A bad mood won't help the Penguins avoid more bad results

Everything came down to a one-on-one confrontation Monday in Cranberry.

Forward Matt Nieto vs. goaltender Tristan Jarry.

Nieto attacked.

Jarry reacted.

Nieto scored.

As Nieto skated toward the left-wing boards to celebrate, half of the Penguins roster — all clad in yellow practice jerseys — mobbed Nieto to celebrate winning an impromptu shootout competition.

As those in yellow hopped up and down, forward Sidney Crosby, in black, skated to Jarry with a smile and tapped him on the pads. Fellow forward donning black, Evgeni Malkin, gave Jarry some guff but did so with a smile, as well.

The fellows wearing black will have some sort of “punishment,” though the nature of it has yet to be revealed.

“Yellow wins,” Crosby guffawed. “So, we’ll see what in store for us. You’ll see.”

To be clear, the Penguins didn’t gather on the ice for a fun, flowery Florence and the Machine concert.

But it wasn’t a somber funeral dirge either.

Those viewing the shootout competition Monday also saw a dutifully executed practice beforehand. It was a demanding 45 minutes or so on the ice, much of which focused on work along the walls. At one point, coach Mike Sullivan barked out a highly audible order to seal off the wall during drills.

In the midst of a cratering 2-5-3 stretch that has dropped them to the deepest trenches of the NHL’s overall standings, the Penguins are doing seemingly everything they can to spruce up the details — or “bone marrow” as defenseman Marcus Pettersson labeled them with a vivid metaphor — of their sagging game.

At the same time, they’re also trying to avoid malaise.

Monday’s shootout practice, conducted after coaches had left the ice, was geared toward that latter pursuit.

“It was an intense practice, and we got some stuff that we needed to get done,” Pettersson said. “Everybody feels bad for how it’s going. You can’t be down for it and stuff like that. We try to just get everybody in a good mood after.”

The mood has been far from good in the immediate aftermath of the Penguins’ losses as of late.

After a 6-1 bludgeoning by the Utah Hockey Club at home Saturday, goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic suggested a way for the Penguins to fix their problems.

“Feel something else,” Nedeljkovic said after that loss. “Anything else feels better than whatever that was tonight and what we’ve been putting out there as a whole this year.”

The feelings Monday, even if temporary, were sanguine.

They have to be if the Penguins are to improve.

“It would be different if you’d win six in a row,” Penguins forward Bryan Rust said. “Then it’s easier to come to the rink and everything feel easy. When things aren’t going well, everything feels impossible almost. For us, we’ve got to stick together as a group. That’s so key.

“When stuff goes the wrong way, it’s so easy to start blaming guys and pointing fingers. There’s going to be things that happen that obviously don’t go our way. But the more we can rally around each other, that’s just going to help us.”

The Penguins staged a rally late last season when they went 8-2-2 in the final weeks of the campaign, falling a handful of points short of earning an improbable playoff berth.

But that surge came after something of a stupor that saw them go 3-9-1 in the days leading up to and following the trade-deadline departures of popular veteran forward Jake Guentzel (March 7) and defenseman Chad Ruhwedel (March 8).

At the time, players acknowledged melancholy related to the deadline had impacted their play.

Are the Penguins currently combating anything similar to that despondency they felt in early March?

“I don’t feel that,” Crosby said. “I feel like it’s tough right now because we’ve done some good things and just found ways to lose. When it’s going like that, you feel like you’re doing good things and you’re getting momentum and then it turns quickly. You find a way to lose it and not get the result that you want.

“That part’s tough. … But I don’t feel that, what (happened) last year.”

As for what is happening now, very little of it has been good.

But the Penguins are doing just about everything to make sure they have the right mood to achieve the desired results.

“You’ve still got to come to the rink and have the right mindset and work and enjoy it,” Crosby said. “It’s still something that we all love to do. Sometimes, you lose sight of that when you’re in tough spots. If we have the right mindset and we handle it right, it’s something that will make us better.”