Post-Game Talk: Cole's Plus Minus: Pens vs. Preds - Face to face with the demons and the demons win again

[ownal]

You brought up .950, not me. I set ~.930 as a place where Muzz needs to about be. It’s hard but true.

I’m not saying we don’t need depth scoring.

If we score 1 goal- that’s on the offense. Allowing 1 goal- that’s a good defensive performance.

So #1 in the league in SV%? He will finish around .925 if he keeps up the good work. The only issue now is the power play.

 

[Icarium]

I didn't say you blamed him entirely, my point the team is creating tons of chances and the forwards can't bury them. Blaming Schultz or any other D for that seems extremely weird to me.

 

[cassius]

The standards for Murray are so laughable compared to Fleury

Murray wins 2 cups in his first 2 years....

Fleury choked year after year and managed 1 cup win during his entire tenure here. There were years where his play alone doomed the entire post-season run.. multiple times.

Yet somehow - Murray gets criticized around here? It's illogical and doesn't make sense.

If you expect your goalie to win the cup every year, and have 100% SV percentage - it may be time to kind of reset your expectations

 

[CheckingLineCenter]

So #1 in the league in SV%? He will finish around .925 if he keeps up the good work. The only issue now is the power play.

Im saying he needs to be there in the playoffs for the Pens to win a Cup. That’s pretty much par for the course for Cup winning goalies, Quick aside.

 

[Peat]

You brought up .950, not me. I set ~.930 as a place where Muzz needs to about be. It’s hard but true.

I’m not saying we don’t need depth scoring.

If we score 1 goal- that’s on the offense. Allowing 1 goal- that’s a good defensive performance.

You seem to be implying that the blue line is exempt from criticism on the former and if that is the case, I cannot disagree enough. Scoring and preventing goals comes from team performance and all five individuals on the ice doing the right things. If the team is not scoring, that rests on every single skater. The dmen may not carry as much responsibility as the forwards, but they still have a huge role and if things are going wrong scoring goals their execution of it must be inspected. I think right now they're doing an awful job of it.

And as such, I see no other logical conclusion to a statement that the current level of the blue line's play is fine other than the current level of scoring is fine.

And I said .950 from the beginning because, if this current level of scoring and defensive play is fine, then that is the goaltending percentage he's having to post just to get the team to overtime. Not even to win the game properly - but to overtime. If .930 is the level you want from him with this level of scoring and defensive play, they're going golfing pretty early.

 

[Dipsy Doodle]

He came back really strong, but he has been really struggling offensively in the last 10 or so games. He's a prime suspect for why the team has started to struggle with scoring recently, he's right up there with Kessel and Hornqvist in that. For being an OFD, his production after his hot start has been unacceptable, especially when you consider Letang was out for a lot of the games he was struggling offensively.

I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Even during cold streaks, I'll still take his puck moving ability over every defenseman on the team outside of Letang.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I didn't say you blamed him entirely, my point the team is creating tons of chances and the forwards can't bury them. Blaming Schultz or any other D for that seems extremely weird to me.

Generating chances doesn't win you games. Scoring goals wins you games. This was my first post in the PGT:

-Any player who is supposed to be a ln offensive contributor.

I'm tired of this BS. Requiring your goalie to get a shutout every game to not go to OT or a SO is ridiculous. I don't care how many chances guys like Bjugstad or Simon create. I don't care how nice of a scouting report guys like Schultz have. I don't care how many points Kessel has on the year. Their play right now is unacceptable because they're not putting the puck in the net.

I'm tired of seeing this team just generating chances while not being able to produce. You don't win games by just generating chances, you need to put the puck in the back of the net. You can apply this standard to a ton of this team right now, I think only Letang, Crosby, Guentzel, Rust, Bjugstad (realized he has like 4 ES goals in the last 10 games after I made that post, so he doesn't apply to that group) and McCann don't have this applied to them.

I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Even during cold streaks, I'll still take his puck moving ability over every defenseman on the team outside of Letang.

I agree, but you can still criticize him and say he needs to be more productive. Some people just refuse to do that it seems like.

 

[CheckingLineCenter]

You seem to be implying that the blue line is exempt from criticism on the former and if that is the case, I cannot disagree enough.

In that post I am talking about team “defense” as a concept, not the position group. It was very good yet again last night.

Team “offense” was the culprit of why they did not win in regulation. A lot of that can be chalked up to Rinne imo; they got to the middle of the ice and held a territorial advantage.

