Head Injuries, Progress and Pessimism

I have had this terrible thought for about a month now -- we may not see Sidney Crosby even at the start of the 2011-2012 season.

That Crosby suffered setback from his January concussion(s) mid-way through the playoff series versus the Lightning cannot be a good thing. Head injuries are funny. Not funny ha ha or funny witty, but funny sad ... really, really sad. And also tricky. There's not a straight line of recovery, the way there often is with a knee injury or shoulder injury. Brains are complicated. Months had passed and yet, Sid still had a nasty bout of symptoms. And I wonder ... if three months were not enough for his head to get better, why do we think six months will make it better? Or eight months? There are no guarantees here.

Penguins Go Down Valiantly in Game 7

At various times through this playoff series, I was elated, anxious, irritated, amazed, disgusted, depressed, joyful, angry, delighted and even perplexed.

If the Penguins collective performance in Game 5 was adismal (abysmal + dismal), Game 7 was the opposite.

I was in awe.

Marc-Andre Fleury was magnificent. The penalty killers were just as good, finally shutting down the dynamic Tampa power play.

They generated rushes, they transitioned, they fought for every puck along the boards. They outhit the Lightning by a mile.

It was gutty and gritty and it reminded me of why I like this team so much.

But it wasn't enough.

The Lightning are loaded with goal scorers -- Steven Stamkos, Simon Gagne, Vincent Lecavalier, and, of course, Martin St. Louis. The Penguins were without their best goal-scorers and even though they managed to win more often than not in the regular season, that inability to score in bunches became a deep, life-sucking crevasse in the post-season.

With a full-compliment of skaters and scorers, offensively speaking, the Lightning were shooting with uzis. The Penguins could only counter with flintlock muskets. (Frankly, it should have been more like .38's, and if anybody's seen Kris Letang's shot, I'm sure he'd like it back. You can turn it in at the Lost & Found at Consol Energy Center. Just through the Trib Total Media Gate -- the one opposite the old barn.)

Imagine what Tampa Bay might have looked like without their leader (Martin St. Louis) and one of their best snipers (Steven Stamkos) on the ice? Think they would have been able to bounce back from 3-1?

Me neither.

The other issue with the Penguins and I think this is the real crux of the matter -- was a pronounced leadership void. The Penguins are all good soldiers. Perhaps there are none better than guys like Tyler Kennedy, Mike Rupp, Craig Adams and Max Talbot -- if I were in a foxhole, I'd want those guys with me, for a fact. But Sidney Crosby is the leader of this team, not just in points, not just in goals scored, not just in stick skills. He is their leader in the intangible ways. His heart, his drive, his bravura all power this team. And like good soldiers, they follow him. He doesn't wear that captain's "C" solely because he's a goal scorer. He wears it because he's their unquestioned leader.

Some guys disappeared for much of this series (yes, Letang and Jordan Staal, I am looking at you), but not last night. Game 7, it was all hands on deck and it looked to me like they tried their best, gave their best, most complete effort, ironically enough, in a loss.

Like good soldiers, the Penguins did everything they knew to do, but without General Omar Bradley out there wearing #87, it was a valiant effort in a losing cause.

I'm sad to see the season end, but I never thought they could seriously make a run at the Cup without Sid. Or Geno, for that matter. Some day, the sting of this loss will fade and we'll remember the many good things from this season, but not right now. Today is a good day to mourn.

[Image from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.]

Conspiracy Theory: Penguins Drop Game 5 in Historic Fashion

Tormented at the Consol Energy Center yesterday, I had just one thought. Okay, I had several thoughts, but one very disturbing one which was this -- the Penguins must hate Pittsburgh fans. They simply refuse to clinch a series on home ice, depriving the 18,000-plus on hand of witnessing in person the magnificence of the NHL playoff hand-shake line.

The atmosphere at the drop of the puck was electric, as loud as I've ever heard a sports facility. I don't mean all the electronic gagetry or the airhorn -- just the organic noise generated by the fans, no vuvuzelas or drums or thundersticks, just the din generated by the throats and feet and hands was ear-splitting.

The Pens got off to a good start, matching the intensity of the crowd for the first 10 minutes of the game, allowing the Bolts only one legitimate attempt on Fleury. Then it was all pissed away. It's hard to put a finger on where it went wrong, terribly, horribly wrong and there were so many problems, I could be here all day enumerating them, but here are a few ideas.

With about four minutes left in the first period, I was thinking that if the Penguins could keep the Lightning off the scoreboard and go into the first intermission 0-0, that would be a good thing. Why? Well because Marc-Andre Fleury can be a slow starter. And the team as a whole is not a great early game team. The earlier the game, the greater the chance you're going to see a stinker. I don't know if it's just the routine of night games or some other weirdness, but they're often better at night. And while it would certainly have been nice to have scored in the first period, I thought that holding the Lightning scoreless for a full period might dampen the Lightnings' spirits a bit, and allow the Penguins to just lean on them, wear them down, the way they did in the first game.

