Power Outage: Penguins Fizzle in 3-1 Loss to Lightning
With just under a minute remaining in last night’s flat-line loss at Tampa Bay, Jake Guentzel crossed the blue line with Sidney Crosby and dumped the puck behind the Lightning net. As Andrei Vasilevskiy went to play the puck Sid swooped in and picked his pocket before nudging the rubber to Guentzel. Jake dropped to knee and fired off a sharp-angle shot, then tumbled to the ice. The puck bounced off Bolts forward Nick Paul and past Vasilveskiy.
A play that was remarkable and unremarkable all the same, because it represented a black-and-gold rarity.
An ugly goal.
To digress, there are two ways to score in today’s NHL. Ugly and on the power play. Our guys do neither.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed. But our once-vaunted offense has dried up quicker than a puddle in Death Valley. In the 11 games since our 5-3 win over Columbus on November 14, a victory fueled by a Crosby hat trick, our Penguins have tallied a total of 23 goals…a smidge over two per game. Part of the reason we’re a thoroughly lackluster 3-5-3 during that span despite receiving stellar goaltending from Tristan Jarry and tandem-mate Alex Nedeljkovic.