Tim Benz: Penguins' loss to Oilers wasn't a wake-up call, it was a knockout punch

If it didn’t hit you after the Edmonton Oilers took a 6-1 lead on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second period Thursday, it should have hit you when the “Fire Hextall” chants echoed throughout PPG Paints Arena shortly thereafter.

#FireHextall Chants at PPG Paints Arena… one the worst games I’ve ever been to. #LetsGoPens #Pens pic.twitter.com/yHUdKVBKyo

— Did the Pens Win? (@DidPengWin) February 24, 2023

If not, then maybe you understood when the team was booed off the ice after that period ended. Or when public address announcer Ryan Mill belted out, “Welcome back your Pittsburgh Penguins” to open the third.

Oh, the fans welcomed the players back. They booed even more.

Yes, by that point, a painful reality should’ve been clear to anyone who follows this Penguins team.

It’s beyond saving.

There is no lightning bolt trade to make before the deadline on March 3 that’s going to spark energy into the locker room. There is no big speech or players-only meeting that is going to reverse fortunes. The 2022-23 Penguins are broken, and it’s going to take a full offseason to fix them.

At least.

Thursday’s 7-2 home loss to the Edmonton Oilers wasn’t a wake-up call, it was a knockout punch.

It wasn’t a flashing red light, warning the players that it is time to get in gear. It was an alert to tell them, “game over.”

To realize it’s time to stop.

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Stop believing it’s still 2016-17. Stop trying to win with the same players, playing the same way they did back then. It’s time to grasp that the guys who are still around from that era can’t dominate the way they once did and their supporting cast doesn’t support them the way they were once supported.

Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith aren’t what Matt Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury were in the Stanley Cup years. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang can’t be expected to still be at the same level of excellence as they were six years ago.

And everybody else is just … everybody else. Phil Kessel is now Kasperi Kapanen. Nick Bonino is now the ghost of Jeff Carter. Chris Kunitz has turned into Brock McGinn. And Trevor Daley is whatever Jeff Petry is supposed to be.

I guess.

If somehow you didn’t grasp that, head coach Mike Sullivan summed it up succinctly after the loss.

“Our roster is our roster. We have what we have,” Sullivan said. “We are trying to put the best combinations on the ice that we think can give us the best chance to win.”

Good luck with that.

Sullivan’s quote was particularly telling, given the Penguins’ onerous salary cap situation. General manager Ron Hextall has just $18,430 in space. That’s not enough room to add to the depth chart, and I can’t imagine there would be any buyers for the Penguins’ disposable costly players to create the necessary space.

Yup. The Penguins are just stuck. Hextall painted himself in this corner, and now there is no way out of it. Hence, the less-than-cordial reaction he got from the fans. Hextall hasn’t felt that much hostility in Pittsburgh since he was a goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers, chasing Rob Brown around the rink.

“There’s lots of season left, and we are fighting for a playoff spot,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said after the loss. “Ideally, we’d be in a better position. But we still have a chance to make the playoffs. … We are not in a spot right now, but we still have an opportunity to make it.”

I get where Crosby is coming from and why he’s looking at it that way. He hasn’t missed the postseason since 2005-06. That was his rookie year.

But I’m of the mind that the Penguins should just start selling off whatever parts other teams are willing to take. I’m assuming the franchise will hold on to the top six forwards and Letang. Dealing away anything else just creates cap flexibility for the offseason.

Moving any of the bottom six forwards, and just about anyone besides Letang off the blueline, won’t be a reason why the Penguins fail to make the playoffs. Honestly, the fact that those players get as much ice time as they do is the biggest reason why the Pens are in this mess in the first place.

Certainly, do not trade away any high-round draft picks or any of the few prospects they have in the system just in the hopes of acquiring rental reinforcements to claw in as the seventh or eighth seed. Because even if this team does somehow scratch its way into a wild-card spot, so what? They’d just be cannon fodder for the Boston Bruins or Carolina Hurricanes anyway.

With 63 points and a four-game losing streak, the Penguins are now in 10th place of the Eastern Conference. Granted, they are just one point out of a tie for the second wild-card position. However, they are also just two points away from 13th place.

It’s not time for the Penguins to give up hope, but it is time to give up thinking they are who they once were — a team that could take circumstances like these, flip a switch and make it better.

If this group could’ve done so, it would have. A long time ago.

But the roster is the roster.