Tim Benz: Sting of Ottawa loss provides perspective as Penguins face Stanley Cup champs in Colorado

As the Pittsburgh Penguins prepare to play Wednesday night’s game against the Colorado Avalanche, they’ll do so with Monday’s loss to the Ottawa Senators hanging over their heads.

Unfortunately for the Pens, that checkmark in the loss column isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much the club feels like it didn’t deserve to receive it.

That sense was evident after the game from the players in the Penguins locker room and from head coach Mike Sullivan at the podium. There was a clear understanding that games like that tend to happen, but the Penguins had previously put themselves in a position where they aren’t allowed to have one.

“Everybody scoreboard-watches a little bit this time of year. It’s human nature,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got opportunities in front of us here. We’ve got to grab some points. We knew this was going to be a fight to the end for a playoff spot. We have some tough opponents coming up. We’ve got to brush this one off. As much as the loss stings, I do believe there is something to feel good about from (Monday’s) game.”

Throughout an 82-game season, a potential playoff team is going to have a disappointing home loss or two where they outplay a lesser opponent, and they still lose. It’s just going to happen. Sometimes the puck just doesn’t bounce the right way.

Consider what happened as the Penguins lost to Ottawa 2-1 on Monday.

• The Pens fell to the Senators despite outshooting Ottawa 49-21.

• The Penguins won 58% of the faceoffs and established a 65% Corsi advantage.

• Ottawa’s game-winning goal came during a power play when one Penguin (Ryan Poehling) lost his stick and another (Bryan Rust) was stung blocking a shot and couldn’t clear the puck out of the zone as a result. The puck then bounced off both goalposts and deflected off the back of goalie Tristan Jarry’s skate and beyond the goal line.

It was simply a night when a more deserving result wasn’t in the cards for the Penguins. Over a seven-month regular season, that even happens to franchises that have made the playoffs 16 years in a row.

“We are trying to improve every day and be a better version of ourselves. Keep sticking to it. Games like that one are hard to swallow. But there are positives to take from that one,” defenseman Pierre-Olivier Joseph said.

But when you don’t have a 19-point playoff cushion as the Penguins did to end 2021-22, a defeat like Monday’s tends to impact the standings a lot more.

Especially when the team that was chasing the Penguins — the Florida Panthers — won Monday in Detroit to leapfrog them into the Eastern Conference’s final playoff spot with 12 games apiece left to go.

Especially when the Penguins have to now face the Stanley Cup champion Avalanche in Colorado and the Central Division-leading Dallas Stars on back-to-back nights.

Especially when the Penguins have already suffered bad losses at home to other lesser teams such as the San Jose Sharks and Montreal Canadiens in recent months that had previously dented playoff hopes, not to mention a loss in Ottawa back in January.

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Then there was that blown two-goal, third-period lead to the other current wild-card team — the New York Islanders — two weeks ago. And they forfeited an overtime point to the Panthers in a wild 7-6 win when the Panthers trailed 6-5 with three minutes left on Jan. 24.

It’s those other previous losses that make the Penguins’ defeat to Ottawa feel more like fatal than just flukey. It’s hard to simply explain away a result like that by saying “stuff happens” when the Penguins constantly allow “stuff” like that to happen.

“You never want to put yourself in that situation,” forward Jake Guentzel said Monday. “We’ve lost (four games) in a row now. The playoffs have started for us already it seems like. So we’ve got to get going.”

If the Penguins ever still needed a reality check of who they are and where they are in the playoff race, Monday’s outcome should have provided that. They are no longer the perennial playoff-worthy Stanley Cup contender, that may just catch a bad break on occasion, but will surely find their way into the playoffs anyway.

Now they are a .500-ish team that is going to play coin-flip games all the time. Which is why — with just a dozen games remaining — missing the playoffs for the first time since 2006 has also become a 50-50 proposition.

At best.

Tim Benz and Brian Metzer discuss the Penguins’ newest losing streak, their fall from playoff position, and the tough schedule ahead.

Listen: Tim Benz and Brian Metzer talk Penguins