Pittsburgh Penguins: What Exactly is Our Issue?

The Pittsburgh Penguins have yet again lost another crucial game.

The Pittsburgh Penguins headed into Nashville coming off a disappointing loss to the Washington Capitals. We had one goal on our minds–to win. We didn’t know how we’d do it, but all we knew was that we were able to shut them out before and we needed to win again.

Pittsburgh Penguins

But unfortunately, the sliding Penguins were not able to capture the much-needed W. We ended up falling to the Nashville Predators by a score of 5-4 in the shootout. Something is wrong with this team, but what exactly is it? Let’s take a look.

Offence

Is offence our issue? It’s hard to say. We have an elite pairing in Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin right now, who are 1 and 2 in scoring on our team with 22 and 20 points respectively. Crosby follows right behind with 13 points.

But other than them, our other guys aren’t really producing as much as we’d like. I expect bigger performances from Jake Guentzel, Conor Sheary, Justin Schultz and Kris Letang. Not to mention, a lot of people are still wondering if the Ryan Reaves trade was worth it. I mean, yes, we did score four goals against Nashville, but we can still use some work.

Defence

Defence is definitely something we have to work on. Our defence has not been great as of late. In our last four games we’ve been letting in at least four games. This is horrible.

Perhaps our pairings need a mix up. Something definitely isn’t clicking.

Goaltending

With a 2.90 goals against average and a .905% save percentage, Matt Murray has been looking really shaky this season. He’s been letting in a number of goals recently and we need to address these concerns.

Either way, some things need to change and fast. We need to get back on the right track as soon as possible if we want to catch up in our tough division.