No Crosby, No Malkin, No Cup

You can’t win if you can’t score. Not in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

There will be all kinds of attempts to analyze or rationalize the Penguins seven game loss to Tampa. Taken in a vacuum any and all might sound reasonable. Make no mistake however; the Penguins will be on the golf course this weekend for one reason and one reason only; their two marquee superstars were in the training room rather than on the ice.

The team put up a valiant fight without Sideny Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. They showed a depth of grit and resolve that for years was hidden from view by the brilliance of their superstars. They won the respect of most intelligent fans with their spectacular effort and refusal to quit. And they nearly beat a team with superior talent and fire power in the first round of the playoffs.

Nearly.

The Penguins are built like the great Chicago Bulls teams of the 1990s, two electric superstars surrounded by a terrific collection of role players. Take Jordan and Pippen away and those Bulls go from six championships to a CBA team. Take Crosby and Malkin away and you have the last three months.  That is why the Penguins became a two goal per game team without them in the line-up. And that is why a highly promising season was derailed after just one round of playoff hockey.

Before the series I stated the Penguins had to do four things to win. They had to SIGNIFICANTLY outwork Tampa, play shut down defense, forecheck the life out of them and get other worldly goaltending from Marc-Andre Fleury. I also made it clear that they could do all those things and still lose. The lack of scoring punch left the Pens with zero margin for error.

Kudos to Dwayne Roloson for a solid performance and a few key saves but he stole neither game 7 nor the series as a whole. The Penguins fired a ton of shots at him few of which were of serious threat.

Game 7 was a microcosm of the entire series, and we the blue prints for it in early February. The Pens lost 1 to 0 to Washington in spite of what was arguably their best effort of the season. For my money, they dominated every aspect of play and lost for one reason, they could not score. It was that night that I came to grips with the reality of their limitations.

Game four was also a microcosm. Believe it or not, it was during that inspirational double overtime victory that I concluded the Pens were in trouble. They outplayed and outworked the Lightning by a large margin but needed 85 minutes and 53 shots to produce three grinder style goals. And with all due respect to the horrifically snake bitten James Neal, the overtime winner was a flub by Roloson.

The game four formula, plus the NHL’s gift of shootouts and points for overtime losses sustained the Penguins for the last three months of the regular season. That formula got them their three games to one lead. And frankly that formula is not sustainable. Once the Lightning realized they had only to approximate the Penguins work rate to win, the series was effectively over.

To be clear, I am neither a prophet nor a genius. I’m just an NHL history major. I watched the Lemieux/Jagr Penguins of the 90s win series exactly like this, just on the opposite end of the script. The Penguins dominated Boston and Washington in the early 90s in spite of often being outworked and outplayed. For all their hard work and grit, the Craps and Bruins of that era could not match the Pens’ superior firepower.

Go back and watch the 1992 series against Washington and you will see a virtually identical script with the Pens in Tampa’s role. The Craps outworked and outplayed the Pens for four games. With their season on the line, the Pens star players woke up, matched Washington’s effort and won the last three games. I never forgot that as I was watching Tampa’s comeback.

So when the Pens were blown off the ice in game 5, this result became sadly inevitable to me.

The loss of Crosby and Malkin is devastating for an obvious reason; you lose two game changing superstars. It also hurts for a more subtle reason; it forces everyone else to play above their normal role.

It’s one thing to ask a player or two to raise their level. Max Talbot did that in 2009 while playing wing for Geno. Without the two headed monster, the 2011 Pens asked the entire roster to work at or beyond the limits of their abilities. That’s a tall order, especially in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

That does not excuse the Penguins pathetic power play effort but it makes it easier to understand. The power play was not very good with Sid and Geno. It was lost without them. Is it fair to say that with 87 and 71 in the line-up they might have gone 4 for 34? Even production that poor likely would have had the Pens packing for Washington.

That also helps explain Jordan Staal’s lack of offensive production. Staal is a second line center at best. When he becomes the number one, opponents focus their top defense players on him. What separates players like Crosby is their ability to produce under such duress and we’ve still seen Detroit and Montreal shut him down. Staal is not and never will be Crosby. Keep in mind that Staal also had to pick up more penalty killing slack due to the loss of Matt Cooke.

The top four defensemen were extended beyond any reasonable measure. Between the four of them they played over 145 minutes in game four. That’s tough enough as it is but even worse when you can’t afford to allow more than two goals per game. It amazes me that some Penguin fans worshipped Rob Scuderri when Ovechkin torched him for 13 points; but ripped Letang and Martin for a superior effort.

Marc-Andre Fleury had to be virtually perfect. You could argue that Fleury was off in games 2 and 6 but remember that he was instrumental in all three victories, stole game one, and was brilliant in game 7. And the Pens as a team had little in the tank for games 2 and 5. In the end, if your only chance to win is for you goaltender to be perfect, you have no chance. Ask Henrik Lundqvist.

And for all the grit and hard work we saw, the reality is this; you can not RELY on Aaron Asham, Tyler Kennedy, and Talbot for offense. Championship teams win when these players fill valuable supporting roles and provide supplemental scoring; not when they are the key to success. You also can not rely on a wing and a prayer that Alexie Kovalev will discover the fountain of youth. The Penguins found out what we guessed and what Ottawa already knew, Kovy is done.

In the end it came to this; hard work, defense, and grit are merely prerequisites for any team winning a championship. You can not win without these things but by themselves they are not enough. The ultimate driver of championship hockey teams is superstars playing like superstars. That’s why Stanley Cups are lifted by the likes of Crosby and Malkin, Toews and Kane, Datsyuk and Zetterberg.

I remain very proud of this team, not withstanding the result. This is nothing like last year when they under achieved against an inferior Montreal team.  My disappointment though profound is limited only to what might have been. When we woke up on New Years day 2011, all seemed perfect in the Penguin universe. The team was a legitimate Stanley Cup favorite. Seeing that degenerate in to under manned grinders swimming up stream was hard to watch.

Honestly, I have not felt the sadness of inevitable disappointment like this since Penn State in the 1995 Rose Bowl. It was a similarly helpless feeling of knowing that no matter how great the effort, the result would not be enough.

I said before the series that the Penguins had a championship coach, championship heart, championship defense, and a championship goalie. What they lacked without Crosby and Malkin was championship talent. I hoped what they had could overcome what they lacked for one round; ultimately that was not the case.

Alas what’s done is done.

In my never ending effort to turn lemons in to lemonade, I give you this. The Penguins role players were forced to push their games to a new level without Sid and Geno. Most if not all became better players as a result. Add Crosby and Malkin to that an you just might have a championship recipe in 2012.

ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY PENGUIN, BLESSED BE THE PENGUIN, FOR IT IS GOOD.