Tim Benz: Penguins need more than just a wake-up call after missing the playoffs

Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was cleaning out his locker last Saturday in the wake of missing the playoffs for the first time since his rookie year. Just a day after seeing general manager Ron Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke fired.

The three-time Stanley Cup champion was asked about the prospect of change surrounding the franchise. Specifically he was asked what his “hopes were for the offseason, and what he will come back to” next year.

Crosby’s answer wasn’t so much about change in scheme or personnel. Rather it was about a change in mentality for those who will return.

“I just hope that we learn from this. I think that’s the biggest thing,” Crosby said. “Hopefully we’re a motivated group because of going through this.”

Crosby was presented with the natural follow question, asking what this largely veteran team still needed to learn in that regard.

“I think, just in general, how difficult it is to make the playoffs,” Crosby said. “I think you find out, just when you start going through the specific games over the course of the year, that you let slide, and you see how close we were, it’s tough. It’s a fine line, and I think you understand that from having to compete and get there every year. But when you’re on the outside looking in and you know, you have to look at all those situations. I think you realize even more so. I think just understanding the mistakes that we made this year. The big ones.”

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For Crosby, those big mistakes were failing to win the games that they were controlling.

“Not putting teams away. We had leads and I think that’s probably what makes it more frustrating — knowing that we were in a really good position to win games so we can close teams out. It ends up being the difference between us making the playoffs and not,” Crosby added.

There are plenty of examples of that issue. Three times the Penguins blew a third-period lead to the New York Islanders. The Islanders ended the season as the top wild-card team with 93 points, just two in front of the Penguins.

Think about the difference those results would have made.

The Pens blew a lead twice in a wild 7-6 overtime win against the Florida Panthers at PPG Paints Arena on Jan. 24, including a 6-5 advantage with two-and-half minutes left. By getting to overtime, the Panthers got a point. They ended with 92 points as the second wild card. The Penguins were the last team eliminated with 91.

But it wasn’t just losing to the teams they were chasing in the standings. It was blowing leads against lesser teams that crushed the Penguins as well. Like allowing a 4-0 lead over the Detroit Red Wings to evaporate on Dec. 28. Giving up a 3-2 lead in Ottawa, and losing 5-4 in overtime on Jan. 18. And inexplicably losing to the cellar-dwelling Montreal Canadiens three times despite holding at least one lead in each contest.

Wretched, indeed.

But here’s my concern about what Crosby said. If the team didn’t learn from any of that over a six-month, 82-game schedule, why should we believe they are going to learn during a six-month offseason?

If the team didn’t learn after the first two blown leads to the Canadiens and Islanders before doing it a third time, who is to say they’ll be cognizant of what to do better next winter?

Why? Just because they missed the playoffs by a point? That’s going to be the wake-up call?

When they were about to play Game 81 against the hideous Chicago Blackhawks, at home, with a playoff berth still not secured but in their control if they won their last two games, they still somehow managed to lose.

I mean, they weren’t awake by then? Enough “motivation” wasn’t present at that moment?

It’s not like this is a locker room full of guys who don’t know how hard it is to make the playoffs. Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin were all on that team that had to win its last game against the Buffalo Sabres to qualify in 2015.

As a coach and player, Mike Sullivan missed the playoffs plenty of times. So have the likes of Jeff Carter, Jason Zucker, Rickard Rakell, Jeff Petry and Mikael Granlund with other organizations.

At one point in early February 2009, shortly before firing coach Mike Therrien, the eventual Stanley Cup champion Pens were 24-23-5. Four games into Mike Sullivan’s tenure, the 2015-16 Stanley Cup team was 15-14-3 on Dec. 19.

Just because the Penguins had made the playoffs every year since 2006, that doesn’t mean that there was a presumption that it was easy.

Or at least that shouldn’t have been the case.

If as coach and captain, Sullivan and Crosby couldn’t make the team understand that before April, then it’s a problem a summer’s worth of rumination isn’t likely to fix.

That said, Crosby’s right. A more motivated team-wide attitude will help. But better roster assembly, better goaltending, better tactics and execution on the ice — especially with leads late in games — is what the Penguins really need.

Unfortunately, that may be too much to address in one offseason as well.