Penguins Blanked By Oilers, Lose Fourth Straight Game

The Pittsburgh Penguins hoped to snap their three-game losing streak – and six-game matchup skid – against the Edmonton Oilers on Friday.

Unfortunately for them, it was much of the same.

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The Penguins were blanked by the Oilers, 4-0, in a completely lopsided affair that saw the Oilers register 50 shots on goal in comparison to Pittsburgh’s 27. Rookie goaltender Joel Blomqvist was outstanding and kept the Penguins in the game until the Oilers’ attack simply became too much in the latter half of the second period.

When asked what the level of concern about his team is, head coach Mike Sullivan was quite frank:

“Well, it’s concerning because we’re just not good enough right now,” he said. “We didn’t play hard enough, we didn’t play together as a group… we weren’t good enough.”

Here are some thoughts and observations from last night’s game:

– Blomqvist was good. Very good. And I highly believe that he is the best goaltender on this roster.

Nedeljkovic is a steady veteran presence who is capable of winning some games for the Penguins right now, and I was ready to give him the net. But Blomqvist just continues to impress in nearly every outing.

The Penguins are almost certainly going to start Nedeljkovic against Vancouver in the second of the back-to-back on Saturday. But I need to see more of Blomqvist. He’s earned more starts.

– The situation with Tristan Jarry is so… odd. I can’t say I can ever remember anything else like it.

He was sent home midway through the trip to work in a program with director of goaltending Jon Elkin. This happened on Thursday. Then, less than 48 hours later, it was announced on Saturday morning that he was sent to Pittsburgh’s AHL affiliate, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (WBS), on a conditioning assignment.

Accounting for travel back from the West coast, this likely means that Jarry spent about a total of 24 hours in Pittsburgh.

Just a really strange situation. Hopefully, a successful stint in WBS will help him regain his form. He can be on his conditioning loan for up to 14 days.

– The Penguins’ top-six is a serious problem right now.

It’s good that they’re getting good goaltending from their rookie. It’s good that their bottom-six has been producing in the early stages of the season. And, presumably, it’s safer to bank on guys like Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, and Michael Bunting figuring things out sooner or later rather than the other two things.

But I’ve never seen Crosby so noticeably off his game. Same with Rust and Bunting. Even Evgeni Malkin, after registering 11 points in five games, has gone pointless in his last four.

There is an obvious scoring deficiency in the top-six, and I’m not sure that’s entirely fixable. Rickard Rakell can’t do it all himself. However, I do think there are ways that the Penguins can optimize their lineup to put their players in a better position to succeed.

This is how I would consider deploying the lineup right now to give it a boost:

Rakell-Crosby-Rust
Bunting-Malkin-Jesse Puljujarvi
Drew O’Connor-Lars Eller-Valtteri Puustinen/Anthony Beauvillier
Kevin Hayes-Cody Glass-Noel Acciari

That fourth line is one of the things this team has going for them. It should stay the way it is. And the second line has gone cold enough to the point where I think it’s okay to shuffle some things around to try to get the top line going.

Because, as of right now, the top line is arguably number one on this team’s list of problems. Not only is it not producing five-on-five, it’s also been putrid defensively.

At the very least, Rakell brings a defensive conscious to the line. And he should certainly help offensively.

– I’m going to get into this in a separate piece at some point soon. But my gut tells me there is something very off about this room right now.

They need to do something about that fast in order to salvage their season, whether that’s a coaching change, a trade, or something else to jolt this team. Because it doesn’t seem like there is currently enough intrinsically to get them to organically start playing with a pulse.

Even if people want to argue that they’re in rebuild mode, I don’t think they’re there yet in a full-blown capacity.

If they lose again in Vancouver, I’d half-expect to see some changes very soon.