Behind The Net
On Thin Ice
By Bob Grove

When the 2008-09 National Hockey League schedule was released last July, the March of the Penguins promised to be significant. You couldn't help noticing that eight-game March homestand, the longest in team history, and figuring those eight games might be critical to Pittsburgh's push for a division title or home-ice playoff positioning.

July was a long time ago.

In more ways than one.

As it turns out, the Penguins might not reach that homestand, which begins March 14 and runs through April 1, with a realistic shot at a playoff spot. To get to that 19-day oasis, the Penguins have to finish a 13-game grind that includes 10 road games - not a promising scenario when they entered the final days of February with two victories in their last 12 games away from Mellon Arena.

How to explain the way in which the Penguins fell from Stanley Cup finalist to 10th place in the Eastern Conference, sending coach Michel Therrien packing along the way?

o   The Penguins aren't a difficult team to play against. Brooks Orpik and Matt Cooke are among the most frequent hitters in the league, and Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby battle along the boards quite well every night. But otherwise, Pittsburgh rarely takes a physical toll on opponents and doesn't win enough puck battles. That goes double in front of its own net.

o   The Penguins' special teams have been a major drag on their upward mobility. Although their penalty killing was improving a bit in late February, threatening to be average, the power play has underachieved in a big way for most of the season. While certainly missing the presence of Ryan Whitney for almost half the season and Sergei Gonchar for four and a half months, the power play's inability to be the deciding factor in many tight games - or a tone-setter early in games - has come back to haunt the Penguins.

o   The Penguins' goaltending has not been a consistently decisive factor. Marc-Andre Fleury raised the bar on his play with a brilliant post-season run last spring, but he didn't reach it as often as he hoped through the first five months of the season. This kind of inconsistency should have disappeared from his game by now. Dany Sabourin's fine early-season play faded and led to his trade, and Mathieu Garon hasn't played often enough to make a difference.

o   The Penguins' scoring balance remains a problem, as they are threatening to become just the second team in NHL history to miss the playoffs while boasting the league's top two scorers. Ruslan Fedotenko began to emerge in February as a potential every night linemate for Crosby, but Petr Sykora remains the only consistent threat from the wing among the team's top six forwards.

Should the Penguins survive the road-heavy portion of their schedule to reach their March homestand, they'll have to face four of the NHL's better teams in Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Calgary as well as a Florida team that has been among the league's most consistent since Thanksgiving. Like the rest of their season so far, it doesn't promise to be easy.