Therrien's latest message comes in loud and clear
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The Penguins' power play has been disappointing because it features Sidney Crosby, pictured, and Evgeni Malkin, two of the NHL's top scorers.
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In an odd scene at Mellon Arena yesterday, Penguins coach Michel Therrien gathered the players around him at practice for a fairly lengthy lecture punctuated with hand motions and diagrams on the dry-erase board -- all while 8,100 local schoolchildren and chaperones on a field trip shrieked and cheered and did the wave.
The youthful spectators, representing 63 schools from grades one through eight in the Pittsburgh region that were invited by the hockey club to attend the practice, couldn't drown out Therrien's message, though.
• Game: Penguins vs. Devils, 7 p.m. today.
• Where: Prudential Center, Newark, N.J.
• TV: FSN Pittsburgh.
"I'm sure we all could hear him," winger Petr Sykora said.
In fact, the Penguins had heard the same points before -- more times than they cared for.
Going into their game tonight at New Jersey, the Penguins are focusing on shortfalls that have become recurring themes: lapses in defensive play that make it difficult to put other teams away and lack of production on the power play.
Both problems led to a 4-3 setback Monday against visiting Buffalo. The Penguins went 1 for 8 on the power play, including being shut down on two of their three five-on-three advantages. They also blew a two-goal lead when they had a hard time containing the Sabres, yielding several odd-man breaks.
"You're always going to see a lot of similar traits when you struggle on some points," center Sidney Crosby said. "It is frustrating because it's something we want to correct. In most cases, it's something that we focus on, but maybe we still don't find ways [to correct it].
"That doesn't mean we stop [working on it], and sometimes things don't come easy."
The Penguins' power play, with a 17.7 percent success rate, is in the middle of the pack among NHL teams but is among the worst on the road at 12.7 percent. It has been inconsistent and has fallen short of expectations considering that the top unit features the top two scorers in the league, Evgeni Malkin and Crosby.
Therrien cited a lack of interest from players assigned to stationing themselves in front of the net.
"I'm supposed to be in front," forward Jordan Staal volunteered. "I've got to do a good job of it. Obviously, I didn't do a good enough job of it [Monday] night. It's about fighting for position, screening the goalies so they can't see the puck."
At the other end, coming up short has been a collective effort among defensemen and forwards.
"Defensive-zone coverage has been pretty bad," Therrien said. "This is where we're losing games. We score three goals [against Buffalo]. That should be enough to win the hockey game. We don't have that mind-set now to get that commitment to play well defensively, and we give other teams a chance to get back in the game. We need to play a smarter game.
"We're losing pucks where we're not supposed to lose pucks. We don't chip the puck in or battle hard enough to get the puck out of our own end at the wall. We've got bad coverage in our own end. You put those things together, the recipe to lose is pretty good."
That the Penguins had an hour to work on their game came as something of a luxury given their schedule lately. They had not had a non-game-day workout in a week because they are in the middle of a stretch of seven games in 11 days. In addition, Therrien has canceled practice a couple days to preserve his team's energy for games.
"We're always at our best when we have quality practices, when we approach the game knowing what we're going to do," Therrien said. "But the games are demanding.
"It's almost damned if you do, damned if you don't."
With games tonight, tomorrow back home against the New York Islanders and another Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia, yesterday's workout was a rare chance to correct things.
"Practice, especially in the NHL, is overlooked a lot," Crosby said. "It's something that really allows your team to regroup a little bit sometimes. You focus on those little details that you apply without thinking once the game comes. Right now, our situation is we're not going to have a lot of practices, so we have to find ways, but when we do get [practices], we have to make the most of them."
And be prepared for an earful.
"When you lose a game like that, you know you're going to come the next day and hear about it, and you're going to hear about why you lost the game," Sykora said.
Even if they have to listen over the roar of a rare, large audience at practice, one whose youthful exuberance provided some balance to the task of tackling a couple nagging problems.
"It was fun. It was loud," Crosby said. "That's, hopefully, a bunch of Penguins fans when they get older."
First Published December 10, 2008 12:00 am
