It was early January, and no team in the NHL was scarier than the Penguins.
The Penguins headed out west and rolled through three playoff teams, including two that finished the shortened season among the Western Conference's top three. Evgeni Malkin was on fire. Tristan Jarry was bulletproof. And Sidney Crosby was on the trip, about ready to rock following a three-month injury absence.
They didn't have their A-game on a Jan. 10 night in Colorado. Matt Murray let a lob from the neutral zone skip by him. The Penguins allowed the Avalanche to tie it with 31 seconds left. It didn't matter. Mike Sullivan's squad won anyway.
"I just think that's an indication of the type of team we're becoming," he said.
No team was more resilient then. They won despite significant injuries to so many key players. They won after trailing by three goals. They won a couple when they coughed up similar leads. Bad bounce? Bad call? Bad goal? So what?
They were that horror movie villain who kept popping up, kept coming back.
And just like that, the killer instinct was gone. The Penguins were unmasked.
A stunning collapse became complete Friday, when they fell, 2-0, to a Montreal Canadiens team that in a normal year wouldn't have come close to making the playoff field. Montreal took the best-of-five qualifying-round series, 3-1.
After the Penguins collapsed in Game 3, blowing a 3-1 lead in the second period, they played a tight, cautious style throughout Game 4. The Canadiens didn't mind, and the whole afternoon felt a lot like a double-overtime playoff game.
Late in one of their most uneventful games of the season, Brandon Tanev made the big mistake. Tanev, the spark plug the Penguins signed last summer to give this aging team more juice, made a blind pass into the middle inside Pittsburgh's zone. Montreal's Paul Bryon picked it off and found Artturi Lehkonen in front.
That gut-punch goal, scored with 4:11 left in regulation, would hold up.
The Penguins during the series got just eight pucks past former MVP Carey Price, who also used his sublime stick-handling to neutralize their forecheck.
They have scored now three goals or fewer in each of their last 14 playoffs games. The last time they got four or more was their 8-5 win over the Philadelphia Flyers that closed out their first-round series victory during the 2018 playoffs.
What the heck happened to this veteran team? How could this happen again?
Maybe it's as simple as this _ the Penguins weren't as good as we thought, not as special as everyone within a proud organization believed back in January.
Perhaps they were winning too frequently in unsustainable ways, propped up by crazy comebacks and a few weeks of gangbusters goaltending from Jarry.
Looking back, it all seemed to start unraveling Jan. 21, when they no-showed in the game before the All-Star break, a 3-0 loss in Philadelphia. The Penguins got away from the little things _ making smart decisions at the blue lines, hounding opponents to get back the puck, five guys skating as one all over the ice.
Jim Rutherford gave up a first-round pick and a top prospect to get Jason Zucker. Three more forwards arrived at the trade deadline. But the downward spiral continued. They went 3-8-0 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world March 12, while the Penguins watched on from a Columbus hotel.
Sullivan had four months to find fixes. But even more stuff got busted against the Canadiens, a team with less talent but more hunger, structure and speed. Now Sullivan and Rutherford _ who are both expected to be back _ will get four more months to make difficult decisions about the direction of the franchise.
It is fairly obvious the Penguins can't bring back basically the same group next season and expect a different result. Significant roster moves need to be made if they are to squeeze one more Stanley Cup out of Crosby and Malkin. It may mean the departure of a few more fan favorites from the 2016 and 2017 runs.
Will the Penguins move on from Murray three years after they chose him over Marc-Andre Fleury? Could Kris Letang be dangled in a trade to shake up the core? Will Rutherford, with little salary cap space, think bigger than that?
The GM fumed last April after a first-round loss to the New York Islanders, but an early playoff exit wasn't a surprise to him. That team never came together.
This one did. Then, seemingly overnight and without explanation, it fell apart.
