Reactions vary after latest loss
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New Jersey's Ilya Kovalchuk gets sandwiched between defenseman Brooks Orpik and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury Saturday. -
Devils goalie Martin Brodeur again proved too much for the Penguins. Brodeur, battling with Tyler Kennedy, had 41 saves in the New Jersey victory at Consol Energy Center.
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Some things, well, they simply can't be disputed.
Like that the Penguins, after a 3-1 defeat by New Jersey Saturday night at Consol Energy Center, have lost four consecutive games, their worst slump this season.
That they have lost the past three of those by the same score.
That they have tumbled from first place in the Eastern Conference a month ago to barely holding onto a place in the top eight in the conference now.
Other issues, though, are a matter of perspective, and there were some radically divergent ones expressed in the Penguins' locker room after the Devils game.
Defenseman Brooks Orpik, for example, effectively called out some of his teammates for not having the mental toughness required to overcome adversity at this level.
"We give up a couple of goals, and everybody's attitude [stinks] afterward," Orpik said. "You can see on the ice, our energy starts out great, then they score a couple of goals and instead of getting [angry] and battling back, we just come out flatter and kind of feel sorry for ourselves, hang our heads.
"We start taking stupid, lazy penalties and start getting off our game plan and doing whatever we want."
The antidote for such self-destructive behavior, he said, is that "there has to be better accountability," which "has to come from the guys in the room, putting pressure on each other."
Center Evgeni Malkin, who scored the Penguins' only goal, did not seem to be nearly as distressed as Orpik about how things have unraveled for his team lately.
"We're not doing anything bad," Malkin said. "We'll keep our heads up. The next game, we'll play the same and we can win."
The chances of that will be greatly enhanced if the Penguins manage to enlarge their collective shooting percentage to a point where it is visible to the naked eye.
Just 24 hours after launching 38 shots at New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, they threw 42 at Martin Brodeur of the Devils. That's a total of 80 shots, only two of which made it into the net.
Coach Dan Bylsma suggested the Penguins are generating a satisfactory number of scoring chances -- "A lot of the opportunities to score goals have to be created just the way we are creating them," he said -- but Orpik noted that shots-in-goal, not shots-on-goal, is the statistic that counts.
"It doesn't matter if we get two shots or 50 shots, because we're only scoring one goal a game," he said. "You can get 50 shots from the outside, and it doesn't matter. One goal is not going to get you much."
First Published January 8, 2012 12:00 am