While I’m not happy about a late lead blown, they played well enough to take 2 points and win.

Edit: but to clarify, earlier I was defending the play of the blueline lately.

 

[Old Gregg]

The standards for Murray are so laughable compared to Fleury

Murray wins 2 cups in his first 2 years....

Fleury choked year after year and managed 1 cup win during his entire tenure here. There were years where his play alone doomed the entire post-season run.. multiple times.

Yet somehow - Murray gets criticized around here? It's illogical and doesn't make sense.

If you expect your goalie to win the cup every year, and have 100% SV percentage - it may be time to kind of reset your expectations

So we are not allowed to say that Murray let in a bad goal last night even tho he played amazing the rest of the night?

 

[Peat]

In that post I am talking about team “defense” as a concept, not the position group. It was very good yet again last night.

Team “offense” was the culprit of why they did not win in regulation. A lot of that can be chalked up to Rinne imo; they got to the middle of the ice and held a territorial advantage.

While I’m not happy about a late lead blown, they played well enough to take 2 points and win.

Edit: but to clarify, earlier I was defending the play of the blueline lately.

Gotcha.

I still have to disagree I think. I don't think we'd be bigging Murray up so much if team defence was doing a very good job; he's got too much to do for that, even if I do think they're doing a good job of boxing out and taking away secondary opportunities.

Does that same performance from the skaters win the next game? I dunno. We might have had the better chances going by the stats, but it felt like a pretty even goaltender duel in terms of what each had to face.



That said, to be positive - I think the resilience of this team at the moment is a big positive. Things keep going wrong but they can keep getting fixed. It'd have been easy to melt down under the threat of another late loss but they didn't. We'll see how it looks down the line, but I think we might look back at this as a turning point where the demons were exorcised.

 

[CheckingLineCenter]

Does that same performance from the skaters win the next game? I dunno. We might have had the better chances going by the stats, but it felt like a pretty even goaltender duel in terms of what each had to face.

If they can play like that every night— I think they’ve got a good of chance as any to win 4 out of 7.

 

[SouthGeorge]

The standards for Murray are so laughable compared to Fleury

Murray wins 2 cups in his first 2 years....

Fleury choked year after year and managed 1 cup win during his entire tenure here. There were years where his play alone doomed the entire post-season run.. multiple times.

Yet somehow - Murray gets criticized around here? It's illogical and doesn't make sense.

If you expect your goalie to win the cup every year, and have 100% SV percentage - it may be time to kind of reset your expectations

Agreed. Pens fans are weird compared to the Steelers. Steelers it's organization >>> players. Pens it's players >>> organization. These fans fall in love with these players and can't take their blinders off. Been doing it for years for another player currently on the roster.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I don't think it's fair to criticize any players defensively, outside of specific plays where players made mistakes (like that Crosby performance a couple of games ago). The team is definitely playing well defensively right now, and there isn't anyone off the top of my head that I'd criticize for their defensive performances. The problems on this team are all offense right now. You can criticize the defensemen for problems with the offense, but I think they're doing a good job defensively. It's just really hard to score when multiple of your top offensive players are in slumps and 4 of your 6 defensemen either have no offensive talent (Johnson and Gudbranson) or poor offensive talent (Pettersson and Dumoulin). From that POV, all of Gudbranson, Schultz, Dumoulin, Johnson and Pettersson deserve criticism.

 

[Anita L]

look at the bright of all of this none of the Pens problems will be playing come playoff time.
21-7 against the top 15 teams =75% win %
19-17 against the bottom 15 teams=52& win %
I like our chances in a seven game series against anyone
don't have to worry about the annoying little flies
its time to play with the big dogs

 

[Icarium]

I'm tired of seeing this team just generating chances while not being able to produce. You don't win games by just generating chances, you need to put the puck in the back of the net. You can apply this standard to a ton of this team right now, I think only Letang, Crosby, Guentzel, Rust, Bjugstad (realized he has like 4 ES goals in the last 10 games after I made that post, so he doesn't apply to that group) and McCann don't have this applied to them.

I still don't see why how a defenceman who is not an all star can be among the among the top 3 culprits for the lack of scoring. It's not like Schultz is good for 15-20 ES goals per season and is underperforming massively in that respect of late. Kessel is the main culprit by a country mile, not only can he not score but his playmaking is nothing to write home about either these days. Line 3 reminds me a lot of the Hurricanes earlier in the season, at some point the dam has to break.

 

[BHD]

Closing this since the next game is tomorrow.