Penguins endure worst loss of season in Dubas's return to Toronto

TORONTO — It was five days ago that Kyle Dubas took to the podium to dissect the state of his first campaign as president and general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The former Toronto Maple Leafs boss threw his support behind a core that continues to be questioned, behind a coach that feels the pressure mounting, just as he had for his previous organization.

And as he’s done before, he took the weight of his club’s fate, ultimately, on his own shoulders.

“In the end, the responsibility falls on me to chart the course of where we’re at and where we’re going,” Dubas said of his Penguins, as they sat second-last in their division, a third of the season in the books. “I think we can get going in [the right] direction if we just adhere to the No. 1 rule of holes, which is: ‘When you’re in one, stop digging.’”

Saturday night, under the Scotiabank Arena lights — in Dubas’s first game back in Toronto following his tense exit from the Maple Leafs organization — the Penguins kept on digging.

“At a certain point in that first period, you kind of got a sense that they just had a little bit more juice than we did,” netminder Alex Nedeljkovic said once the final buzzer had sounded on what wound up a 7-0 drubbing at the hands of the Maple Leafs. “They were winning more battles, beating us to more loose pucks, just getting better looks overall from the start. For whatever reason, we just didn’t have the pushback.”

In a cruel twist of the knife for the man trying to lead these Penguins between eras, the loss to his former club stands as the worst of the season for Dubas’s new one. The Penguins haven’t allowed as many goals in any game this year. They’ve been shut out only one other time — a far more forgivable affair, as they came up just short in a 1-0 loss to the conference-leading New York Rangers last month.

This time out, the shutout was far less forgiving.

It took less than two minutes for the thing to begin spiralling out of control, Toronto’s Matthew Knies picking up the puck in the neutral zone as Maple Leafs fans were still finding their seats, then dancing by defender Ryan Graves before going forehand-backhand-top shelf on Tristan Jarry. Mitch Marner, Bobby McMann and Max Domi added three more to the pile over the next period’s-worth of play before Jarry gave way to Nedeljkovic, the loss all but sealed before the tilt had even reached its halfway mark.

“I mean, you can’t chase the game against them,” a dejected Sidney Crosby said from the visiting locker room post-game. “You give them room and open up, you’re going to pay. We got behind there, and then tried to force things to get back in it. That’s what happens.”

It’s an especially frustrating turn for a Penguins team that showed glimpses of turning a corner earlier this week, netting a pair of wins in the wake of a four-game slide. Instead, they find themselves back at square one.

“We did some good things, [but] you know, it’s a loss. It’s an ugly one, obviously,” Crosby said. “We’ve got to move by it and get ready for Monday. … You evaluate every game, win or lose. You try to get better, you try to learn from it. So, we’ll try to learn from this one.”

The Maple Leafs offered up at least one crucial lesson plan during the 60-minute drubbing Saturday night, putting on a special-teams clinic to push an already-lopsided match-up into ‘rout’ territory.

Pittsburgh’s struggling, Hall-of-Fame-laden power-play has been the talk of their season so far, having gone goalless for a month before finding its footing and potting some goals this past week. This time out, success deserted them again, Pittsburgh earning three chances to send out that star-studded top unit — desperate for a goal all three times — and coming away empty-handed.

Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs turned a dominant 4-0 into an uncatchable 6-0 courtesy of two man-advantage goals of their own in the second period, their power-play a vision of clean entries, elite puck movement, and relentless pressure.

So troubled was the Penguins’ power play by the time it took the ice for its third attempt of the night, early in the final period, the crowd began raining ‘Duuuubas’ chants down on the visitors, taunting their former manager.

“It’s a long year. You play 82 games — you’re not going to feel very good all of those nights,” said Erik Karlsson post-game, hands on his hips as he sorted through the disappointment of the evening. “And when you don’t, you’ve got to find a way to bring something. We can’t just be satisfied with being out there and being in the right spot — you’ve still got to contribute, whether that’s with the puck or without the puck.

“Today we didn’t do that, consistently throughout the lineup. … No one really did anything out there, except being there.”

In the other locker room post-game, the feeling was every bit the opposite.

“I’m certainly thrilled with how guys stepped up here today, throughout the lineup,” Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said of his squad late Saturday. “Good energy, good start to the game, Kniesy got us going — the guys never really looked back from there. I thought our execution offensively tonight was as good as it’s been in a long time. We kind of expected a high-event game here tonight. We were hoping to slow it down a little bit coming our way, but capitalize on what was going to be available the other way.

“And that’s really what happened for us.”

Capitalize they did, and they could’ve even more. While his Maple Leafs managed to put seven on the board, they rung at least three pucks off Pittsburgh’s post, too, and had another tally called back for goalie interference. And in their own net, Martin Jones stifled any life the Penguins hinted at finding.

“He was so calm and relaxed in there tonight,” Keefe said of the netminder. “You know, on a night like this, the score being what it is, it’s one of these nights where almost everything’s going your way offensively. We talked about this other night — when you’re down 5-0, to me, it’s not as bad as the scoreboard shows, there’s still good things happening, and when you’re up like we were tonight, it’s not as good as the scoreboard necessarily shows.

“There’s still lots of stuff coming our way, at our net, and the goaltender has to be really sharp, otherwise the game can start to change a little bit, momentum’s changing. He didn’t allow that to happen."

For his counterpart, Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan, the assessment of what transpired here Saturday night will take more time.

After an abysmal start that’s all but snuffed out the early excitement sparked by the arrival of Dubas, Karlsson, and a remodelling of the squad’s depth, the question now is whether Saturday’s gut-punch somehow sparks a mid-season revival, or stands as the eventual signpost of a lost campaign.

“I’ll certainly dissect it. I’m not sure quite yet how I’ll respond to it,” a terse Sullivan said from the bowels of Scotiabank Arena post-game. “You know, it’s a humbling experience. We didn’t perform to our expectations, and it’s disappointing.

“We’re all in this thing together. We’ve got to figure it out.”