Phil Bourque is the color commentator on the Penguins' radio broadcast. He's also a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the team — and he's not happy with the way they're playing right now.
Bourque, after Pittsburgh lost 2-1 to the Blue Jackets on a late shorthanded goal by Brandon Dubinsky, took them to task for Thursday's and an overall lack of effectiveness over the last month or so.
Sidney Crosby fights Brandon Dubinsky | Alex Ovechkin, badass
Some background: The Penguins are now fourth place in the Metropolitan Division and seventh place in the Eastern Conference. They're also 7-11-4 against divisional opponents, which is a problem, given that they're highly likely to face one of those in the first-round of the postseason.
The power play is a problem (scoreless in nine games and its last 19 opportunities), as is as lack of point production from Sidney Crosby (six points in nine February games) and Evgeni Malkin (three in eight February games).
So, here's Bourque, via the Penguins' website:
Usually by the time I get down here from the broadcast booth, I’ve kind of gathered my thoughts, gathered my emotions. Not so much tonight. I think as a Penguin fan, I think you should be ticked off tonight, because your goaltender laid it all on the line. That’s one of the best goaltending performances I’ve seen in years. He was taking my breath away.
To lose the game like that, it should bother you. It should bother you a lot as a player. I don’t know if anything was said in that room, but it bothers me. I take a lot of pride in working for this organization and what this organization stands for. And what I witnessed out there tonight, it was not Penguin hockey. You had a goaltender that absolutely laid every ounce of energy he had on the line, and you lose the game like that, on a shorthanded goal where he makes the save and you just don’t cover up Brandon Dubinsky? That should really stick in your craw to the point where things should change after this game tonight.
Because I think enough is enough. Enough has gone on here, and everybody’s kind of being patient: ‘OK, we’re gonna be fine. OK, we’ve got Malkin, we’ve got Crosby, we have Letang.’ It should get to the point of unacceptable, what’s going on the ice. … It’s not about working hard.
Don’t get me wrong, you did some good things against Washington, but the way that you unraveled after the Ovechkin two-hand chop on Letang, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. And you come back, and you don’t have a great start here against a team that’s clearly out of the playoffs, it’s frightening. In their room, they’re thinking ‘We’re going down with the ship. we’re going down swining. we’re going down and we’re gonna empty the tank every night.’ They beat the Philadelphia Flyers, they come rolling in here. and they snatch two points from the Pittsburgh Penguins.
I don’t know what the comments are from the players, but you should feel like this is rock bottom. Just because of the way Marc-Andre Fleury played. Sid’s trying to fire himself up, he’s trying to fire the troops up by fighting Brandon Dubinsky, but I don’t know. In my estimation, I see too much talent and too much character on the ice and in the room for this to go on any longer than tonight.
(GM Jim Rutherford is) a guy that’s more likely to pull the trigger in the next few days than wait for March 2. On top of that, if you don’t have that fear of being traded, you might want to start having the fear of not making the playoffs. You might think you’re all nice and cozy where you are right now, but guess what: All of a sudden, when you pick up the paper tomorrow or you go online and look at pittsburghpenguins.com or NHL.com, the Penguins are going to be in the wild-card position. They’re No. 7 right now. And guess what: The Boston Bruins aren’t that far behind, and the Florida Panthers are not that far behind. And if you continue to slide like this, I don’t think you want to go into the last 15 games of the regular season going ‘holy moley, we are two points from being out of a wild-card position. And the way things are going right now, that reality should be staring you in the face right now.”
Not with that talent and what ownership has done to build a team to win now. And that’s the thing: I know there’s a little bit of a sense (where) everyone is looking at the Metropolitan Division. Now we’re four games below .500 in the Metropolitan, and the teams we beat are the teams that are not in the playoffs for the most part. You’re not beating the Rangers, you’re not beating the Caps, you’re not even beating the Flyers for that (matter).
There’s kind of been this ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Don’t look at the stats. Don’t look at the numbers so much.’ That’s kind of what you’re hearing. You know what, at this point, you better look at the numbers, because it’s a reality. It’s not a small sample size anymore. It’s a reality that right now, this team is not good enough, and there should be some real, real healthy fear of what’s going on right now.
There's a lot to unpack here, and we'll have that opportunity over the next however many days, but it's impossible not to agree with Bourque. The Penguins are a top-heavy team, even in a best-case scenario. They don't need puck possession from their top two lines — they need points. And that's not coming right now. Things devolve from there, because the bottom six isn't capable of carrying the load.
Throw in the fact that they look off in a way that belies underlying numbers, and frustration on the part of guys like Bourque is beyond understandable. Things can turn around quickly — talent has a way of winning out, and the Penguins, shallow as they may be, certainly have enough to make the playoffs — but the last month has been undeniably ugly.
It should be something of a wakeup call, though; again, their success is predicated on points from Crosby, Malkin and the power play. If any three of those go in the tank, things are going to get dodgy. If all three do, things are going to get worse. It's what happened during playoff losses to the Rangers and Bruins, and it's what happened this month.