OFFSEASON OF CHANGE LOOMS AFTER PENGUINS KNOCKED OUT BY ISLES

OFFSEASON OF CHANGE LOOMS AFTER PENGUINS KNOCKED OUT BY ISLES
The Penguins have been swept out of the playoffs in the first round again, and for the second time in the last three years, the culprit was the New York Islanders, who have been a villain for the Pens going all the way back to 1975.

The Islanders blasted befuddled Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry with three goals in the second period, then shut down the Penguins offense the rest of the way for a 5-3 win, and a 4-2 win in the series.

The Penguins led the game three times, 1-0 on a goal by Jeff Carter early in the first period, then 2-1 on a power play goal by Jake Guentzel later in the first, and finally 3-2 early in the second on a tip-in by Jason Zucker. But the Islanders scored three straight goals in the span of five minutes, by Brock Nelson, at 8:35, then by Ryan Pulock on a slap shot from the blue line 13 seconds later, and finally at 13:34 by Nelson again.

Jarry was already beleaguered because of poor play in the playoffs, and after allowing allowed five goals on only 24 shots, he will certainly be scrutinized in the offseason, as will some of the team’s veterans…even the core three of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang.

Coach Mike Sullivan says despite the loss, he is proud of his team.

The team’s front office, led by Ron Hextall and Brian Burke, will have to address the core group either this season or next. Malkin will be 35 when the new season begins, Crosby 34, and Letang 33. Malkin and Letang will be entering the final year of their contracts. Carter, who was acquired at the trade deadline and played perhaps the best hockey of all of the Penguins, will be 37 next New Year’s Day, and is also entering the final year of his contract.

NHL playoffs: Penguins look for answers after loss to Islanders; Golden Knights lose key challenge
Pittsburgh Penguins stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have won three Stanley Cups together.

But since their last championship in 2017, they have won one playoff round.

And the new management team of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke will have to figure out how to proceed after the Penguins unexpectedly won a division title but lost in the first round to the New York Islanders for the second time in three years, falling 5-3 in Game 6.

Crosby says he has heard the speculation about whether it's time to break up the core for years.

"I know the three of us, we want to win," he told reporters. "We’ll do whatever it takes to try to compete to do that every year."

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The Penguins had to deal with the abrupt resignation of GM Jim Rutherford and struggled early before turning it around. Hextall's acquisition of Jeff Carter at the trade deadline paid off as he got nine goals down the stretch and five in the playoffs.

"Up and down the lineup, it’s a team that can definitely compete for a Stanley Cup," said Carter, who has a year left on his deal. "The hunger is still in that room and that comes from the top guys."

The Barry Trotz-coached Islanders won the final three games, even without a goal in the series from regular-season points leader Mathew Barzal. They got a strong performance from goalie Ilya Sorokin after he returned to the net in Game 4.

"They play a very structured game, a very simple game and patient game, and when they get opportunities, they capitalize on them," Carter said of the Islanders.

Penguins goalie Tristan Jarry, meanwhile, made a bad pass in losing Game 5, then yielded five goals on 24 shots in the clincher. The Penguins had three one-goal leads in the game, only to see the Islanders tie and take a two-goal lead.

"I thought when the game was 2-1, we got a huge save and that gave us momentum and we came back and got to 2-2," Trotz said. "When it was 5-3, on the Malkin breakaway, we got a huge save and that settled us right down."

Said Crosby: "There’s zero doubt in my mind that the group we have is a really good group and we had a real good opportunity here, and that’s why it stings so much."

Crucial sequence in Wild victory
The Vegas Golden Knights' Chandler Stephenson appeared to tie the Minnesota Wild 1-1 in the third period, but on-ice officials waved it off, citing goaltender interference by Alex Tuch.

Coach Peter DeBoer challenged and lost, getting the explanation that Tuch didn't try to get out of the crease. That led to a delay of game penalty, and Minnesota's Kevin Fiala scored on the power play. Instead of a tie, the Golden Knights were down 2-0. The Wild won 3-0.

"Those (reviews) have gone our way before," DeBoer said. "We felt it was worth the challenge. Our PK's been excellent all year. That point of the game, we felt it was a close enough call that it was the right thing to do."

Game 7 will be Friday night in Las Vegas. Key scorer Max Pacioretty has yet to play in the postseason and shutdown defenseman Brayden McNabb sat out Game 6 because of COVID-19 protocol.

