Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Locked On Penguins Episode 3

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Hunter recaps the Penguins lifeless home opener against the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night on the Locked On Penguins Podcast as nothing seemed to go right for the Penguins. Too many odd-man rushes, bad power play, leaving Matt Murray out to dry, it's all in here. He also dives into a few positives though, such as Evgeni Malkin and Matt Murray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to this edition of Locked-on Penguins. I'm your host Hunter Hodes, and for this episode, we're going to talk about the first game for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and a wolf. That's really all you can say about it is just woof. I always remember you can subscribe to this podcast on Spotify and Apple. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. But, yeah, the Penguins game last night, opened the season against the Buffalo Sabres, a 3-1 loss to them, and nothing really went right. There weren't really a lot of positives to take out of this game.

Before I get into the game, I just want to say, guys, usually this team does start slow to start the season. They really don't kick it off until January, February, in case some people are new to following the team or whatnot. But, yeah, last night, just nothing went wrong. A lot of the same problems that the Penguins had at the end of last season came up again last night. And one of those things were the odd man rushes that they were giving up.

Even at the end of this preseason, Coach Mike Sulloden was actually yelling at the team by saying, if we're going to keep giving up all these odd man rushes, let's get good at actually converting them. And safe to say, the Penguins really didn't get a lot of odd man rushes last night, but they gave up a whole lot of them. And the Sabers had two breakaway opportunities. They didn't really score on the one, but Rosemus Dahlene,

at the end of the second period, he came in, he actually split Blugher in Latang and he roofed it past Matt Murray and that was one of the odd man rushes the Penguins gave up and it was just it was not pretty they had 17 turnover

against the Sabres Chris LaTang had an uncharacteristically very poor game by his standards not a good way to open up the season for him he had four of them and they were also outshot at even string 3221 even halfway through the first period when the penguins were just like coasting along,

they were being outshot 14 to 3. To say this was a flat performance is putting it nicely, I would say. And penguins, they just, they looked slow out there. And I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because some of their defensive pairings. There's a couple players on there that really should not be there. Of course, we'll talk about Jack Johnson. Eric Good Branson did not enjoy a good game.

honestly really I don't think anyone on the defense enjoyed a good game especially the Dumlin Latang pairing that was probably one of the worst games I think I've ever seen out of them and they're usually one of the best top pairings in the league um withang just didn't look like himself that game um a lot of poor turnovers bad decisions brian Dumlin also was the same way bad turnovers poor decisions and I think a big thing I've come out of this game was the way of guinea malcon absolutely like hammered the team after this game. He's not happy.

Josh Yeli wrote a great article for the athletic. Shout out to him. And Malkin said, one of the quotes Malkins said was, we take a couple bad penalties. They change the game. It's a young league right now. We need to play hungry.

We need to play faster. Every puck we need to win. It's not good for us how we played. We need to change. Another one, Wizzy said, it's real games right now. It's for a sure wake-up call. We need to understand that every team is dangerous.

It doesn't matter if it's Buffalo or Washington. We need to learn from how we played tonight, play better for sure, like 100% better. And yeah, when Evgeny Malkin, one of the Penguins leaders, probably one of the only Penguins that actually had a good game, and we'll get to that in a minute, is saying that, I think it's time. I think they need to wake up a little bit.

I know, like I said earlier, I know the team. You know, it plays a lot better after the new year. They don't really, I don't think they take these first 20 to 30 games so much seriously, but some of the teams in the division, like the division I think is going to be, I think, more competitive this year, even though I do think the Penguins will still get into the playoffs with ease.

But every year, like Gino says, it is harder to get in the playoffs. They can't afford to, you know, just tank a lot of these games, because it still could come back to bite them. You never know. But I think, like, also in that game, like, when they went down 3-1, And they actually had like two or three power plays in that third period.

It almost looked like they didn't really care enough to score on them, which was very concerning. They were not playing well at all in the last 30 minutes, especially the last 20 minutes. Even Marcus Pedersen said, in a quote to Josh Yovie's piece, I don't even know what happened in the final 30 minutes. So, I mean, when you have a bunch of, when you have a few players saying they don't know what happened

and they don't know why we're playing so bad. That's not good. And I also say that Sydney Crosby and Jake Ensel did not have good games. I know Jake had a couple decent chances, but Crosby did have that power play assist on a Gany Malkin's goal, which we'll get to in the next segment. But just not good games for them. Obviously, that's not going to be the norm.

