Mental Errors Are Unacceptable.
Jesse Marshall | Pittsburgh Penguins
May 2, 04:49 PM | Hype this story!
The Penguins took the ice against the Capitals for game one this afternoon and within the first twenty seconds of the game, Sidney Crosby had already registered a shot on goal.
The team took to his tempo with each line generating a solid shift for the first four minutes of the game.
Crosby topped off the hot start with a nice goal cutting through the slot to give the Penguins a 1-0 lead.
That’s about all we can write home about, because the next series of events is inexcusable for a team that currently finds itself in the conference semi-finals.
During the next sequence, Fleury kicks a harmless shot from the corner directly into the Slot, where Evgeni Malkin fails to pick up his man driving to the net. The game is tied at 1.
During the next sequence, Sergei Gonchar clears the puck over the glass in his defensive zone. Power-play Washington.
During the next sequence, Matt Cooke takes an absurd penalty after getting hit by Alex Ovechkin. A 5-3 ensues, and it’s 2-1 Capitals.
At the start of the third, with the game tied, Brooks Orpik has a brain cramp and forgets to play defense. 3-2 Capitals.
The common denominator in each Washington goal was a serious mental error by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Washington Capitals didn’t win as much as the Pittsburgh Penguins lost.
Facing a 3-2 deficit, the Penguins power-play was handed two golden opportunities in the third period, yet each chance was more atrocious than the other. No scoring chances were generated via either opportunity and the puck was consistently turned over once it entered the zone, if it entered the zone at all.
The Capitals will walk away from this game up 1-0 in the series, but they hardly out-played the Penguins. Alexander Semin was a no-show, Ovechkin was held in check save an easy 5-3 chance, and the Capitals handed the Penguins odd-man breaks like nobody’s business.
All that aside, the Penguins still played the game like they were practicing at training camp.
If the Penguins cannot solve these mental lapses and get the power-play going, this series will be over pretty fast.
With the amount of odd-man breaks the Penguins are getting, only two goals against a rookie goaltender is a fairly inexcusable performance. What’s more frustrating, is that the Penguins have seemingly done the Capitals a favor in game 1. Their cycle was utterly ineffective after the first period and milked time off the clock for the Washington. The Penguins struggled to maintain possession of simple passes and keep-in’s, allowing the Capitals to make the Penguins play go-fetch all afternoon.
The Penguins need to rally from their performance in the first ten minutes and come out flying against the Capitals in game 2. They were consistently the better team at even strength. However, if you aren’t playing smart and generating scoring chances, being the better team won’t even buy you a cup of coffee.
There’s a chance Monday night for redemption. The Capitals showed little in the way of a capability of dominating at even strength. If the Penguins can come out with a better performance, I think we know what the result will be.
As long as they don’t beat themselves.
Comments
Albert
May 3, 10:26 AM
Compete level:
Crosby: A
All Other Skaters: Unacceptable
Brad
May 3, 11:27 AM
Fleury’s uncontrolled rebound that led to the Cap’s first goal changed the entire momentum of the game. Gonchar played a horrible game. I don’t understand why Sykora is back in the line up and it was just plain stupid to have him on the power play late in the third with the game on the line. The PP is weak and lazy and he just compounds the problem. I would rather see them put Gill on the PP and have him battle in front of the net than to see Sykora loose every single battle along the boards.
TheOneAndOnlySurge
May 4, 10:17 AM
Wow! Thats all I can say about this article and everyones opinion of the game. WOW! You people are way too spoiled. Washington was out played at almost every minute of the game and if not for being able to capitalize on mistakes this game would of been 2-1 Pittsburgh. The Pens should hold their heads high and go into the next game with the same approach and believe me they will win the series. I just hope they don’t read things like this and lower their confidence to the point that they believe what you people are saying.
Jesse Marshall
May 4, 11:13 AM
.25 cents and the sentiment that the Penguins “out-played” the Capitals will buy you a cup of coffee at the convenience store.
I think I enunciated in my article that the Penguins are the better team but cannot hand games over to the opposition.
Ray aka WildcatRay
May 4, 11:25 AM
@TheOneAndOnlySurge,
The point Jesse is trying to make and I agree with is that a championship caliber team does not make the mental errors that the Pens made in Game 1. With only 2 penalties against and many for, the Pens should have won the game easily and quite possibly by shutout. Final score: Caps 3, Pens 2!
My peeve is the power play. With all those man advantages, the Pens managed way too few shots. More importantly, how soon they forget. Just a week earlier, they got back into Game 6 at Philly doing what? Let me spell it out for those of you from Turtle Creek. C-R-A-S-H-I-N-G T-H-E N-E-T! (Sorry, I could not resist the tease.)
Malkin and Fedotenko crash the net with Gino getting the puck on goal and Fedo poking in the loose puck, 3-1 Flyers.
Next a 3-man break-in. Kennedy gets the puck on net. Eaton, jumping up on the rush, bats the puck out of the air and into the goal, 3-2 Flyers.
Then, on another break-in, Guerin shoots/passes the puck from deep on the far left boards. A Flyer skater and G Biron play “hot potato” with it before Sid alertly stops and comes back in front to knock this puck out of mid-air, too, 3-3, tied up.
Is anyone else sensing a pattern here?
Early in the 3rd Period, the Pens get another rush/break-in, only now the Flyers are shell-shocked. Instead of standing up at the blue line and forcing the Pens to dump and chase, the Flyers back in DEEP. This enables Gino to drop the puck back to Sarge whose slapper catches the far upper left corner, 4-3 Pens.
The pattern is when you crash the net, good things are likely to happen. This team, much like many of the Lemieux/Jagr ones, can be loathe to scoring ugly, blue collar type goals even though they have shown they can and achieve success by doing so. With all the man advantages they had on Saturday, if they had opted to crash the net rather than look for the pretty play, maybe they don’t end up with a doughnut.
TheOneAndOnlySurge
May 4, 05:42 PM
@Jesse, the numbers speak for themselves. 36-26 in shots, 5-2 in penalities taken and I think I read somewhere like high twenties and less than ten in giveaways. The Pens won in every instance except for PP Goals and the overal goals scored. If you don’t think thats out playing your opponent then you need to go follow golf or running because that is the only sport where lower numbers mean you are performing better.
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