Pens' Lose 4th Straight, With Second 4-1 Home Loss To New Jersey This Season

Playing shorthanded as the Pittsburgh Penguins are right now is challenge enough.

Face-off against some of the hottest, best teams in the NHL at the same time and it's a recipe for a 4-game losing streak.

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what the Penguins now have, after a 4-1 loss to the streaking New Jersey Devils last night at Mellon Arena -- a defeat which skid them to 4 straight defeats following previous losses to the Boston Bruins, and the red-hot Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks during the last week.

New Jersey didn't ease up on the accelerator against Pittsburgh last night, either. It was their second 4-1 win in Pittsburgh over the last 2 and 1/2 weeks, their 7th straight overall, and 9th straight on the road.

And it was good enough to lift them over the Penguins into the Atlantic Division lead with 26 points, while the Penguins sit with 24, tied for 5th in the NHL overall standings.

What? You didn't expect the Devils to have sympathy for Pittsburgh's injury woes, did you?

Hey, at least the Penguins didn't lose anyone last night.

The Devils have injuries too -- missing guys like Paul Martin, Jay Pandolfo, and Johnny Oduya -- but they aren't playing without their top 3 defenseman, one of the top 3 players in the game, and one of their top goal scorers.

Take Andy Greene, Zach Parise, Jamie Langenbrunner and a few additional guys out of the Devils lineup, then you start to approach the depleted group they faced wearing the skating Penguin last night.

Pittsburgh actually had a better effort against New Jersey than they did in recent games.

They even got the first goal, a garbage marker by Ruslan Fedotenko in the first period, who did what every Penguin should be doing right now -- barrage the net and bang rebounds in.

Sidney Crosby assisted on the play -- his first point in 5 games.

Unfortunately, the Penguins could muster no more, but they weren't without chances.

Defenseman Martin Skoula hit the post in the first period. Chris Bourque had an open net he couldn't convert from a bad angle in the 2nd period.

Crosby also had not one, not two, but THREE nice chances in the 3rd. 2 of them hit iron, and another one in the slot was blocked.

As if that weren't enough evidence of the lady luck they were missing last night, after Niclas Bergfors had tied the game in the second period, the Devils got their second goal from Greene on a point shot that went right off the skate of defenseman Ben Lovejoy -- making his season debut for the Penguins, by the way -- and past netminder Marc-Andre Fleury.

When Parise scored about 4 minutes into the 3rd period on a nice top corner shot to finish off a 2-on-1, I knew it would be tough sledding for the Pens the rest of the way.

David Clarkson finished it with an empty netter for the Devils.

And with that, the Penguins chose to have a closed-door team meeting after the game.

No word if they called in a medicine doctor to do some voodoo in the hopes of getting them healthy faster.

I'd even settle for Mr. Myagi working on Ralph Macchio's leg in The Karate Kid right now.

As it is, all the Penguins can do is look forward to their next game, at home on Saturday night against the same Bruins team that whitewashed them on Tuesday.

The Penguins have to find a way to get goals. They've scored only one in their last 10 periods. That's not going to win any hockey games.

Perhaps Evgeni Malkin can help that. He's now participating fully in practice after missing the last two weeks with a shoulder injury and, at this point, is expected back in the lineup that night.

Defenseman Brooks Orpik, by the way, appears as if he's going to be on the shelf for 2 weeks with what is being described only as a 'lower body injury'.

It's somewhat ironic. He, Talbot, Gonchar and Letang will probably all come back around the same time -- somewhere between 10 days from now and Thanksgiving. Kennedy will probably have returned by then, so assuming nobody goes down, it won't be long before Pittsburgh has a full complement of bodies back.

Good thing, because right now, it's obvious they are just trying to stay above water.

More over the weekend.