It's too early for Groundhog day, since it's only the 2nd full week in January, but you certainly wouldn't know it from the way the Pittsburgh Penguins have been playing lately.
Thanks to another putrid performance by their power play and more goaltending from Marc-Andre Fleury that can only be characterized as average, at best, the Pittsburgh Penguins dropped their 7th game out of 9 last night in falling to the Minnesota Wild at the Exel Energy Center, 4-3.
In a back-and-forth contest, it seemed that the Penguins and Fleury just couldn't get out of their own way at times.
They started well, with Sidney Crosby getting a goal less than 4 minutes in when a point shot first went off Pascal Dupuis, then off him and past Wild goaltender Nicklas Backstrom.
Later in the period, however, Wild forward Eric Belanger got a gift that tied the score on an play that was more pass than shot when his flip towards the net from 40 feet deflected off something down off the ice and took a strange bounce over and to Fleury's left past his glove.
The Penguins came out of the 2nd period gate strong, looking to re-establish control of the contest and were rewarded for it less than a minute in when Pascal Dupuis took a pass from Bill Guerin and finished a 3-on-2 rush to give the Boys of Winter a 2-1 lead.
But just as quickly, the Penguins gave up an odd-man rush to Minnesota sniper Martin Havlat made no mistake, taking a pass from Guillaume Latendresse and beating Fleury to the short side to tie the game at 2.
Pittsburgh then had a chance to go up by two goals when they were awared a 2-man advantage for about 75 seconds around the 4 to 5 minute mark of the second frame.
Not surprisingly, they squandered it.
Badly.
Fleury was fighting the puck again later in the period when Cal Clutterbuck got credit for a goal on play where Latendresse again just meekly tossed a puck towards the goal and it went in off the Wild bruiser to give Minnesota the lead.
Again, early in the third, Pittsburgh got back into it on a point shot that got past Backstrom and was originally credited to Mark Eaton, but later changed to Crosby.
It was Crosby's 29th of the year. He's now tied for the top goal-scoring spot in the National Hockey League.
Unfortunately, Latendresse finished off his 4-point night by scoring on a 2-on-2 rush from right in front after he and Kyle Brodziak made Penguins' defensemen Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski -- out together on that shift -- look like meek pylons and capitalized on a virtual tap-in.
Trying to recapture some momentum later in the final period, Pittsburgh successfully killed off a 5-minute interference penalty to Sergei Gonchar which was the result of a wicked bodycheck and forearm shiver to the head of Clutterbuck away from the play.
Basically, Sarge retaliated for a shove and hit along the wall by Clutterbuck several seconds earlier, and got his hand caught in the cookie jar while doing so.
The Pens' weren't able to do anything with that, though, mainly because they were awarded a momentum-sapping power play a few minutes later and didn't post a single shot as a result of it.
They finished 0-for-6 on the man-advantage for the night and got no closer -- despite the 38 total shots they threw on Backstrom.
Fleury, conversely, stopped only 20 of 24.
Pens' head coach Dan Bylsma was optimistic after the game, saying that if the Penguins played that way on the rest of the road trip and the final 33 games of the season after that, they'd be a good hockey team.
I'm not so sure.
Aside from Fleury's continued struggles and the abject pattern of failure shown by his team's man advantage, they continue to be weak on coverage in the defensive and neutral zone. They also aren't very difficult to play against in front of their own net right now, and Orpik's current absence from the lineup certainly doesn't help.
I haven't even heard Jay McKee's name called the last two weeks. He's mostly a non-factor these days.
Geno also continues to be invisible. He has scored in only one game in his last 13 contests, and he had 3 tallies in that game against the Ottawa Senators in the Penguins 8-2 beating of them about 2 and 1/2 weeks ago.
The Penguins really need him to turn things around.
Ron Cook, a columnist from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, issued a fairly blistering critique of Malkin in yesterday's edition, commenting on how Malkin needs to stop sulking about his slump and work harder to get out of it.
He also went as far as likening Malkin's current attitude to that of former Penguin Jaromir Jagr, when Jags said he was "dying alive" during his last 2 seasons in Pittsburgh before being traded to the Washington Capitals.
I'm usually not as much of a Cook basher as many Pittsburgh sports observers can be, but his column yesterday was way, WAY off the mark.
There's little similarity to Jagr's attitude during his last seasons here and Malkin's attitude now. Jagr didn't want to play here anymore and was acting like a petulant baby because of it.
Malkin is just struggling and his confidence is suffering as a result. That's bothering him emotionally but that's because he cares and wants to win so much. Virtually all players go through that.
Cook must not have anything else to do other than stir the pot now that the Steelers season is over. I can't remember the last time he actually wrote a column about the Penguins.
Moving past that garbage, I was going to say that backup goaltender Brent Johnson was due to get a start sometime in the next two games, when the Penguins have back-to-back games against the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers on their slate for Wednesday night and Thursday night, respectively, but that was before Johnson tweaked his groin at the end of the game-day skate in Minnesota yesterday.
That forced the Penguins to call up John Curry from Wilkes-Barre Scranton, where he joined teammate and fellow-call up from earlier in the day, defenseman Ben Lovejoy.
I don't see any harm in giving Curry one of those games if Johnson isn't ready.
Speaking of Lovejoy, he was put right in the lineup last night, taking Orpik's place and surprisingly keeping veteran Martin Skoula in the press-box.
Skoula, obviously, has fallen out of favor with the coaching staff.
The Penguins certainly have a lot of things they need to improve in their game. Right now, they are basically just treading water, and lost a chance last night to get rolling a little bit. As it is, they have to start over and look to be strong in the next 2 contests to try and get that mojo back.
We'll see how it goes.
More later this week.
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