Penguins Couldn't Find Their Game Against Canadiens

This Penguins team overcame plenty of adverse situations throughout the course of the year. But on Friday, they ran into one that they couldn't overcome when the Penguins were eliminated from the Qualifying Round as Montreal won the best-of-five series with a 2-0 win in Game 4.

"It's a three out of five," Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. "Anything can happen. We did some good things. Did we do enough? No. Give them credit. They played really well."

The fifth-seeded Penguins knew that the 12th-seeded Canadiens - despite being 10 points out of a playoff spot with a 31-31-9 record when the NHL pressed pause and with less a one-percent chance to grab one - would be a big challenge for them.

Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said before the series started that they would have to be at their very best to beat Montreal, a team they had a lot of respect for.

"I meant that sincerely," Sullivan said. "These guys are all good players, they're NHL players. They've got a lot of young talent on the team that's starting to take a next step. They've got great leadership with some of their defensemen and they have an elite goaltender. We knew this was going to be a hard series. I don't think any of us thought otherwise."

And unfortunately, the Penguins didn't bring their very best. They did at times throughout the series, but not consistently enough to get the results. Meanwhile, the Canadiens got brilliant goaltending from Carey Price and for the most part, simply outplayed the Penguins.

"I thought guys prepared themselves well," defenseman Kris Letang said. "But when the puck dropped, we faced a well-balanced team with a great goaltender that played better than us. I think that's what happened."

Looking back on it, both Sullivan and Crosby agreed that the Penguins' strongest game was Game 1 despite losing in overtime, 3-2.

"Obviously to play as well as we did, to get as many chances as we did and to lose that one, that hurts," Crosby said. "But that happens in the playoffs."

The Penguins bounced back with a 3-1 win in Game 2, and seemed on track to take a series lead in Game 3 as they built another 3-1 lead early in the second period.

But instead of keeping their foot on the gas, they took it off, and ended up shooting themselves in said foot as a result as the Canadiens came back to win 4-3.

"We let them back in it and we give them hope," Crosby said. "We shut them down for the rest of that period, we're probably looking at a totally different situation. It doesn't take much. It's a short series. Things swung in their favor with them being able to come back in the game."

Today was anybody's game, for the most part. Tristan Jarry was terrific in his NHL debut, keeping the game scoreless until the final minutes of regulation with some key saves.

But the Canadiens capitalized on one mistake by the Penguins when they turned the puck over in their own zone to take a 1-0 lead with 4:11 left. They iced the win with an empty-netter with 31.8 seconds left.

"Both teams played pretty tight," Crosby said. "There were some chances on both sides. They got one late. Game 1 was when we got to our game the best, but you've got to get better as the series goes on."

It's hard for the Penguins pinpoint why they couldn't carry that resiliency they showed throughout the regular season into the postseason, but they did say that the long break between playing meaningful hockey - 145 days - might have played a factor.

"We did some pretty good things with the amount of injuries we had throughout the year," Crosby said. "This is the situation we were faced with. We would have loved a better outcome. But it's hard to tie it all in. It's like starting fresh. It's hard to draw off the season as a whole when there's a four-month break and you start all over again. I think the year as a whole, we did a lot of good things leading up to this. But this was a whole separate thing and we didn't play good enough to win."

Crosby said that personally, he would have liked to stay healthier and play a full season. He missed 28 games after undergoing surgery to repair a core muscle injury back in November.

"It's been a tough year and a half not playing a lot of hockey, with a long offseason and only playing 20 games and coming back for a short period and then having this," he said. "(It would have been) nice to get into a rhythm. It would've been great to play meaningful games right now. But it's a really hard one to evaluate. That's the honest truth as far as trying to break this all down. It's a tough one to evaluate overall."

Sullivan echoed that, saying that right now, they're dealing with the disappointment and the emotions of losing the series. At some point, they'll look at the experience, assess it and evaluate it.

But one thing he does believe is that this group - led by their veteran core of Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Letang - isn't done yet.

"I think these guys are still elite players," Sullivan said. "I believe in this core. They're such character guys. I still think there's elite play left in them. That's what I believe. At some point everybody's window closes, you could argue that with any team in the league. But I strongly believe that this group has a lot of elite hockey left."