Special teams failures big reason why Penguins haven’t closed out Rangers

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan believes his team has been “really good” at 5-on-5 during its first-round series against the New York Rangers.

So why did the Penguins miss two chances to close out the series heading into Sunday’s Game 7?

“I am probably stating the obvious,” Sullivan said, “but special teams is the difference.

“We’ve got to be better on the power play; we’ve got to be better on the penalty kill.”

The Penguins weren’t good enough at either during Friday’s 5-3 loss in Game 6. And they haven’t been all that good at either during the entirety of the series.

Statistically, the Penguins’ have the third-worst penalty kill among the 16 teams in the playoffs at 66.7%. While their power play is in the middle of the pack (eighth among playoff teams at 22.2%), that doesn’t tell the whole story:

• The Penguins have allowed two short-handed goals in the series. No team has allowed more this postseason.

• Two of the Penguins’ four power-play goals in the series were by the second unit. Those still count, of course, but it also helps underscore how much the top power-play group has failed to get the job done. It has just one 5-on-4 goal in six games.

• The Penguins power play squandered 3 minutes, 7 seconds of 5-on-3 time the past two games.

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The myriad failures on the power play and penalty kill add up to a series that’s even in games won despite the Penguins holding a five-goal edge in 5-on-5 play and significant advantages in puck-possession metrics and zone time.

“We’ve got to go back and look over what we can do better (on special teams) on both sides of the puck,” forward Brock McGinn said. “Definitely when you get a kill, you can build momentum, and then if you score on the power play, same thing. So I think we’ve just got to go out there and execute and go into the rink (Saturday) and figure out what we can do better and go out and try to win a game.”

The Penguins’ special teams in the Game 6 loss featured two Rangers’ power-play goals in three opportunities as well as 1:07 of futile 5-on-3 time by the Penguins as part of an 0-for-3 effort on their power play.

Game 5 also featured an 0-for-3 by the Penguins power play in addition to the winning goal coming during a New York power play early in the third period. The Penguins additionally failed to score during a full two minutes of 5-on-3 time early in the first period.

Suffice to say, the Penguins have good reason to believe that if they would have just gotten an extra kill here or a 5-on-3 conversion there, they’d already be resting up and preparing for the second round.

As it stands now, there is only regret that special teams join injuries as the biggest reasons why the Penguins have put their season in peril by going on the road to play a Game 7.

“We have been really good 5-on-5 (in the series),” Sullivan said. “I think our team has played a lot of really good hockey. We are competing hard out there, and I think we’ve played a lot of really good hockey.

“The special teams, we know we are capable of being better, and we’ve got to find a way to do that. And I know that the solutions are inside our dressing room. As a coaching staff, we are going to go to work. We are going to try to help them and share some insights and see what we can learn from (Game 6), but certainly we’ve got to be better on both (the power play and penalty kill), and I know we are capable of that.”

Keep up with the Pittsburgh Penguins all season long.