Penguins woes against divisional opponents continue

Rangers chase Fleury in 5-2 win

It has been said in the past that the Penguins don't do well in early afternoon games and that was evident in the 12:30PM game against the New York Rangers this Sunday. The Penguins defence continued its poor performance from their recent outing against the other New York team even taking to score on themselves. It has been noticeable in the recent games that Fleury has been struggling lately. This is because he has been over-worked lately, today being his 6th game in a row. He has struggled against the Rangers and Islanders recently, specifically the Islanders. With the Penguins playing two more games against the Blackhawks and Flyers before the All-Star break I'd like to see Greiss get some games to see if he can handle the workload under pressure should anything happen to Fleury in the play-offs.

The Rangers are a well structured team and hard to break down if you don't work them. They have a good D system which sees them channel the oppositions shooting lanes into the center where they can block them and also make it easier for Henrik in goal by giving him a clearer line of sight. With players like Girardi and Staal this is something that has been part of the Rangers identity in recent years, preceding Alain Vigneault. This is something which was evident in their game today as can be seen in the picture below produce by war-on-ice.com

As we can see in the above the Penguins were mostly restricted to shooting from the middle. The only chance they got to shoot from the wings where on the PP which was obviously easier due to the use of the extra man advantage. Crosby's goal game from a net presence rebound and Perron's game from him taking on his man. Both goals came from just outside the paint. To score against the Rangers you have to get in Lundqvists's kitchen and the Pens didn't do enough of this.

The Rangers have the ability since the play-offs to shut the Penguins down and they just don't adapt. Since Game 5 of the play-offs the Penguins have been outscored 26-11. That's 11 goals in 7 games. When you consider that 2 goals were scored today then that is even worse. It is something that needs looking at, are the Rangers a kryptonite to us? The Rangers deserved their win, they dominated for large periods and enjoyed the majority of puck possession. The Penguins gave away a large number of penalties but whether this was the referees being over-zealous I don't know but it definitely made it harder even if they killed 5 out of 6. 

If you want to look for positives from tonights game then I suppose Crosby getting on the scoresheet and Perron continuing to be deadly is about as good as it will get. Which doesn't really say much for the rest of the teams performance. The Penguins next two games will be tough. The Blackhawks and Flyers. It will be interesting to see what the response is.