Sydney Crosby is going to have way more good games than bad games. is Zoha J counsel who's coming off a 40-goal season. I thought this tweet from Adam Greth's last night basically summed up the performance and basically the Penguins as a whole. If you had concerns about the Penguins, all those concerns were on display. The defense was not good. That's for a death sometimes has questions. That said, it is still just one game.

And Crosby, Gensolitan, Dumblin will not struggle this much every night. Of course, leaving Al Malkin and Murray because they were outstanding. And he's right. Yeah. I mean, that's basically what I took away from this as well. The core players are not going to struggle this much every night. They're going to get them a bunch of their wins as the season goes on. It's only one game.

I know people love to overreact and say, oh, yeah, well, you know, this team's done. Saturdays, they still have another home game coming up against Columbus, but, you know, this was not encouraging to see. And, you know, some people were probably going to start to say, well, you know, the 2018 Kings, the 2017 Blackogs, let's chill out, it's a long season. And yeah, I think that the Penguins, they should be fine. We'll be curious to see how they play against Columbus

if they come out really firing against them, or if it's the same lackluster performance. Because this honestly looked like game five against the Islanders in the playoffs, where like nothing was working, they were giving up odd man rushes, pinching at bad moments, moments, slow, and it was just accumulation of a bad opening night loss. But I doubt it's going to be the norm, and they just have to move on to the next game.

And that's exactly what they're going to do as they play, like I said, I call them those blue jackets on Saturday night. I think one of the big positives come out of this game was Matt Murray. Well, one of them is there's probably only a few positives coming out of this game, but Matt Murray was definitely one of them. He was keeping the penguins in this game the entire night. 38 saves out on 41 shots He played like the go-tender that was playing in the second half of the season last year

And Sullivan even said as such after the game saying, Yeah, you know, we were really only in this game because Matt Murray Was just outstanding throughout the whole game He was he was moving very well his glove was great He was seeing the puck all through the way all the way through I don't know why I'm mixing up my words right now. But yeah, he was outstanding. And if it weren't for Murray, that 3-1 loss is probably a 6-1 or 7-1 loss, I think,

because the hang ones were just that bad. It'll be curious to see if he's going to keep doing this. I really think he will. Like I said on my last episode, I think he's going to have a monster year. He's going to be a Vezna Trophy finalist. And last night was, I think, a good first game step-te. that he was absolutely amazing um none of the goals were really his fault dalene had that awesome roof uh shot uh sherry had a couple goals but i mean marrari really had no chance on those but

he had made a lot of really timely saves when the game was tied and even when they were down two one and three one to keep the penguins from to keep the penguins in the game and to give them at least like a sliver of hope that they could come back but it wasn't going to happen with how they were playing Also, I think, was the play of Evgeny Malkin. He looked fast. He looked crisp. He scored the Penguins only goal. It was a nice shot through a screen by Patrick Hornquist on the power play.

And, yeah, he was, he was, I think he was their best skater on the ice last night. And, yeah, we talked about this going into the season, how he was going to play after a really bad season for Malkin standards last season, you know, only 72 points in 68 games.

And, yeah, I think he was, he was just, he was outstanding. We'll get to his line in a second with Galchanyuk and Tannov, but like, he was skating with authority. He was not turning the puck over. Like I said, his decision making was great. And, I mean, I think he's going to, and with those two on, with Gau Cheneok and Tanov on that line. I think that's just going to really help Malk and get back to

where he needs to be. And I guess we'll just jump right into that line. I thought Alex Galtzhenyuk and Brandon Tenev were awesome too. And that line has the makings of a really, really good second line. Contract aside for Brandon Tanev, like we said, we all know the six years

is too long. He was outstanding last night. He was creating turnovers. He was fast. He was drawing penalties. He got some really good looks from Malkin in that game. I think Malkin had a really nice pass to him that was saved by Hutton in the first or second period. I have to go double back and check, but I know he had a couple really nice chances. And he's going to be a really good player, I think, for the Penguins of the season. He's like that kind of player that

I think the Penguins have desperately lacked these last a couple seasons. Like he's that fast winger. He play in any situation pk even strength second power play perhaps he's fast draw like i said draws penalties and i'd be curious to see if he can play that that carl maybe like that carl hagglin role pascal dupuy role i think like and see if he can uh like had like that like he can like bloom like dupley did when he was here and when dupley played on crosbie's line because he turned into a different when he was up there. And I think the same could be potentially said for Tanev if he keeps playing the way he did last night because he was superb.

And also on Alex Gowchenyuk, I thought, was very, very good. He was fast. He was tenacious with the puck. He was creating turnovers. He didn't draw any penalties like Tanev did, but still, he also had some very, very good chances. I thought a couple times he was going to pop one. But it'll be coming. think this has the makings of a very, very good line.

