Slipping Away
Is a season loaded with promise turning sour for the Pens?
By Bob Grove

Watching the Penguins slog through the opening month of the season, I was reminded of some 33-year-old lines from Roger Waters and David Gilmour that summarized October, 2005:

And then one day you find/10 games have got behind you/no one told you when to run/you missed the starting gun…

OK, it's "10 years," but otherwise we can adapt Pink Floyd very well for purposes of analyzing Pittsburgh's shocking start to the 2005-06 season. By failing to win any of their first nine games the worst start in the history of the 38-year-old franchise the Penguins have jeopardized what back at training camp seemed like an excellent chance of returning to the playoffs for the first time in four seasons.

They finally stopped the bleeding with a home victory in their 10th game, before which they had the fewest points in the league precisely where they were when the 2003-04 season ended.

The beauty of the NHL schedule is that more than 70 games remained to be played, affording the Penguins the opportunity to find solutions for an array of early-season problems. It helps that they gained a point in five of those early losses, but the reality is that their margin for error the rest of the way has been compromised. Major injuries, bad breaks or mid-winter slumps that might otherwise have slowed them might now doom them.

How did this happen?

It's human nature to try and isolate one cause for a bad outcome, but that's too simplistic in many cases, this one included. October left questions of personnel, work ethic, hockey sense and confidence, to name a few. Answering those questions is not a job just for general manager Craig Patrick, coach Ed Olczyk or any one player; it's a job for all of them collectively.

The first and easiest choice of culprits would be Olczyk, but he's not to blame. He assumed responsibility in comments to the press, which is laudable and a common approach for coaches seeking to keep critics off the backs of their players. The reality for any professional coach is that he may, at any time, pay with his job for the truth spelled out in the standings, but recent public support from both Patrick and owner Mario Lemieux suggests Olczyk's status is not about to change.

Olczyk twisted and turned his 23-man roster about as many ways as possible last month, scratching players, reducing their ice time and shaking up his forward lines and defensive pairings in an effort to produce a victory. Only New Jersey, Tampa Bay and Boston could beat the Penguins in 60 minutes, but for the most part all that maneuvering didn't work.

The blame properly belonged in the dressing room.

The goaltending, usually the most critical part of every successful team, simply wasn't good enough on most nights. Sebastien Caron and Marc-Andre Fleury (before he was reassigned to the AHL) each submitted one spectacular road performance, but Caron also had one shaky start and has yet to display the consistency he'll need to become a No. 1 someday.

Veteran Jocelyn Thibault, injured in the opening week, proved a major disappointment. His failure to control rebounds and to stop shots at critical early and late junctures did not play to the strength of a team that was built to score, not to win 3-2. The reality of the Penguins' playoff hopes is that they are based on consistently good goaltending. Fail to get that and all other issues are moot.

The defensive corps was rife with inconsistency, prone to unforced turnovers, rarely seemed to gain loose pucks and failed to win one-on-one battles that make it possible to clear the zone. Not one of the eight defensemen on the 23-man roster was impressive, and Sergei Gonchar's struggles to stay out of the penalty box and to produce offensively were troubling.

Most of the Pittsburgh forwards had not displayed a consistent effort to prevent goals, either. In today's NHL it requires skating, and few of them seemed committed to doing it. Instead of bursting back to the defensive zone, too many of them hung out in the neutral zone waiting for home run passes that never came. Olczyk wants his team to play a puck possession game, but that can't be done until you get the puck, which takes hard work and smart decisions.

The lack of discipline the Penguins displayed was, at times, shocking. In a game at Boston, Pittsburgh gave the Bruins eight power-play chances and four power-play goals in the second period alone. They started poorly, scoring the first goal just once in the first 11 games. They played in flashes and never put together 60 strong minutes, and their confidence was reeling before they rallied from a 4-0 deficit to beat Atlanta Oct. 27 for that first victory.

The bright spot in all this was the play of rookie Sidney Crosby, who had points in nine of the first 10 games and was proving to be everything anyone could have expected. But he can't get the Penguins to the playoffs alone. It's going to take better play from every guy on the roster for the next five and a half months.

PSR Senior Writer Bob Grove has been covering the Penguins since 1981 and currently serves as a regular co-host on the Penguins Radio Network.