DK’s Daily Shot of Penguins: A positive lesson?

0:00This might not be the episode for you if you're upset about what happened here last night how this game unfolded. I honestly wasn't and upon checking with some of the athletes feeling pretty solid about that stance. Good Wednesday morning from Boston, I'm day on Kovacovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports and this is daily shot of penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this. Bruins 2, penguins 1, yeah, that's in regulation and yeah, also they haven't had a regulation loss in some time. But what I'm going to get at here goes well beyond just, hey, let's be nice to them because

1:04they've been awesome since Christmas. First, some of the particulars for anybody who missed the game, Eric Carlson scored early, the Bruins scored twice right after that, but Stuart Skinner overall was plenty good enough giving his team a chance to come back and tie though they never did. Peter, stopping 26 out of 28 shots, the penguins getting not one, not two, but three clean rakeways on Jeremy Swaman getting 35 total shots on Swaman and not beating him again after that innocent looking Carlson flick sneaked in from the right point, but I got to tell you, I have seen versions of this game in the recent past and whether this is fair or not, I'm going back before this season, before Dan Mews came along as coach and a lot of those games, not all of them, but a lot have come against this same opponent

2:07or teams that play a lot like these Bruins do for the record and another reason to not get all bent out of shape over a single result. Games have now won 11 in a row here, this rank, and in that time they've given up an average of 1.75 goals per game. That's because what they do is they get a lead, any lead, and then they can borrow from the soccer vernacular here, they park the bus, meaning you know, park the bus in front of the soccer goal, and they don't really concern themselves all that much with what happens elsewhere on the ice. From overhead, and that's where the TD Garden press box is, you could watch the Bruins, the moment they came close to losing possession. At any point on the rank, they were just high-tailed it backward.

3:08Was it, you know, the 1995 Devils? No, but it wasn't all that far from it. Still, the penguins kept going at them, and they didn't do it in a way that reflected exasperation or lacking answers or even lacking personnel. In addition to the breakaways, there were great A's galore right through the final horn. The difference in this game was Swaman, and I'll say this forever. When you get goal-lead, you just tap the stick and move on, you don't fuss over it, you don't beat yourself up. And the way I felt this one went was that the penguins did everything except beat Swaman, and that if they had beaten Swaman even once or twice, they get themselves a really riveting, uplifting result against an opponent and a style that usually gives them much bigger

4:12problems than this. I had a good talk with Skinner in general afterward. This is one minute of that that I'm going to share with you. How did the game go from the bottom middle of the first period of onwards? Yeah, I felt after the first 10 minutes, I thought we were just able to get our legs underneath us. We started giving our push, and this is a really good response from the first 10 minutes that we played. Yeah, as a group, we should be proud of how we played tonight. Yeah, we just need to start a little bit better, and maybe we were able to bring this game no-t. How'd you feel? Yeah, I felt good the whole way through. Just battled. I thought the guys in front of me battled, especially obviously just being down one, and the way we were able to get PK, you know, being able to get all of our PK's done. I mean, that's huge, especially in a tight game like that. So they could easily gone 3-1, and then you're out of the game. But the way that we, again, just really resilient group in here, so now we're going to learn

5:18from our mistakes and be ready to go next game. Understand, these are smart dudes. They know what it is that they're saying, especially when they say it in front of a microphone or a camera. Stu knows that speaking publicly about how the team should have been proud of the way it performed, it's probably not going to sit well with too many, even if you like chanting stew with the games where he plays. But he's actually right, and in the longer term, he's way right. That doesn't mean you celebrate the outcome. It doesn't mean you go patting yourself on the back, and no, it doesn't mean that there's a moral victory. There is no such creature when you're in a playoff chase. You're going to say this again, there's nothing to feel good about. However, there are ways to look at a cumulative event like this and say, listen, the next

6:20time the penguins face the Bruins, which actually is next week. For another very similar opponent, also from Boston's division in the Senators, there'll be a lot better equipped with answers for how to approach a team like that. Listen to this from Dan Muse, basically taking my question on this subject and throwing it back at me because he's not interested in any sort of moral victories or whatever. Listen to this. Did you find any encouragement in the fact that you were taking better pressure? They were really pushing early. Yeah, I mean, I thought it got better, but it's not rockin' out of it without any points. You have to lock it, and this time of year, you can't walk away and say that's okay. It was a good effort. We didn't start the way we wanted to, and we got to find ways to generate more of that way and to stop the gunneries, even when we did get in the offense and so on, just to

