There were no screaming or punishing sprints — nor were there sweeping changes Monday when the Penguins practiced for the first time since Saturday’s 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues, easily their poorest outing of this young season.
It was business as usual in Cranberry, an up-tempo skate that emphasized special teams and defending odd-man rushes. The 5-on-5 lines remained intact.
After practicing for about an hour, the players stood at center ice as coach Mike Sullivan quietly but firmly laid out expectations for the tough tests ahead.
“We’re not panicking here,” Matt Nieto said. “It’s just five games into the season. But we’re aware we need to be better. To a man, we all understand that.”
Saturday’s loss had Sullivan fuming throughout the game, including a 30-second tongue-lashing during a timeout. He carefully chose his words afterward, saying he needed time to “digest it” before he could go about finding fixes.
It was one particular type of performance that has historically irked the coach.
The Penguins possessed the puck in the offensive zone for nearly twice as much time as the Blues, per Sportlogiq. But they lacked patience and focus, especially during the second period, and looked for shortcuts. That led to six odd-man rushes for St. Louis and seven scoring chances off Pittsburgh turnovers.
“I don’t think it’s a game that’s certainly emblematic of what this group’s about. I don’t think we were at our best. We didn’t play the game with a sense of purpose that’s necessary to have success,” Sullivan said. “I think the biggest case in point was the number of odd-man chances we gave up off the rush.”
Rush chances against is a bellwether statistic for the Sullivan-era Penguins. Two weeks into the season, only four NHL teams had given up more per game.
“We weren’t happy without how St. Louis went. We gave up far too many chances,” Ryan Graves said. “It’s just not the way we’re looking to play as a group. When we are playing our best, we’re a group that defends well and plays within a structure. We’re not looking to be a team that [only attacks] off the rush.”
The big defenseman added: “It’s hard to win consistently like that. We need to play just a little bit more of a patient, calculated game where we aren’t so willy-nilly with chances against. If we clean that up, then I think the rest will come.”
And that’s what Sullivan harped on with his players Monday, after they had Sunday off. He thought that was a better course of action than shaking things up.
The Penguins during practice showed the same forward lines and defensive pairs they deployed in St. Louis. The only notable change was on special teams, where Bryan Rust replaced Rickard Rakell on their top power play unit.
Sullivan gave a thoughtful explanation of why he has resisted major changes.
“We’re still young in the season. We’ve had mixed results. There’s been a lot of hockey that we’ve liked. There’s been some that we haven’t,” Sullivan said. “So consistency is really the operative word that we’ve got to start to establish in our game. And I’m not sure that a line switch is the answer to that.”
Through five games, Sullivan is pleased with the play of his top six, and he said he liked what Radim Zohorna brought to the third line in his season debut.
He did make a switch on defense Saturday, sitting Pierre-Olivier Joseph and giving Ryan Shea a chance to make his NHL debut. Based on Monday’s practice, it looks like that will hold Tuesday when the Penguins host the Dallas Stars.
But after going through his usual post-game process of chatting with his coaching staff, sifting through the data and watching film, Sullivan felt further changes were unnecessary. He added that “a coach’s instinct” also comes into play.
“If we just throw the lines in the blender every time we have struggles, then we’re going to have an awful lot of line combinations. We’re not going to allow our guys to play through anything,” he said. “So I do think patience is an important aspect of coaching and … giving players an opportunity to figure it out.”
They will have to figure it out during a difficult homestand. Dallas and Colorado are Western powerhouses. Then Ottawa and Anaheim will arrive in town.
“Obviously, really high-end teams,” Jake Guentzel said. “So we’ve got to be at our best, and hopefully we’ll have a bounce-back game [against the Stars].”
