What happened Saturday at the Pepsi Center was the Penguins’ season, in a nutshell: In a 5-3 loss to Colorado, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, two of the league’s showcase young players, put on a terrific show, setting each other up for goals against the Avalanche.
Yet working against the Avs’ Wojtek Wolski-centered top line — that still looks a bit jarring in print — the Penguins’ stars were on the ice for two Colorado goals.
Pittsburgh otherwise looked shaky, got bad goaltending from backup Dany Sabourin for the first two periods, lost for the seventh time in eight games, and at the end of the day was in 10th place in the Eastern Conference.
The Penguins dynasty waiting to happen . . . isn’t.
Or at least it’s on hold.
“The things that allow you to win don’t change, based on the month,” Crosby said in the somber visitors dressing room. “It’s the same things it took in October and November. It’s the same now. It’s finding a way, and we haven’t done that of late.”
Crosby added, “Sometimes you’re going to play well and you’re going to lose. It’s a competitive league, but you have to give yourself your best opportunity to win. The last 12 days, it’s been a bad period here, a bad period there. Tonight, they were pretty disciplined and we made mistakes five-on-five, and that hurt us. . . . It’s not going to take one guy, it’s going to take everybody. Everyone’s got to step up their game a bit, and if we all play solid, I like our chances.”
When Malkin and Crosby, the first- and third-leading scorers in the league going into Saturday’s games, are on the same line, the results can be electric, but with Jordan Staal centering the second line, it also highlights how the Penguins have lost some of their depth from last season.
“We want to make sure we’re doing our part when we’re put together,” Crosby said of his teaming with Malkin. “It’s a message to us that we have to produce as far as our line goes. We’re both naturally centermen, but when we’re put together, we want to try to make things happen, and that’s what we have to do.”
On Saturday, it wasn’t enough. And in a sport where a two-game losing streak can trigger panic, it’s possible the Penguins might make coach Michel Therrien the scapegoat or make a shake-things-up trade.
“It’s not easy when you’re losing,” Crosby said. “I don’t expect everyone to kind of have a smile on their face and be happy with the way we’re playing, because we shouldn’t be. But I don’t think anyone’s waiting for anything. We all trust each other.”
Unhappy returns.
In this sport, the starting lineup is a minor detail, so it’s a waste of emotion to get outraged over fan-voting selections for the starters at the Jan. 25 All-Star Game in Montreal.
That said, Washington coach Bruce Boudreau was justified to label “dumb” the omission from the Eastern Conference starting lineup of the Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin, the league’s No. 2 scorer, and an example that an NHL star can be flamboyant without being a complete jerk about it.
Ovechkin “should” have joined Crosby and Malkin in the East starting lineup, but the third forward selected was the Canadiens’ Alexei Kovalev as the host team was the beneficiary of some home cooking in the voting. Montreal also has goalie Carey Price, plus defensemen Andrei Markov and Mike Komisarek among the starters.
The bigger issue than the starting lineup is who makes and doesn’t make the rosters, which are filled out by the league’s hockey operations department in consultation with the general managers. Ovechkin was an automatic choice there, and it’s not as if this is Ken Griffey Jr. or Barry Bonds in their primes not getting on the field at the, ahem, genuflect, Midsummer Classic until the seventh inning.
It was just as “dumb” that neither Nick Lidstrom nor Pavel Datsyuk of Detroit was named to the Western Conference starting lineup. But both were added to the roster.
The league needs to dump the requirement that all 30 teams have a representative selected to the rosters, making it less likely that deserving players are left out. Colorado didn’t have a player in the game last year because Paul Stastny was chosen, then underwent an appendectomy 10 days before the game. This time around, the deserving choice was Milan Hejduk, and Ryan Smyth probably is near the top of the list of possible injury replacements, if any are needed.
Spotlight on …
Rick Nash, Blue Jackets winger
Nash, who had a goal and three assists in Columbus’ 6-1 rout of the Avalanche on Jan. 2, last week again was named to the Western Conference roster for the upcoming All-Star Game in Montreal.
He had a hat trick in the game last year at Atlanta, and the league’s top overall draft choice in 2002 will be back for another crack at the MVP award — which went to Carolina’s Eric Staal instead.
“I think it’s going to be crazy,” he said of the All-Star Game on a Thursday conference call. “Every All-Star Game I’ve been to has been crazy. Minnesota was my first one, and it was pretty nice. But going to a Canadian city where hockey is pretty much religion and life, it’s going to be unbelievable with all the celebrations, the (Canadiens’) hundred years, things like that. It’s going to be definitely a special weekend.”
First, he will have to recover from an injury, apparently a sprained right knee, suffered against Detroit on Tuesday. He didn’t play in a 3-0 win at Washington on Friday and wasn’t expected to be in the lineup for the Jackets’ Saturday home game against Minnesota.
“It’s just one of those things where you don’t want to come back for one game and then miss another week,” Nash said. “So we’re just going to take it a little slow and hopefully after the weekend, early next week, I’ll be back at it.”
Nash has 17 goals and 39 points for the Blue Jackets, who likely will be one of the teams in the hunt for the final Western Conference playoff spots — along with the Avalanche.
Terry Frei, The Denver Post