7:22build a steady place and to get through in that front. So, you know, I think these are going to be, we're going to have more games like this on the stretch. Tight-checking games, it gets harder and harder from this point out, and so, you know, I think we've got to take some things from this game and learn from them from the quick. Good for him. That's how he should approach it. He is behind the bench of a team that is trying very, very, very, very hard to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in four years. Good for him. That said, if you listen closely, you'd also pick up that he also found things in this that he can apply moving forward. And in his eyes moving forward, again, this is all per him there, won't just be the Bruins and the Senators and any other packet in kind of teams in the NHL because they're all going to start becoming that. They're all going to start getting more cautious because every goal, every point, becomes

8:28more precious. You're going to have to find a way through that. This might have helped set that stage when we come back, J-1-Q. Today's J-1-Q. Good one comes from Jason who says, DK, why wouldn't Dan meet his put Ben Kindle or Igor Chinacov on the ice with the gold tender pulled? You were not the only one to send this, or some version of this. And the first thing I'm going to say to you in response is, as it was happening, that didn't really cross my mind. It really should have, but it didn't. And maybe that's just because I'm used to seeing the same sweaters and the same numbers out there in the situations. Let's go over who's on the rank. The first name I'm going to mention is probably the one that in the past, you would have said,

9:29what's he doing out there? It was Noah Chari, and that's because he's your best remaining right handed faceoff man. And because every second counts, Chari doesn't just go Jeff Cartering back to the bench. Once he wins the draw, which he did, the first of them anyway. He has to stay on, and you know, play ice hockey, go to the front, do something, and he did. You have Gany Malkin's out there, Brian Rust's out there, Ricardo Raquel is out there, and the decision was made to go with not just Eric Carlson, but also Chris Latang. So you'd have two point men who are comfortable on the points. So I'd ask you, who do you want to take off in favor of Kindle and or Chinacuff? I'll say that in a vacuum in which the only thing I'm concerned about is the finish,

10:31the final touch, or really in the case of Kindle, the playmaking, I'd make your moves in a snap, but it's not that simple. And I'm mostly relaying to you what they would say to you if you'd bring this up with them, because it's not just about the names or the reputations or their veterinosity. It's about having experience in different roles in six on five settings. For example, and don't sneeze at this, just at least hear it out, and then after that you can tell me I'm wrong or they're wrong or whatever, but just, you know, give it a chance. Both Rust and Raquel are seen by not only these coaches, but their predecessors as being very, very, very good at retrieval, meaning a teammate misses a shot, shot gets blocked, shot ends up going into the corner, you absolutely have to get it back. You can't be risking a clear.

11:33You can't be risking a puck just ringing around the boards and leaving the zone. Some players are better than others at navigating that kind of thing. These two happen to be very good at it. Each players are the most adept at jumping in and helping their centerman when a face off. That was something that Muse talked about after the game through gridded teeth, because the penguins had another one of these terrible performances in the circles going 16 and 32 yikes. He wants to see more wingers jumping in and make things happen. Just, you know, kick the puck, tie somebody up, do something, anything to get possession. Whether your centerman gets credit for a double you or not, it doesn't matter as long as you end up being able to make the next play.

12:34So that's another thing that comes into this. You lose that draw. The one right at the beginning of the sequence and you might as well burn 30 seconds off that clock. So am I saying that it's the right thing to do? No. Am I saying it's the wrong thing to do? Also no. If that comes across as excessively wishy washy, well too bad. I mean, that's how some situations are. Not everybody has every answer. What I'm trying to do here is at least relay what I know to be an HL coach is logic when it comes to these things. It's not just let's just put the, you know, the six most deadly snipers on our roster out there and make it target practice. There's a lot more to it than that. I appreciate the question. A good one, a fair one and one that honestly we should keep an eye on beyond just this one event. I appreciate everybody who listens to daily shot of penguins. I'll be flying home this morning and I'll be covering penguins versus sabers at home

13:41tomorrow. But today, I'll hook up with a double shot of penguins that'll be at 3.30 p.m. Live on our YouTube channel, it won't be the same if you're not there. If I can come all the way to Massachusetts to do these things, you can go just to YouTube you know and join in on the fun with us hope to see you then.