Sully Says: "We Got to Stay With It"
By
Michelle Crechiolo
Penguins Team Reporter
But Pittsburgh couldn't find a way to beat the Devils, who skated out to a 5-1 victory. The only other time the Devils posted an undefeated record against Pittsburgh was in the 2009-10 season (6-0).
Florida's 2-1 win over Buffalo moved them past Pittsburgh in the standings. The Panthers are now in the first Wild Card spot with 87 points, ahead of the Islanders - who also have 87 points - since they have one more regulation victory. The Penguins are third with 86 points. All three teams have played 78 games.
This morning, the Penguins talked about how the Devils are a fast, skilled team that can generate a lot of chances offensively. Rickard Rakell said Pittsburgh would need to play a good defensive game, and win the special teams. They didn't get the job done in either of those areas tonight, particularly the latter category.
After the Devils opened the scoring with a tally from Dougie Hamilton that got deflected on its way into the net, Dawson Mercer buried a nice feed from Nico Hischier to give New Jersey a 2-0 lead. The Penguins had a chance to respond on a power play right after, but didn't convert.
Early in the second period, the Penguins gave the Devils a 5-on-3 power play, and their trade deadline acquisition Timo Meier converted. Mercer built on that with his second of the game late in the second period after Tristan Jarry had stopped a breakaway shortly before.
Mercer completed the hat trick in the third, while Bryan Rust got the Penguins on the board to negate the shutout for Vitek Vanecek. Here's what Mike Sullivan had to say after the game.
I know the Devils a really good team in transition, but you must be very unhappy with the amount of odd-man rushes you gave up tonight. What was the biggest problem in that regard?
It just boils down to details, you know? You got to make better decisions. In some of those circumstances, we didn't.
What's the danger of a game like this carrying over for your final games and really kind of taking the spirit away?
I don't know that I think of it in those terms, you know? I'm not sure we have the luxury of thinking in those terms. We're looking at the game right in front of us. We're disappointed tonight we didn't get the result. We didn't play well enough. We got outplayed. All we can do isfigure out what we can take from it, and try to apply it to the next game, and that's what we'll try to do. But we're gonna have to stay in the fight here. We're still in it. And that's the way we got to look at it. We got to stay with it.
Does your power play have enough urgency?
I don't know if urgency is the right word. I think when our power play's at its best, there's movement, there's motion, there's a shot mentality, we're retrieving pucks. When we're not at our best, we tend to be stagnant, robotic. It's not from a lack of care or any of that nature. Sometimesmaybe to the fan, it may appear that way. But I can assure you that's not the case. We weren't at our best tonight on the power play, but we've got to find a way to be better. I think a lot of it just boils down to simplifying the game, trying to establish a shot, getting some motion. The puck's gotta move, people have to move. I think that in my experience of coaching these guys over the years, that's when they're at their best. I just thought we were a little stagnant tonight.
What do you make of how Tristan played? He just said a minute ago that's a tough team to play against because they make that extra pass, and that can really test a goalie.
Yeah, this team is a good team that we played. You guys know that they're dangerous within transition, they've got some dynamic young players that are emerging stars in the league. They're a talented group. They generate a lot of offense. Their analytics numbers are tops in the league with respect to offense off the rush within transition. We knew that going in. So, I thought Tristan played extremely well. He made a lot of good saves for us to hold us in there. Wecouldn't seem to score in that first half of the game to give us some life. I think if we could have found a way to just get the first goal while we had it in striking distance, I think it could have helped our energy level. But we just couldn't seem to get that first goal. It took us too long to get it. But we've got to find a way to fight through that.
In a game like tonight, when there's so many odd-man rushes and you guys find yourselves down pretty early in the game - and then there's more and more odd-man rushes throughout the game - is that just a product of trying to overcompensate in the offensive zone? Or is that just not doing a good enough job of kind of toeing the line of calculated pressure?
I think it's more a case of just pressing to try to get back in the game. So, we're making more high-risk decisions trying to try to score and create offense. When you're down that amount of goals, I think it's human nature to press in that regard. That's not the solution to getting back in the game, but I think it's human nature to press. We gave up a significant amount of them there in the third period, on the power play in particular, trying to keep pucks alive. In those types of decisions, where we give them the odd man rushes like that, is not a proven way to get back in the game. But I think that was more the case.
