Seriously Now

For all I could ho-hum the Penguins victories until the cows come home to roost (which will never happen, as cows do not roost, so that means into perpetuity), the fact of the matter is that the Penguins players have come to expect what I have come to expect.

Penguins players expect to win games. They even expect to win games when they spot teams multiple-goal leads or relinquish leads in games. Lately, despite the team’s propensity for giving their opponents a multiple-goal lead or allowing their opponent to climb back into a game, the Penguins have typically pulled at least 1 point, most often 2, even when "playing with fire."

Because, as everyone knows, the Penguins just can’t continue to do this. At some point, spotting teams multiple goal leads has to catch up with you. At some point, sitting on a lead has to catch up with you. You just can’t keep getting away with what the Penguins have somehow been able to continue to get away with doing in recent games. Honestly, you can’t.

Except, well, anecdotal and recent evidence points that the contrary statement is true. For the most part, the Penguins have gotten away with this nonsense of allowing their talent to sprout up or kick on or reboot or whatever you want to term it, at crucial moments in games. And for the most part, the Penguins have come away with at least a point in those games.

Coaches, of course, as well as experts and even the players, will tell you that teams can’t keep doing what the Penguins are doing. Yet the actions of the Penguins’ team itself demonstrates differently. To be clear: Sometimes, against inferior opponents, and perhaps even more often than just sometimes, you can do what the Penguins are doing and still win games. In the end, talent wins out, and when a superior team is playing an inferior team, sometimes talent matters matter more than spotting the other team a two-goal lead or relinquishing a lead.

The issue, of course, becomes clearer when the Penguins are the inferior team to that particular opposing team, or even when the Penguins are close to equal with a team. Then, unless Lady Luck is really on your side, you surely can’t get away with what the Penguins have made a habit of doing successfully. And, as the race for the playoffs get tighter, and assuming the Penguins can make the playoffs, what the Penguins have been getting away with doing, yes, will, catch up to them.

But let me be clear. The reason the Penguins are winning games while playing only a certain percentage of the sixty minutes going full-bore is because, in those games, the Penguins are the superior team. They should win games against inferior opponents.

Do I believe it’s to Pittsburgh’s benefit to continue their practice of letting other teams jump out to leads and/or relinquishing leads? Of course not—because, when the Penguins face off against teams like Buffalo and New Jersey and even against still more desperate teams such as Carolina, the New York teams, etc, in coming weeks—the Penguins are going to have the intensity of their opposition. They can’t be outworked when the other team is playing with desperation or when a team—for the moment—is a superior team to them.

So, much as I knew the Penguins weren’t out of yesterday’s game even after appearing comatose (I believe that was how Dave Molinari’s PG recap put it today) for the first forty minutes of play, there will come a time when the Penguins aren’t going to be able to manufacture those three goals in a span of a little over twenty minutes. Try that against Buffalo, try that against Jersey—it will not happen. May as well work to overcome those bad habits—and yes, of course, be glad you sneaked away with two points. But acknowledge, honestly, that you sneaked away with two points that you shouldn’t have had to sneak away with—they should have been guaranteed if you’d worked to your fullest capacity for the entire sixty minutes of the hockey game.