleven current Penguin contracts have some type of no-movement clause.

Very few players — or the coach — are really going to be held “responsible” for this collapse.

During the course of the AT&T SportsNet broadcast and throughout the day on Twitter, a common theme was present: Don’t be sad that the Penguins playoff streak is over. Be happy that you got to see it last as long as it did.

Yeah. OK. I’ll get there eventually. But, right now, I can’t ignore the reality of how this Penguins season unraveled.

Nor, given the teams they lost to, can I ignore how it ended.