1st showing of Penguins new-look power play gets bad reviews

The Pittsburgh Penguins were thumped in their season opener Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena, falling 6-0 to the New York Rangers in a game largely devoid of any offensive success.

The loss offered an initial look at the club’s power play, now overseen by first-year assistant David Quinn.

By game’s end, the Penguins’ man-advantage, which went 0 for 4 with three shots on goal, was just about as unimpressive as the final score.

“I think it was an extension of our overall game,” said coach Mike Sullivan. “I think the power play’s done a lot of really good things throughout training camp. I don’t think (Wednesday) was representative of how they’ve done to this point tonight.

“Some of the power plays late in the game, for me, (were) just symptomatic of our overall game at that point. I just think it unraveled on us.”

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Rickard Rakell, Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson comprised the first power-play unit.

Michael Bunting, Kevin Hayes, Jesse Puljujarvi, Lars Eller and Matt Grzelcyk made up the second unit.

Last year, the Penguins finished tied for the NHL lead in shorthanded goals allowed with 12.

One game into the season, they’ve taken an early step towards claiming that unfortunate distinction for the second straight year, as with 8 minutes, 25 seconds to play in the third period, New York’s Chris Kreider beat Tristan Jarry with a backhand for the game’s fifth goal.

The Penguins were about 45 seconds into their fourth and final man-advantage of the evening when Malkin fired a pass cross-ice at the offensive blue line with no teammate there to receive it.

After the puck crossed into the neutral zone, Kreider and Letang raced over, with both players trying to get a stick on it.

The result was a fortuitous bounce in favor of Kreider, who collected the puck in the Penguins’ zone, maneuvered past Letang and buried a clean look through Jarry.

“Kreider and Mika (Zibanejad) are (some) of the better penalty killers in the league and one of their weapons is that they do score a lot of shorthanded goals,” Karlsson said. “They’re good at reading plays and they capitalize on things like that. That’s exactly what they did. It’s unfortunate.”

In a game where a power-play score would have done wonders in manufacturing some much-needed momentum, the Penguins came up empty.

Making matters even worse was the self-inflicted wound of Kreider’s shorthanded tally.

“Not great. They score (a) goal short-handed,” Malkin said postgame. “We need (to) play the same, stay the same way as practice. Move (the) puck quickly, one-touch. We know they play hard, every corner, behind the net, blue line. They have great forwards.

“We watched video before the game. We know how they play, but we need to play better, for sure. We’ll have a couple power-play (chances). If we score one, maybe we’re back. The power play, it’s huge. We need to forget this game, for sure, and go tomorrow.”

The Penguins have a quick turnaround, as they immediately departed Pittsburgh for Detroit, where they’ll play the Red Wings on Thursday evening.

From the power play to the end result, things went about as badly as possible in the Penguins’ opener.

In a number of regards, a chance to get on track is right around the corner.

“I think we did some good things (Wednesday),” Karlsson said. “It was the first game fully together. We’re going to get in some situations we’re not comfortable with or familiar with just yet and we just have to make sure we adjust for it the second time around. Again, I think we made some good decisions.

“We just didn’t connect on the passes and (the puck) didn’t really bounce our way. That’s the way it’s going to be sometimes. I thought we stayed with it and didn’t get frustrated. I think we’re excited for a new chance (Thursday) already.”