Penguins need to get stingy

Tuesday, May 04, 2010
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1

You'd never know it from the metric tonnage of hockey analysis at hand, but the truth is that no one can know for certain what will happen when the Penguins and the Montreal Canadiens convene for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals tonight in Quebec.

Except, of course, that the Canadiens will score at least three times.

Probably.

PITTSBURGH - MAY 2: Jordan Leopold(notes) #4 of the Pittsburgh Penguins defends against Benoit Pouliot(notes) #57 of the Montreal Canadiens in Game Two of the Eastern Conference Semifinals during the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on May 2, 2010 at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Canadiens defeated the Penguins 3-1 to tie the series at one game apiece. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Or am I missing something from the way the defending Stanley Cup champions have played the first eight games of a postseason harder to read than James Joyce?

Six times in eight games, the Penguins have allowed three goals or more.

Can a team with great ambitions succeed in May while dragging around a 3.125 average in the all-important category called warily north of the border, goals a-gaynst?

"In my view," veteran winger Bill Guerin told a smattering of media before Monday's international flight, "we've definitely got to cut down on that a little bit. We definitely have a team that's capable of scoring more than three goals a game, but you just can't plan on that. You have to plan on winning 1-0 or plan on winning 2-1.

"As we've moved along, we've gotten better, and we will get better, we just have to remember that the defensive end is part of it."

Guerin might be right that the Penguins are running their systems more efficiently now than when the playoffs started nearly three weeks ago, but empirically, when they take the Bell Centre ice tonight, they'll have played five consecutive games in which they've found three pucks in their own net, if not more.

For a team whose primary defensive weapon is, of all things, offense, no one's even sure that this 3.125 figure is even toxic, much less lethal. But of all the things the Penguins have been called through one-plus playoff rounds, hard to score against isn't one of them.

Of the eight teams still actively employed, only the Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings have allowed more goals than the Penguins' 25, but Montreal vaulted into this round on the strength of holding Washington, hockey's most prolific offense, to one goal in each of the final three games of that first-round series. Detroit, which allowed four goals or more five times in the postseason's first nine games, eliminated Phoenix largely on the strength of a Game 4 shutout by Jimmy Howard and defensive efforts in Games 5 and 7 that permitted only one Coyote goal in each.

Howard hasn't been great, but he has probably kept Marc-Andre Fleury from getting recognized as the most unspectacular of the surviving playoff goaltenders.

"I hope my family and friends will still cheer for my team," said Fleury, who rooted the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup as an 8-year-old Quebecer in 1993. "But everybody has been nice to me so far. It should be interesting and fun to play there."

Fleury would probably find things a lot more amusing in this postseason if he could put together a series of performances in which he's virtually unbeatable, as when he beat Detroit 2-1 and 2-1 in Games 6 and 7 to win the Stanley Cup in June. Save for a 2-1 victory against Ottawa in the first round and some dazzling work through most of six periods of Game 5 in that series, he has been downright ordinary.

If there's a team still alive that can probably win despite allowing more than three goals a night, it's probably named for flightless waterfowl, but that's not a proposition anyone wants to test. In the postseason last year, the Penguins' goals a-gaynst per game was 2.66, or half a goal per game better than it is today.

"We want to put every chance to win on our side, and by allowing three goals or more -- we obviously need to reduce that," said forward Max Talbot. "We've got to maybe put it in our heads that it's all right to win 2-1 or 3-2. We don't need to score four or five to win the game. Maybe if we pay a little more attention to details defensively and try to play our game, we'll get better at it."

The problem, at least potentially, is that the Penguins' systems are difficult to compartmentalize. The Canadiens can play in their own end interminably when they feel it's prudent, but the Penguins' defensive principles are spread heavily through the offensive end.

"When we got the lead [in Game 2] 1-0 and we watched the tapes, we let them off the hook a couple of times," Talbot said of the Penguins' work in the offensive end. "We had chances to finish body checks, and we didn't. We tried to anticipate the cutting plays instead. But we know it's a long series. We're going to have to invest and be a little more physical maybe."

Hockey sometimes has a way of making physical a synonym for stingy. The Penguins should hope it's about that time.

Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com. More articles by this author

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