Nearly 10 months ago, with the Penguins’ backs against the bubble and their season on the brink, former general manager Jim Rutherford settled in for Game 4 of the qualifying-round series against the Canadiens.
“You’re waiting for the desperation at the drop of the puck,” Rutherford said in the aftermath of that 2-0 loss. “It didn’t come in the first period. It didn’t come in the second period. And it was even worse in the third period. There’s something wrong if you don’t have the drive to win at that point in the series.”
One season later, the Penguins have once again reached that do-or-die point in their first-round playoff series.
But this is a different team. This is a different season.
At least that’s what we’ve been told throughout the year on countless occasions. The word “resiliency” has been used time and time again as the Penguins survived injuries, avoided illness and weathered countless storms to claim the East Division title in what was arguably the NHL’s toughest division.
But now, once again facing an elimination game, it’s time to see if or how this team is different than the one that flamed out of the playoffs in four games.
The situation is straightforward. Down 3-2 in the seven-game series against the defensively stout Islanders, the Penguins will need to win the final two games to avoid losing in the first round of the postseason for the third consecutive season.
That starts on Wednesday at Nassau Coliseum. The Penguins will need to go into a hostile environment, beat the Islanders in what could be the last-ever NHL game at the venue and then return back to PPG Paints Arena on Friday to finish the job.
“Our guys understand the circumstance,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said on Tuesday. “We just have to put our best game on the ice in New York. That’s our intention.”
Some of the biggest questions center around Tristan Jarry after his stick-handling blunder turned into Josh Bailey’s double-overtime winner. But throughout the lineup, from the Sidney Crosby line to the last defensive pair, the Penguins are in for a test that will make or break their season.
Practice at UMPC Lemieux Sports Complex on Tuesday began with a meeting on the ice that had all the players laughing. Throughout the workout, players appeared relaxed and confident. At one point, defenseman Kris Letang took a tumble to this ice and got up covered in snow and a smile. Colton Sceviour laid down and jokingly pretending to snipe Letang with his stick.
“It serves us no use to come in and feel sorry for ourselves,” defenseman Mike Matheson said. “The only thing we can do is learn from last game… Nobody said you had to win them in four straight or in five games or in six games or whatever the case may be. You just have to win four games in a seven-game span.”
It helps the Penguins that they can look at Monday’s 3-2 double overtime loss and feel confident that even if the result wasn’t what they wanted, the process was. The Penguins controlled territory and tempo throughout. They generated 67% of the shot attempts and 68% of the expected goals at all strengths. They created 40 scoring chances to the Islanders’ 19 and 16 high-danger chances to New York’s five, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“I thought it was our best game of the series,” Sullivan said. “There was so much of it to like, other than the result. That’s hockey.”
While this will be without question the biggest and most-significant test of this team’s ability to respond to adversity, the Penguins have faced plenty of galvanizing moments during this unique season.
They played 23 of the 56 games without an injured Evgeni Malkin. At one point, five of the top nine forwards were out of the lineup due to injury or COVID-related absence. Crosby sat out a game as a COVID precaution.
The list goes on. But perhaps the best example of a moment that could have unraveled the season but instead bound the team together tighter came during one of the longest and strangest road trips in Penguins history.
During a nine-day, four-game jaunt in late January through Boston and New York, the Penguins’ blue line was absolutely decimated by injury. All four left-shot defensemen from the Game 1 lineup were out. Then the top righty, Letang, went down, forcing the Penguins to call Yannick Weber and have him drive 16 hours through a snowstorm to join them.
Meanwhile, Jarry was floundering to the point many wondered if the team would bring in outside help in net. Malkin was saying publicly he needed to look himself in the mirror.
To top it all off, seemingly out of nowhere, that same general manager who questioned the heart and desire of this team last postseason? He quit.
As if all that wasn’t enough, a blizzard blasted New York City, forcing the Penguins to delay their travel plans and extend the trip from hell one day longer.
During that moment, with their season at a crossroads, the Penguins rallied back to life to win the division.
“I just think it’s part of the evolution of a team,” Sullivan said. “When you go through difficult circumstances, my experience being part of teams, it does one of two things. It makes you better. It brings you closer. It galvanizes the group. Or it can tear you down. It’s one or the other.
“My experience being around this team, they tend to rally around adversity. It starts with the leadership that we have. I’ve witnessed it time and time again with this group. That’s one of the reasons I have so much faith and so much trust in this group of players.”
