I'm the last one to defend our last five years of playoff failure, but the general consensus outside of HFBoards seems to be that Sully outcoached the shit out of the Rangers but were done in by horrid G play, no disrespect to Jars showing up on one leg for the last game. He earned a pass in '18, we were beat down, and gave the Cup winning Caps all they wanted for 6 games, so if we're being charitable, maybe Sully earns a 1-3 post-Cup PO record using creative accounting?
Rangers series was all the warts Sullivan refused to sort out. They reacted to every dumb thing the Rangers did and fell into their trap of retaliation penalties. It's the Penguins DNA to lose their cool like that and like typical fashion they did. Pettersson acted all shocked at the helmet thing and delayed going off and that killed us. Erod got crushed and instead of just realizing the situation he went and took a dumb penalty.
Geno had 3g and 3a in the 7 game series. He wasn't the issue at all. Sullivan let the team unravel and had no course correct planned to get back on track. Same thing happened vs the Capitals when Wilson destroyed ZAR and the team had Oleksiak try to respond and then the following season Crosby requested they get Reaves.
They had a 3-1 chokehold and then shit it all away. The Defensive coverage was shit and the Pens system was getting exploited in a series where Sullivan needed to adjust and find a way to stop it and he just never did. Felt the system would figure it out and it didn't.
Game 6, they jumped out to a 2-0 lead and then lost 5-3. The Pens have been blowing leads since then. It was one of the biggest issues the last two seasons as well. They'd get out to a lead and then blow it. These issues haven't been new. The coach has to adjust and fix it and Sullivan just trots out the same shit and flips one player with Sid and figured that'll do.
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