Specific matchup issues emerging for Penguins in potential playoff series against the Rangers

Even though Tuesday was “Ben Roethlisberger Night” at PPG Paints Arena, the Penguins couldn’t finish off a late comeback.

The Penguins were beaten by the New York Rangers 3-2 despite a heart-stopping onslaught of 6-on-5 shots against New York goalie Igor Shesterkin. All the while, the Rangers were narrowly missing a slew of empty-net chances by fractions of an inch.

Personally, I blame Todd Haley.

A pair of “ol’ cowboys” got the goals for the Penguins: Sidney Crosby and Brian Boyle.

But it wasn’t enough as New York (91 points) hopped over the Pens (90 points) into second place of the Metropolitan Division. It’s the second time in five days that the Pens have lost to Shesterkin and company. The Rangers romped to a 5-1 victory when the two clubs met at Madison Square Garden on Friday.

That game was more of an outlier. The other two contests between the teams this season were tight and tension packed. Tuesday’s affair came down to the death just like the Penguins’ 1-0 win in the regular-season series opener on Feb. 26.

Now the teams have only one more chance (April 7 in New York) to get a feel for one another before they lock horns in a likely playoff series that has been forecast for months.

So, after three games and 180 minutes of hockey, what have the Pens learned about their likely opening-round opponent?

At this point, three things stand out.

1. The Rangers mess up the Penguins’ breakout: After Tuesday’s loss, that’s the first thing Penguins defenseman Mike Matheson mentioned.

“We got under siege and didn’t execute on our breakouts as well as we could,” Matheson said. “That’s a really good area of their game, their forecheck. They hemmed us in our zone a little bit too much. It caused us to not have as much juice to get going and create more offensive zone shifts.”

Penguins coach Mike Sullivan admitted that Matheson was onto something.

“Their forecheck is one of the strengths of their team,” Sullivan said after the game. “They are fast, they are quick. They get the (defensemen) involved. Their ‘D’ are really active along the walls. The challenge is, you have to beat their pressure. If you do, you can get some looks.”

So how do the Penguins combat that next month and perhaps in the postseason?

“We struggled a little bit making tape-to-tape plays. Sometimes you have to just put pucks to space and get in foot races if they are going to come that hard at you,” Sullivan said. “We were trying to make a few too many tape-to-tape plays instead of just putting pucks in areas and allowing our guys to get in foot races.”

2. Shesterkin is for real: As the Penguins have learned, all the hype surrounding the Rangers goaltender in 2022 is legit.

At 32-9-3 with a 2.11 goals against average and .936 save percentage, the 26-year-old Russian is everything he was made out to be since the Penguins first beat him 1-0.

In the three games so far this season against Pittsburgh, Shesterkin has allowed only four goals, and he has stopped 67 of 71 shots.

“He moves well,” Jake Guentzel said. “We have to get as many pucks as possible on him. Get net front. When he sees the puck, he is one of the best goalies in the game. We have to make it a little tougher on him. Get (shots) up a little bit more.”

Guentzel blames himself for not elevating a shot late in the game that could’ve tied the contest and forced overtime.

3. The Penguins need to shoot more: As good as Shesterkin has been, the Penguins aren’t shooting enough pucks at him.

Their 23.6 shots on goal per game against the Rangers is significantly under their season-long average of 34.4 per game.

The Rangers usually allow 31.7 shots on goal per game. So the Penguins need to get more pucks on net. Matheson said one big issue is that the blueliners aren’t able to get enough pucks through New York’s shot blockers.

“As defensemen, our forwards did a good job of fighting through position in front of the net. You could see it on Sid’s goal. The goalie had no chance of seeing the puck. As defensemen, we could do a better job of getting those pucks through,” Matheson said.

Sullivan says the Penguins may need to make a conscious effort to go against their natural inclinations.

“The nature of our team is that we are not a group that shoots the puck from everywhere. When you look at the makeup of our team, we tend to hang onto pucks and look for more quality than quantity,” Sullivan said. “I just think that is part of the DNA of our group. We have some playmakers that aren’t just going to throw pucks at the net. We can adopt a little bit more of that mindset, though. We can try to find a modified approach.”

Unfortunately, one thing that has also become part of the Penguins’ DNA is losing in the first round of the playoffs. They have done so in three consecutive seasons.

If they don’t change these matchup issues quickly, the Rangers may extend that stretch to four if these two teams really do meet up in the first round.