They couldn't close out the first period. In fact, it was so bad, that they let in two goals inside of the final three minutes (or thereabouts).

The first Lightning goal was scored by Simon Gagne, a long time pain in the balls to Penguins fans. They had kept him quiet so far in this series, pretty much limiting the Tampa offense to Marty St. Louis exclusively. With Gagne emboldened, the second goal that got behind Flower just 46 seconds later was scored by Steven Stamkos. My great fear was that if Stamkos got going, the whole team would rise up.

I really think that is what happened. Tampa's whole bench loves when Stamkos gets going; they all get a lift from it. It's like a shot of emotional Red Bull for Stamkos to score. And it turned out to be a portent of things to come later in the game. It snowballed from there. Eventually Dan Bylsma pulled Fleury, but Johnson wasn't really any better. The goal differential was the worst playoff differential in the history of the franchise. It was literally: The. Worst. Playoff. Game. Ever.

I don't know that the team can linger on this loss. In fact, I suspect they have to just toss this one out. When Fleury is bad, he is often epically bad. This was one of those days, for a fact. Of course, his usually stalwart defense didn't help him much. Nor did the wingers or anybody else, for that matter.

There are three things that they need to do on Monday:

1. Flower has to have a bounce-back. And I think he will. He often follows up his worst performances with stellar ones. I think we'll get the Game 4 Marc-Andre Fleury on Monday night, not the Game 2 version.

2. Penalty Kill. Through the first four games, the Pens had allowed four power play goals on 15 opportunities. That penalty kill percentage of 73% is nowhere near as good as the regular season killer percentage of 86%, but still, against a power play unit like Tampa's, it's not bad, all things considered. Yesterday, the Pens allowed goals on four of seven power plays. That's just unacceptable. They have to get the kill back down in the neighborhood of 75% effectiveness, if they want to advance to the second round. It's just that simple.

3. Power Play. The Penguins power play is so putrid, so miserable, that I wish hockey were like football and the Pens could just decline the penalty. They have scored one power play goal on 25, opportunities, a scoring percentage so low the folks at the Carnegie-Mellon are studying it to see if they can learn anything new about absolute zero. The biggest problem with this, of course, is that the Lightning have no fear of taking a penalty. The power play won't punish them for the occasional board or cross-check or slash, so why should they give a rat's ass if they get caught administering one? Heck, it just gives that offending player a chance to rest in the penalty box and come out refreshed after watching the Penguins muck about ineffectively for two minutes.

The power play has been a problem for most of the season, frankly, so this is not a new development. The Pens do not establish possession well. And when they do establish position, they don't get enough traffic in front of the net. I know it's radical, but I wonder if Bylsma shouldn't start Eric Tangradi in place of Chris Conner for this game? I like Conner a ton, but he hasn't done much this series. Also, he's small. Tangradi's a big body. He has shown a willingness to plant himself next to the net. I don't think it's an accident that the Penguins one and only power play goal of the entire series came when Tangradi shielded Dwayne Roloson, preventing him from getting a bead on Tyler Kennedy's shot. Just saying.

If this thing goes to seven games, I may have to get one of those medic alert monitor things, because I'm sure I'll stroke out before the end of the first period.

(Photos from the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review)

Playoff Preview: Penguins Versus Lightning

How will the series break down? What are the keys for the Penguins if they hope to advance to the second round? How can the Lightning derail this Pittsburgh team? Will I, personally, survive the heightened anxiety of the NHL playoffs?

1. Offense. Even though Steven Stamkos has slowed down considerably from his prolific first-half scoring, he still put 45 pucks in the back of the net (2nd in the NHL) and had 91 points (5th in the NHL). I expect Tampa will try to get him going early in the series, try to feed him opportunities early in the first game, but even if Stamkos doesn't score, the man I most fear is the diminutive Martin St. Louis. I love this guy. I love watching him play. I love how he skates through defenses to create opportunities. Appropriately enough for a guy who plays on the Lightning, the guy is electric. If this Tampa Bay team were playing any other team, I'd be rooting for them, based on my fondness for St. Louis. Which is why he and his 99 points (2nd in the league) and 68 assists (also 2nd) scare the beejesus out of me. He's the offensive engine that really drives the Lightning. Plus Vincent Lecavalier looks resurgent -- and that's quite a one-two-three offensive punch for the Bolts.

