After generating just 18 shots on goal (and only one goal before resorting from pulling their goalie in desperation time to find a second goal) in Game 1, the Pittsburgh Penguins were unable to get much of anything going as a counter to that slow start in Game 2. In fact, the opposite happened for the Pens, they only registered two shots on goal in the first period. It was a telling sign that they didn’t not figure out how to break through the Flyers’ defense in the short time between Games 1 and 2 and went on to get shutout in a game where they were looking for a big response.
As a result, the Penguins leave Pittsburgh having lost the first two games of the series. They’re in a big hole now.
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How was the game lost? Surely the Pens are wondering the same thing, desperately searching for an answer before it becomes too late. Philadelphia made Rick Tocchet one of the league’s highest paid coaches and he’s proving to be worth every penny by instilling a physical mindset and restrictive defensive strategy that has confounded the star power of the Penguins, making them look old and ineffective.
Tocchet’s finger prints are all over the series, and a big reason Philadelphia took Game 2. The Penguins can run from starting Sidney Crosby against Sean Couturier at the beginnings of periods, but they can’t stop the Flyers from putting Couturier and Travis Sanheim on the ice for defensive zone faceoffs. Couturier won 13 of his 18 overall faceoffs last night, many against Crosby who won just 39% of his 31 faceoffs. That alone isn’t a big reason that Pittsburgh lost, but it starts to explain the story of how the matchups are going all over the ice, in ways big and small.
Couturier besting Crosby knocks areas like the power play out of whack before it can even get on track. Then the Flyers’ defensive posturing, physicality and the Pens’ lack of urgency take over. It did last night when Tommy Novak took an indirect, slow route to a puck up for grabs (not even starting to skate towards the wall for a full beat after Stuart Skinner played the puck), threw a halfhearted bump and then slid all the way out of the picture in what started the sequence for Philadelphia’s second goal, which then really turned into something when Tippett went by Kris Letang like he wasn’t even there. It served as a backbreaker before the end of the second period to extend the lead to 2-0. It might as well have been 20-0 at that point.
The difference in the Pens and Flyers is the difference between Novak and Letang and Owen Tippett on that play, how much effort and energy is on display. One side is busting their ass to make something happen, the other is just kinda there. It should be needless to say but it can’t be like that in the NHL playoffs.
The above play was the only goal scored during a full 8:00 of game play where the Penguins had a power play. That, in a nutshell, is the simplest answer and explanation for how Pittsburgh lost Game 2. They have almost nothing going right so far and their opponent looks more hungry, smarter, faster, better-coached, better in net (not that Stuart Skinner could do too much about winning with zero goal support), you name it and it’s been an uphill climb.
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Erik Karlsson summed it up, in what could have been the entirety of this article and been correct. (A 34-word quote isn’t good for the search engines, though). But Karlsson pretty much nails it here.
“We don’t really get in sync, and you would think that we would dictate what we want to do out there,” Karlsson said. “But they’re doing a good job, and we’re not. That’s the bottom line.”
Wrap it up, that’s all there is to say. Despite what elements of coaching or goaltending or any other variable that factors into the overall big picture, playoff hockey often comes down to which side is simply playing better or worse than the competition on the ice. So far the results have been very clear in that regard, with Game 2 serving as a terrible indictment of the Pens’ ability to find any answers on how to solve what their opponent has been throwing at them.
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