PITTSBURGH — If the Pittsburgh Penguins are to make sure the Tampa Bay Lightning don’t get loose on the lead in yet another playoff series, there is a logical place to start.
Though captain Sidney Crosby and, to a lesser extent, Russian star Evgeni Malkin have each played an important role in the Penguins getting to the Eastern Conference final, they’ve suddenly found an inopportune time to go silent.
Crosby is currently in his longest goal scoring slump of the season, which is saying something given the coolness with which it began. He hasn’t found the back of the net in eight games now, a stretch that includes the entire second-round series win over the Washington Capitals and Friday’s 3-1 loss to the Bolts in Game 1 of the best-of-seven conference final.
Malkin, meanwhile, has scored just one goal in his past seven games. The Penguins have been getting scoring from other sources (hello, Phil Kessel), but against a dangerous Tampa squad, it’s hard to fathom advancing without meaningful contributions from their two biggest stars.
“Obviously, when they score goals, it gives our team a better chance to win,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said on Saturday when asked about the missing output from Crosby and Malkin. “I don’t think that’s earth-shattering news.
“They always get the attention of our opponents’ top players and top checkers every series. It’s no different with this series. I think that’s part of the burden of being elite players in the league. These guys are accustomed to it. We just have to find a way to be successful through this process.”
Finding ways to do that will be a focus for Sullivan and his staff as they look to avoid falling into a 2-0 series hole and completely squander home-ice advantage. With two off days prior to Game 2 on Monday, neither the Penguins or Lightning practised on Saturday leaving Sullivan and Tampa counterpart, Jon Cooper plenty of time to digest the tape from Game 1.
On Friday, Sullivan’s team learned in a hurry what the Detroit Red Wings and New York Islanders did before them in this Stanley Cup tournament: the Bolts may have came into these playoffs under the radar, but are clearly a balanced, disciplined force to be reckoned with.
Including the victory in the opener here, Tampa is now on an impressive five-game winning streak and is a dominant 9-2 overall these playoffs.
They’ve done it with speed up front and offensive contributions from up and down the roster. But they’ve also done it with team defence that can tighten the screws in their own end. (“We’ve been battle tested in the ways we’ve tried to win games,” Cooper said on Saturday.)
Which brings us back to getting contributions from Crosby and Malkin, Sullivan tried to sound like he wasn’t overly concerned with the dry spell and for now there is no need to panic. Crosby did have a nifty assist on Patric Hornqvist’s goal on Friday, but coming as it did with his team trailing 3-0 at the time, it wasn’t a meaningful contribution.
“We believe it is and what we’ve tried to re-iterate to both Sid and Geno is that they have to continue on focusing on playing the game the right way and not trying to force plays that aren’t there to try to score goals,” Sullivan said. “The further you go along in the playoffs, it gets harder and harder to score goals. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t knee-jerk to those circumstances.”
If there is a concern, it is that the Penguins didn’t make the best of their opportunities while the Lightning did. Malkin had a game-high seven shots on net on Friday and Crosby had two. And in a five-minute power play after Ryan Callahan pasted Kris Letang into the end boards early in the first period, the Penguins got a first-hand look how tough the Bolts can check when need be.
“We didn’t execute as far as the chances we had,” Crosby said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t capitalize on enough of ours. We need to be better. Just understanding how they play (after one game), we have a better feel for that.”
Besides worrying about what Crosby and Malkin are able to produce, Sullivan is concerned about limiting the Lightning’s opportunities and reducing the quality of those chances. All three goals in Game 1 saw Tampa shooters take advantage of Grade A opportunities in front of them.
“I don’t think we gave up a significant amount of scoring chances, but the quality of those chances were very high,” Sullivan said. “I thought for the most part we controlled territory. Where we have to get better is the quality of chances that we gave up.”
And perhaps take better care of the quality chances 200 feet down the ice, as well.