Embarassing Penguins Throttled By Maple Leafs Again

There are a lot of words to describe the way the Penguins played for a lot of last night's crucial 6-2 loss on the road against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Disgusting.

Shameful.

Dispicable.

All are too charitable.

The Penguins were literally outworked by the Leafs for much of the night and that is the part I and a lot of other fans in Penguin Nation should be the most upset about.

Pittsburgh is simply in no position to get outworked by other teams -- not with them needing every point they can get just to get into the post-season, and ESPECIALLY against squads below the Penguins in the standings.

Perhaps the worst part is that this has happened all too often for the Penguins this season. They've been beaten by the likes of Tampa Bay, Nashville and Toronto all too often this year. The Leafs', in particular, have beaten them 3 times a row and scored 7, 4, and 6 goals doing it.

Maybe that's the biggest problem? The Penguins' lack of defense. They gave up 40+ shots again last night. Certainly, you can't give that many chances to any opponent if you're going to win on a consistent basis. Penguins' netminder Marc-Andre Fleury actually played fairly well, despite letting 6 pucks go by. He was hung out to dry most of the night by his team, and to be truthful, kept the result from being worse. He made a 10-bell save on Jason Blake in the 3rd perdod that was for the ages, diving to snatch the puck from going into an empty cage after Blake had been left alone in front (again).

Unfortunately, that just kept Blake from getting the hat trick.

I don't know that I've seen too many defenseman play a worse game than Mark Eaton and Kris Letang last night -- Eaton more so than Letang. Eaton has been fairly solid recently, but he was miserable in his own zone throughout the game. The Penguins held 2-0 and 2-1 leads thanks to goals by Matt Cooke and Bill Thomas, but that's when Eaton and Letang did the most damage. Because of their play in front of the Penguins' goal, they were basically responsible for Toronto's first 3 goals in the 2nd and 3rd periods. At that point, the Leafs never looked back.

On the first Toronto goal -- which admittedly wasn't as bad as the next 2 -- Eaton and Letang allowed Leafs' forward Nik Antropov to crash the net so easily off a faceoff that he was able to get position on them and bang a rebound out of mid-air and past Fleury.

On the second Leafs' goal, Eaton again got outmuscled in front, this time by the diminutive Blake, who found himself able to deposit the puck into the empty cage behind a sprawling Fleury.

On the third goal, Eaton did a poor job of communicating with LW Pascal Dupuis along the wall in the Penguins' zone and turned the puck over which led to a quick odd-man situation in front of the Penguins goal. Pittsburgh-killer Blake ended up with the puck alone and made a nice move to deke Fleury and again score, essentially, an empty-net goal.

After that, the Penguins imploded completely and the Leafs' rolled to 3 more goals thanks to more poor defensive play by the Penguins. Ryan Whitney was culpable a few times on those goals.

Just an awful night by the Penguins all around. Their poor play overshadowed the solid returns of Ruslan Fedotenko and Sergei Gonchar back into the lineup. One would think that having those two back in the lineup would give the Penguins a boost. I suppose it did, but I didn't think the boost would be for only 10 minutes.

Gonchar actually looked pretty good out there. He had 20 minutes of ice time and gave the Penguins' power play a look they definitely haven't had all season.

Too bad the Penguins didn't work hard enough to generate sufficient power plays to make that advantage meaningful.

The bottom line in this one is that Pittsburgh had a chance to build some real momentum against a team they should beat after having won 3 of their last 4, but squandered it by not showing up and playing 60 minutes. That's happened way too many times for the Penguins this year.

Last night's loss could be the real-killer for Pittsburgh's playoff chances. I know I'd have a hard time getting over this one if I'm in that locker room. I'd be wondering why the team didn't show up when it needed most.

With efforts like that, I'd be thinking that the team doesn't even deserve to be in the playoffs.