"This is why you work your ass off all season to have the record you have to host this game in your building," DeBoer said.

Lightning's Vasilevskiy shines
Florida Panthers rookie goalie Spencer Knight got a lot of attention after giving up a goal on his first shot then settling down to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1 in his playoff debut in Game 5.

He also let in the first shot he faced in Game 6. The difference Wednesday: Tampa Bay's Andrei Vasilevskiy, considered a front-runner for the Vezina Trophy, stopped all 29 shots he faced for a 4-0 series-clinching victory.

"They got a great young goalie over there and we have the best right now and he showed it tonight," Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said.

Thursday's playoff games
Montreal at Toronto, 7 p.m. ET, NBCSN. Maple Leafs lead 3-1.
Carolina at Nashville, 9:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN. Hurricanes lead 3-2.
This is not the time for Penguins to make major changes
Not all playoff losses are created equal.

Sure, the end result might be the same. It might leave you just as disappointed. But the path you take to get there can be very different. That path should — should! — be considered when you are picking up the pieces and trying to figure out what to do next. If you are not careful you can misread a situation or a result and do something that sets your team back and significantly hurts its chances the next season or beyond.

Sometimes you just get beat because you are not good enough or did not play well enough.

Maybe you had some injuries at the wrong time or just ran into the wrong team.

Or perhaps you played well enough to give yourself a chance to win and were simply done in by the ultimate X-Factor and great equalizer come playoff time — goaltending.

That brings us to the 2020-21 Pittsburgh Penguins, who for the third year in a row will not be advancing to the Second Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs after being eliminated by the New York Islanders in six games on Wednesday night.

[Related: Islanders advance to Second Round]
You will probably hear a lot of narratives in the coming days, weeks, and months as to why they lost. They were not big enough. They were not strong enough. The core players are too old. They did not have the commitment to defense that the Islanders have. They could not finish or score enough goals.

Just about all of them will be wrong.

The bottom line is this: They lost because two goalies did what goalies do come playoff time and significantly impacted the result of a series. In other words, they got goalie’d.

It will be easy to take that statement as an opportunity to pile on Tristan Jarry who had a completely miserable postseason experience. That experience was capped off by a brutal overtime gaffe in a pivotal Game 5, and a terrible Game 6 performance where he never gave his team a chance. He struggled. There is a strong argument to be made that the Penguins played well enough to win Games 1, 5, and 6 of the series, only to lose because they could not get a single save when they needed it.

But it was not just about Jarry struggling.

It was also just as much about the other goalie in the series, New York’s Ilya Sorokin, taking a big step toward the stardom the Islanders have been hoping for. He was sensational, and it seems likely that the net is his moving forward. The combination of him and Barry Trotz is going to make the Islanders a headache to deal with every year for the foreseeable future.

When one team’s goalie struggles, and the other team’s goalie plays at an exceptional level, there is not much else that is going to happen in a series that is going to change the result.

When you look at the numbers in this series the Penguins had a significant edge in most categories, including shot attempts, shots on goal, scoring chances, expected goals, and high-danger chances. Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said on Wednesday that outside of one game where they would have liked a better effort (almost certainly Game 4) they really liked their game every night in the series. And he is right to think that way, because there was nothing wrong with the way they played. They just didn’t get the result.

Now it is going to be up to the new management team of general manager Ron Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke to figure out why they didn’t get the result and take the appropriate action. And that is where things are going to get interesting.

They have no loyalty to anybody in the organization. They did not win championships with any of these players or coaches. It is a fresh start and a clean slate for them to operate without emotion. Do they think this is a team that needs broken up after another early exit? Or do they see an otherwise strong team that is still a contender that simply lost a goaltending battle in a best of seven series?

[NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs 2021 First Round schedule, TV info]
There already seems to be something brewing as Burke and Hextall seem to have a different vision for what the team should look like when compared to the head coach. Burke has repeatedly talked about getting bigger and having a team that “doesn’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” He has always wanted teams that play a certain style and have a certain build to them. That seems to run counter to the way Sullivan wants the Penguins to play, and he even made the comment after Game 6 that they didn’t lose the series because they were not big enough.

But if you conclude, rightfully, that this series was won and lost in the goal crease, why would you want want — or need — to make that sort of seismic shift with the roster? For starters, Crosby, Malkin, and Letang are all still high level players. Maybe not as dominant as they were five years ago, but still upper tier players. They are still the foundation