Penguins successful elements disappear in defeat
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The Devils' Zach Parise, right, reacts after scoring a goal as Pascal Dupuis looks on Sunday in Newark, N.J.
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NEWARK, N.J. -- The Penguins won't have to conduct an in-depth evaluation to figure out what went wrong in this one.
Not when their No. 1 goalie -- the guy who has been so good, for so much of this season -- was out of the game in less than 23 minutes.
Not when the members of their No. 1 line -- the group that has terrorized the NHL for the past month -- generated just one point and had a combined plus-minus rating of minus-12.
Not when they spotted a three-goal lead to a team that had beaten them three times in a row, and seven times in the previous eight, on its home ice.
Not when they could only get two pucks past a goalie who had won six of his previous seven starts at home against them.
So no, there wasn't much mystery surrounding the Penguins' 5-2 loss Sunday to New Jersey at Prudential Center.
Not much good to take out of it, either.
"We'd just as soon pretend this one didn't happen," said defenseman Matt Niskanen, who scored their first goal. "Learn from it, but we weren't very good [Sunday]."
OK, perhaps there were a few positives.
Sort of.
The game is over.
The loss cost the Penguins only two points.
And their power play had a productive game, converting on two of its three opportunities.
Then again, a bad game might have gotten a lot worse with 2:21 left in the third period, when right winger Tyler Kennedy hobbled off the ice and directly to the dressing room after going hard into the boards with Devils winger Alexei Ponikarovsky.
Coach Dan Bylsma said later there was no word on the nature or severity of Kennedy's injury.
Still, for all that went wrong, the defeat was just the second in the past 11 games for the Penguins (30-19-4), so it would be folly to overstate its impact.
While it denied them a chance to hurdle Philadelphia and move into fourth place in the Eastern Conference and allowed the Devils to climb to within a point of them, with 29 games left in the regular season, the Penguins have ample time to nail down a satisfactory place in the standings.
First Published February 6, 2012 12:00 am