Sidney Crosby has been out for three and one-half months and he still leads Pittsburgh in goals (32) and points (66) and while the Penguins have done a noble job of manufacturing points, these are the playoffs and Chris Kunitz, Mark Letestu and Tyler Kennedy are going to be facing top defensive units -- goals are going to be even harder to come by. Even before Evgeni Malkin blew out his knee, Pittsburgh fans were disappointed in his production, but you cannot tell me that now, in the playoffs, you wouldn't kill to have an explosive scorer like Geno back on the ice? In their time together in Pittsburgh, Sid and Geno have combined to account for 30.7 percent of the team's playoff goals since 2007 -- nearly a third of their goals, fer cryin' out loud.
ADVANTAGE: LIGHTNING (huge advantage, editorially speaking)

2. Defense. This may be the Penguins best and most improved unit. Despite the marked paucity of defensive stats available, I decided to beat my head against a wall and try to crunch defensive numbers anyway. That's just how I roll. I used the top seven defensemen for each team -- for the Pens: Kris Letang, Brooks Orpik, Paul Martin, Zbynek Michalek, Ben Lovejoy, Matt Niskanen and Deryk Engelland -- for the Lightning: Victor Hedman, Mike Lundin, Pavel Kubina, Brett Clark, Mattias Ohlund, Randy Jones and Matt Smaby.

The Pittsburgh defensemen are a combined plus 40. Tampa's corresponding crew are a combined minus 7. That's just a shocking disparity. Shocking. Meanwhile, the Pens defensemen have scored 137 points and the Lightning 110. And, in another nice little stat, the Pens defensemen have netted five game winners, versus the Lightnings' two.

It's more than numbers, though. In the off-season, Ray Shero went out and got shot-blocking savants, Zbynek Michalek (146 blocks) and Paul Martin (129 blocks). Then, Coach Dan Bylsma installed a defense meant to protect the net-minder, but also to turn it around and head the other way -- Pittsburgh transitions from defense to offense as well as any team in the league, creating opportunities on the other end. And they are used to winning tight games, ranking third in the league in winning percentage in one-goal games. The playoffs are tight games more often than not.
ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS

3. Goaltending. It is true that to start the season, Marc-Andre Fleury had his head lodged up his fetching little behind and I don't think I will ever figure out just what was wrong with him in the fall as he absent-mindedly watched pucks whiz by from time to time. When Bylsma started Brent Johnson for a stretch until Fleury got some things figured out, there were the nay-sayers who worried that Flower's ego would be permanently damaged or, at the very least, that his relationship with Disco Dan would be forever ruined. Pah-tooey. I did not believe and still do not believe for one hot second that Fleury, a Stanley Cup winning goalie, is so fragile that a couple of benchings when he playing like ass will cause him to fall apart. He's tougher than that and it's ridiculous that anybody thinks that about him. I believe that he is the main reason they are in the playoffs and hosting this round.

On the other side, Dwayne Roloson is a cagey old net-minder, a steady presence in net that Tampa Bay was needing. He's been great for the Lightning and, like St. Louis, were he matched up against any other team, I'd be rooting for him. That said, he's not the kind of stopper that Fleury can be. He just doesn't have it in him.

The Penguins allow just 2.39 goals per game on average and the Lightning 2.85. Much of the burden of getting the Penguins through the first round is squarely on Flower's shoulders who is often magnificent, but I'd be foolish to ignore the fact that he does lay an occasional stinker (and when he does play a stinker of a game, it is bad stinky). Even given that, 'll take Fleury with all the pressure any day of the week.

ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS

4. Special Teams. The Lightning rank sixth in the league in power play efficiency, scoring 20.5 percent of the time they have the man advantage.

The Penguins rank first in penalty kill (even without Matt Cooke because of his idiocy), killing off the man advantage 86.1 percent of the time.

My friends, something has got to give.

I have to wonder if it might be the Pens penalty killing unit actually scoring a goal, particularly given that the Lightning have given up 16 short-handed goals, more than any other team in the league and we know how the Penguins love to get in transition on the kill unit.
ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS (ever so slight)

How is it all going to shake out?
This is a tight series. The Lightning can be explosive. Roloson can pitch an occasional shut out. It's always harder to score in the playoffs and the Pens are already offensively challenged. As good as Fleury and the defense are, there's no way they're going to be able to shut out St. Louis, Lacavalier, and Stamkos, not to mention Simon Gagne and a very motivated Ryan Malone.

Even so, there is something special about this Penguins team. They keep winning against all odds. If they want to continue to do so, they will have to manufacture goals from somewhere. With Staal, Kennedy, et al facing the toughest defensive pairings, they need a boost from their third and fourth line guys and their defensemen. Craig Adams and Mike Rupp, Michalek and Ben Lovejoy: come! on! down!

If you were a mad scientist and you went into a lab to create perfect fourth line guys, what you might come out with would be Adams and Rupp. They just do everything so well, all the little things. And no, they don't have the speed of Chris Conner, or the vision of Sid, or the hands of Malkin. This is why they are fourth line guys. But they are smart, they crash the net, and they lean on teams. In the last five games of the season, Rupp had three goals and an assist, while Adams had one goal and two assists. The defensive guys chipped in down the stretch too, with young Mr. Lovejoy contributing four assists and Michalek adding two goals and one assist.

The other place I would look for an offensive surge is none other than Max Talbot. Talbot has been a big game player in the past (I need not remind Pens fans of his two goals in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals versus the Red Wings). Could we be so lucky as to see a return of Super Max?