TAMPA, Fla. — Neither effort nor engagement lacked for the Penguins Saturday night.
It was instead a lack of execution that doomed them.
Which, ultimately, led to the result they never got, one they needed at this point in the season.
The Penguins played one of their more spirited games in recent weeks, but they simply ran into a really good team, as the Tampa Bay Lightning looked like the high-powered machine that it is and won, 5-4, at Amalie Arena.
“It’s the way games are going to be this time of year,” captain Sidney Crosby said. “We have to find ways to be on the right side of it.”
The Lighting leads the NHL in goals and points and ranks near the top of the league in pretty much every meaningful statistical category. After the Penguins earned a 4-2 victory over Tampa Bay Jan. 30, the Lightning clearly was looking for revenge.
Tampa Bay got it by winning a game that had a playoff feel from the start, featuring post-whistle scrums, fights and a tremendous amount of intensity.
“They think they’re the top team in the league,” said Penguins left winger Garrett Wilson, who scored his first NHL goal. “We want to show that we can beat them. This was a tough game. They played hard. It would’ve been nice to scrounge a point.”
So many ingredients went into the game — one of the most entertaining of the year for the Penguins — but three miscues stand out above the rest. They contributed to the lack of execution that proved so costly.
The first was a Bryan Rust turnover that led to Tampa Bay’s first goal. Rust tried to find Crosby, but his pass was off the mark. Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman picked it off, and the result was a three-on-none the other way because Marcus Pettersson, the last man back, fell down.
At the offensive end, left winger Yanni Gourde and center Brayden Point went back and forth until Gourde finished at 15:02.
“The decision was great. Sid was open,” Rust explained. “The pass was [expletive] horrendous. That one’s on me.”
The second put the Penguins in a 3-1 hole midway through the second period — another short-handed goal allowed, their NHL-worst 12th.
The play started with a careless pass from Phil Kessel into the middle of the ice, which Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh quickly sent the other way.
Alex Killorn slid a pass to center Anthony Cirelli, who went to his backhand to beat Casey DeSmith at 7:42 of the second period.
The Penguins responded nicely, with Jared McCann and Rust combining to make it 3-3 after two periods, but if they don’t allow a short-handed goal there, the Penguins probably pick up at least a point.
Allowing so many short-handed goals has been frustrating for the Penguins, and it left Sullivan speechless afterward.
“No. Nothing,” Sullivan said when asked if there’s anything left to say about the power play, which is now 1 for 19 over the past eight games.
“We kept fighting throughout the course of the game. I give our players a lot of credit for that. I have nothing more to say about the power play.”
The final area where the execution lacked was in the third period, when the Penguins had just five shots.
Right winger Tyler Johnson made it 4-3 on his goal from the left circle — with the Penguins over-committing to center Ondrej Palat and Jack Johnson giving Johnson space while screening DeSmith.
Then when Coraopolis native J.T. Miller made it 5-3 at 14:03 of the third, sneaking a shot through while Pettersson battled with Cirelli in front.
Earlier in the period, Rust had a glorious chance on a two-on-one with Crosby, but his shot — while staring at an open net — sailed wide.
“[The puck] got flat,” Rust said. “Then once it hit my stick, I went to stop it, and it flipped up. I have to be aware of that.
“That’s a goal that … I do that drill in morning skate all the time. [Jake Guentzel] gives me that pass, and I probably score nine times out of 10. I have to put that in.”
In a vacuum, none of the aforementioned stuff is terrible. You chalk it up to playing a really good team, in their building and move on. The Penguins can’t do that.
They now have dropped four in a row and are 5-8-1 since their eight-game winning streak. They need points.
The Penguins (28-20-7) have just a one-point edge on the final playoff spot, and nearly half their games the rest of the way are against teams in playoff position.
“We know the situation,” Crosby said. “The fact that a few of the games we’ve been in, we haven’t found a way to win them. Close games like that are going to be pretty common all the way in here.
“We need to make sure that we’re finding a way to get those big plays. I think that’s probably more the frustrating part than anything.”
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: February 10, 2019, 3:08 a.m.
