Do These Penguins Look Familiar? They Should

Watch the current edition of the Pittsburgh Penguins often enough, and a certain sense of deja vu sets in.

Oh, not because almost anything that transpires during games — aside from the relentless excellence of Sidney Crosby, anyway — inspires memories of the long-ago days when the team was winning Stanley Cups with relative regularity. Or at least back when they were penciled into the NHL’s playoff field every spring.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of parallels.

These Penguins, you see, are looking a lot like the opponents they used to torment as a matter of course.

Finding ways to win at this level isn’t as easy as the Penguins made it look for a lot of winters.

Finding ways to lose? Well, there’s no shortage of possibilities, and the Penguins have dabbled in all of them.

Play a strong two-way game and get solid special-teams play? Great, but then the goaltending has an off-night.

Get timely, spectacular saves and diligent defensive play? OK, but it doesn’t matter because the goal-scoring dries up.

Start well, and control play for much of the game? Yeah, great, but a couple of lapses and letdowns are more than enough to negate all the positives.

The Penguins are on the other side of the equation they enjoyed for so many winters. They are now the ones giving up the deflating, decisive goal rather than scoring it. The ones who leave an opponents uncovered at the net-front at a pivotal moment, and pay for it on the scoreboard. The ones who never seem to get a power-play goal or penalty-kill when it is needed most.

All are things that have been staples of Penguins games for a lot of years. Along with downcast expressions on the bench and broken sticks on the ice, after the other team scores a goal to alter — or settle — the course of a game.

It’s just a different club being guilty of them now.

Attendance commands attention

The Penguins’ weekend losses to Washington and the New York Rangers at PPG Paints Arena attracted impressive crowds — attendance for the Capitals game was announced at 18,207, while the turnout for the Rangers game was 17,186 — although having a significant number of fans for the visitors helped to pad the gate in both.

But with the Penguins having no realistic chance of qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs, it’s likely that fewer and fewer people will show up for home games as the regular season grinds on.

That seems to be a virtual certainty. What will be interesting to see is how the drop in attendance is interpreted, both inside and outside the organization.

Will that suggest that a significant segment of the Penguins’ fan base is made up of frontrunners, people who aren’t shy about spending good money when there are on-ice successes to celebrate, but who will direct their attention — and dollars — elsewhere rather than investing their support in a struggling team?

Or will it indicate that PPG Paints Arena crowds are discerning as well as disappointed, that staying away will be intended to deliver a not-so-subtle message to ownership and management that a subpar product simply is not acceptable?

Penguins fans understandably have been spoiled for the better part of four decades — watching your team win five Stanley Cups and routinely field lineups featuring once-in-a-lifetime talents like Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Jaromir Jagr and Evgeni Malkin will have that effect — but the franchise is now paying the price for its decade of dominance between 2008 and 2018.

How many fans will be interested in helping to share that cost during the balance of the 2024-25 season — and why they do or do not — should be intriguing.