The Laziness of Youth

Much has been made about the inexperience and youth of the Pittsburgh Penguins and nowhere is that more apparent than the play of Evgeni Malkin. In watching Game 3 of the series with the Ottawa Senators yesterday, it was obvious from the opening faceoff that Malkin was uninterested in doing any of the things that actually win hockey games other than skating with the puck and, possibly, scoring goals.

He took shift after shift (after shift after shift) floating through the neutral zone, waiving his stick at the puck-carrier on the forecheck, lazily back-checking, making ill-advised passes which resulted in easy turnovers, seflishly over-handling the puck and losing offensive zone draws without any effort.

Ottawa was able to get themselves back into that game, and eventually take it over, in part because Malkin aided and abetted them. Both of his penalties in the first half of the game were momentum changers, the second one resulting in the go-ahead goal which started the avalanche that the Penguins never got themselves excavated from.

A quick look inside his regular season stats reveal nearly half of his points came on the power play, not the most physically-challenging portion of the game. He's got the size and strength, no question, but right now it's about playing smart, high-percentage hockey, not highlight reels. It's about all those little things that he just seems unwilling to do.

The puzzling thing for me is the lack of reaction from Michel Therrien. Malkin takes the worst kind of penalty early in the 2nd which gives the Sentors their first lead of the game and the next shift he sends out Crosby's line, with Malkin on LW! Then he turns around after the game and calls out Eric Christensen as someone he wants more from. Well, I'm sure if he'd given Eric (8:13 TOI) a few of Malkin's minutes (21:47 TOI) he might have gotten more from him. By contrast, Jordan Staal looks great out there and yet he skated 6 minutes less than Malkin did. Of course, I would have benched Sergei Gonchar in this game as well.

Simply put, Malkin's not going to learn anything if he's rewarded with ice-time for poor play. And, doing so is only going to make it harder to motivate your role players. If anyone's inexperience is showing in this series it's Michel Therrien's. How sad would it be for Therrien to be out-coached by the Poster Boy for Playoff Failure, Bryan Murray, who is that way because he does exactly the same thing under pressure?

About as sad as Malkin's bear hug on Chris Phillips after Sid the Kid took yet another swan dive at the end of the game.

Ta,