And I would not be surprised if it's together for most of the season, considering how much chemistry got Chenyuk and Malkin, I think, already have. And just how Tana fits on that line. Like I said, he's fast, tenacious with the park. And I'm just, I'll be curious. I'm interested to see how this line does throughout the season. And we'll be curious to see if they can maybe get a goal and even straight together against Columbus.

for that matter. Also, I think I wanted to talk about the power play last night. Just switch gears for a second, I should say. The power play was bad. It's probably putting it a bit lightly, but I know they did that power play goal. Beautiful, nice shot by Malkin, Carter Hutton, nice screened by Hornquist.

Other than that, though, it was just, it was bad. There was really no puck movement to it. they were getting some shots through but I mean you can tell just by last night like the power play it did miss Phil Kessel at least for last night and um I'm not going to obviously say that for every time that Penguin's power play is bad but last night I do think it definitely missed Phil um he was like one of the biggest reasons that the power play was so good he could be on the half wall players could rotate him and if players went too far to him they could just give it to Malkin or Crosby and maybe make you pay that way.

Now without him, they don't have like that same presence out there. And also, of course, Kessel had that amazing playmaking ability. He didn't just shoot from there. He had some amazing passes that would lead to goals and some outstanding sequences. So let's not get lost with that. But without him there last night, it just didn't look as crisp. It didn't look as clean. The zone entries were also not that good at times.

almost everyone on that unit, even on the second power play unit, it was just bad. I mean, it's not going to continue the whole season, folks. The Penguins are going to finish with a top five power play. They do it every season. But last night was definitely not encouraging to see it that bad. Even if you want to switch to the other special teams,

the penalty kill was, I'd say better when what the hardware play does, but they still did. They gave up that second power play goal. I'm trying to think of when it was in the second period, yeah, when it was won one. Connor Sherry's second goal. The Penguins took back-to-back penalties.

Very dumb penalties to take. I think one was on Brian Dumlin, and the other one was on Pedersen, and they ended up scoring on the Dumlin penalty right after they killed off the first one. and Sherry, of course, Sherry got the goal. He had two goals against his former team. And, yeah, Sherryam had a very interesting quote at the end of the game.

Basically, a reporter asked him, like, does it's like, do you get out for these games, basically? And he had a pretty tongue quote. He's like, yeah, when you get traded by, when a team that doesn't want you, it kind of just sticks with you. So, yeah, I kind of want to go out there and show them what they're missing is basically what he said. I'm just summarizing it. and yeah you know but Conor Sherry fell down a lot though right he had a couple really he had a couple

nice goals last night and you know I think the Penguins they definitely do miss some of his speed I would say but I mean a player like that is not going to derail the penguin season but to get back to the overall point the penalty kill they did give up that

power play goal that ultimately would change I guess changed the game in the sense that the Penguins would not see a tied game again or even the chance to take the lead. It was just a bad special team's night. I guess that goes to the theme that really no one had a good night, except for, of course, Matt Murray,

Evianney Malkin, Brandon Tanev, and Alex Galcheny. I'll take it back. I thought Nick Buk's dad was okay. Maybe Jared McCann. Yeah, I thought McCann was pretty good. He had some really nice chances last night. I think he's going to have a really good season for the Penguins this season. I know I believe he's an RFA after this season.

He's going to get a very handsome raise. But I thought he was good. I thought the fourth line last night of Teddy Bluger, Zach Ashton Reese, and Dominic Simone also was not bad either. I thought they had some good chances. I think once Rust returns, I think Aston Reese will be the odd man out on that line. That's my guess. But also, you know, I really, actually, yeah, I think he would be the odd man out. don't see anyone else in that lineup coming out.

Well, maybe Dominic Cahoon. Dominic Cahoon did not enjoy a good night. He hasn't looked good in the preseason. He hasn't looked good last night. I mean, the preseason is the preseason, but if it starts translating to the regular season, there's a problem. And, you know, the Penguins, he's the player that they got in return for Oli Mato

when they shipped Mata to the Chicago Blackhawks in the off season. And, yeah, he enjoyed it. thing is he enjoyed a really, really good rookie season for the Blackhawks last year. He had almost, I think it was 15 goals. I'm not mistaken. I need to make sure I got that right.

I don't need to spew anything that I don't know. Yeah, if hockey reference would love to load love to load. Yeah, 13 goals, 37 points in a full 82 game season last year. Yeah, he had a, and 12 of those goals, yeah, 12 of those 13 were even strength. So,

Yeah, you know, to say that, you know, it's not going to be a concern unless it starts getting into like maybe 10 to 15 games into the season. But, you know, hasn't enjoyed a good camp supposedly, not a good preseason and not a good start to the regular season. So if Russ comes back and Cahoon is still not playing well, he could be the odd man out if Aston Reese really is playing well. I think Aston Reese is a very intriguing case. If he can stay healthy, I think he can contribute around, I'd say, 10 goals. on the fourth line. I don't think that's too far out of the question for him. What else about last night's game that we feel like?

Let's see. I don't really think there's too much else to talk about for last night's game. It was just, it was just, well, I guess going back to the defense, all the defensemen were under 50% course the Fenwick percentage, their possession numbers, and yeah, that's bad. In case you all familiar, that that's a bunch of puck possession. If you're over 50%, that's very good. That's where you're supposed to be.

If you're under 50%, not an almost every, yeah, every defenseman, like I said last night, was very bad and was under it. If I find this tweet where I saw it, even the Tang and Dumlin, who usually are well over 50% basically every game, we talked about earlier they did not have a good game they were even they were even under it and yeah doom went 42% last night Latang 44% Pedersen 47%

Shultz and Johnson 42% Surprise surprise considering that I don't know why they're playing together for some reason and Eric Goodbranson 47% Yeah that is That is not good And Latang 12 scoring chances 4 15 scoring chances against

11, scoring chance for 12 for Regents for Pedersen, 8 and 11 for Johnson, 12 and 16 for Dumlin, 11, 15 Schultz. Basically, what I'm saying is they gave up a lot more scoring chances against than they account and they helped get for the Penguins. And that's not good. That's not going to be the norm, I think, for all of these defensemen. I think obviously the Latang and Dumlin are going to be over 50%. They're going to be on the positive side most of the time for scoring chances for and scoring chances against.

I think so. Will Patterson? Justin Schultz? Well, hopefully in the case that Jack Johnson is not anchored to him for the rest of the season, though, I did read an article from Rod Roski yesterday, which was very interesting to me. He said that when the penguins are going to be fully healthy, this is from the athletic, of course. When the penguins are fully healthy, when Ryan Rust comes back, Jack Johnson's not going to be in the lineup. And that's an interesting thing here because, I mean,

Russ does take up a few million in cap, because when he comes back from LTIR, he's going to count against the cap, and then the Penguins will be over the cap. So they're going to have to do something cap, flexibility-wise, to get under the cap. And Rossi said that the penguin pairings, they would be Dumlin-Littang,

Pedersen-Sholtz, and Rico Goodbranson, which is a lot of what we saw towards the end of the preseason, actually, when Jack Johnson was actually a healthy scratch for a couple games. and then of course when Brian Russ gets hurt in the final preseason game blocking a shot it looks like he broke his hand there was a replay of that last night during the game it struck his hand I think he broke his hand he's probably going to be out maybe a month or two or something like that

but yeah I think but that's what Rossi says apparently they really really really like those pairings and the only reason really Jack Johnson's in the lineup right now is because Brian Russ is hurt and he has to stay on the I on the long term MRI are for 10 games, 24 days. So he'll be out for a few weeks, maybe close to a month, I would say. But, well, I see, obviously I'm not a doctor here. But yeah, and then apparently he also said that they're really intrigued by a Pedersen

Marino, apparently, of horse, meaning John Marino, who made the team out of camp, they acquired him from the Edmonton Oilers over the summer. But yeah, I think that wraps up this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. Not a good game last night in all facets of the game. Of course, the Gauchang Malina, I said, was great. Matt Murray was great. They'll all continue to be great. Cindy Crosby and Jake Gensel will bounce back.

Brian Dumlin and Chris Latang will... I totally screwed that up, so my fault. Excuse me. Sydney Crosby and Jake Gensel will bounce back. Chris LaTang and Brian Dumlin will bounce back. Justin Schultz, they'll all be fine. But they need to clean up these odd-band rushes if they are going to go anywhere this season. They can't keep giving these up.

They can't keep looking slow on defense. letting the opposing forwards get behind them, making bad pinches, leaving Matt Murray out to dry to make a save. Because, like I said, he was the only reason why that game was as close as it was last night. The Penguins will be back in action on Saturday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Look for another episode of this podcast, potentially later on tonight. I'm trying to catch up. I've had a couple of little schoolwork to do.

But, yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. Please subscribe on Apple, podcast or Spotify. Follow my Twitter, Hunter Hodes. and yeah, I hope you guys have a great day and hope you enjoyed this episode.