Mark Madden: No sugarcoating this Penguins mess

A Syracuse radio host got fired for being too negative about Syracuse University’s sports teams. His station’s boss said, “I’m an SU fan. I bleed orange.”

It read like a story from The Onion or The Babylon Bee. Like satire. Analysis quashed by fanboy drivel. Then again, real news has long since picked sides.

But, to play along, I began imagining ways the Penguins might win a playoff series. They haven’t done that since 2018. But I don’t want to be negative. Or fired.

Going into Tuesday’s home game with Montreal, the Penguins were on a 7-1-1 run.

Carolina, one potential playoff foe, lost winger Andrei Svechnikov to season-ending knee surgery. He’s arguably the Hurricanes’ most dynamic player.

New Jersey, another possible opponent, is a young group. The Devils haven’t been to the playoffs since 2018. Perhaps the Penguins’ postseason experience could trump Jersey’s lack thereof. That happened to the Penguins in 2007, their first playoff berth with Crosby, when they lost to a much more grizzled Ottawa in the first round.

Then the Penguins played that game against Montreal. I can no longer talk myself into anything good.

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In a roller-coaster year filled with worst losses, that 6-4 defeat really was the worst.

Montreal had lost seven straight, got drilled 8-4 by Colorado the night before at home, flew to Pittsburgh where the Penguins were waiting and resting, is riddled by injury and fell behind 2-0 inside of five minutes.

But the Penguins trailed 4-2 by the first period’s end and bowed despite outshooting Montreal, 43-22.

It was an absolute stink sandwich. It also completed a sweep of the season series by Montreal: Three losses to the Atlantic Division’s last-place team.

It’s easy to point the finger at a few people. So, I will.

Tristan Jarry is rotten. If he’s playing hurt, as suspected, then he shouldn’t play. Casey DeSmith should be the No. 1 goalie. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.

Jarry allowed four goals on seven shots Tuesday. Sure, some of Montreal’s goals were great chances. But a goaltender should do better than stop three of seven even if the shots are all breakaways. (These weren’t.) That’s a .429 save percentage for those of you keeping score at home.

Jarry got pulled for the third time in nine games since coming back from his latest injury, his fourth in 10 months. His save percentage over that span is a horrible .863, his goals-against average a terrible 4.03.

Jarry has had many chances to establish himself as a No. 1 goalie since making his NHL debut in 2017. He hasn’t. He never has won a playoff series. He’s too often hurt.

Jarry’s contract is up at year’s end. It’s time for the Penguins to move on from Jarry regardless of price. He’s not good enough or reliable enough.

Jeff Carter’s contract, unfortunately, has another year to go.

Carter’s performance Tuesday is impossible to comprehend. He played just 8 minutes, 28 seconds but was somehow minus-4. Carter was no innocent bystander on those minuses, either. He was too often the scene of the crime.

Carter’s worst moment came when he got put on the ice to take a defensive-zone draw near the first period’s death. He’s the Penguins’ faceoff specialist, after all. Carter lost that draw, and Montreal scored with 11 seconds left.

You had one job …

Carter isn’t a good player mired in a bad patch. He’s 38. He has one goal in 16 games. He can’t move. He’s washed up. He’s an empty jersey. He shouldn’t play.

But Carter was nonetheless on the ice with under two minutes left Tuesday as the Penguins tried to tie the score.

Too much respect for veterans is one of Mike Sullivan’s coaching weaknesses. It’s reminiscent of when he kept using Patrick Marleau’s corpse in 2020.

Carter has earned respect. But not in Pittsburgh. He’s accomplished nothing here.

That loss really stinks. The Penguins had built momentum and were mounting a challenge, however improbable, to the New York Rangers for third place in the Metropolitan Division with games against the Rangers on Thursday and Saturday at Madison Square Garden.

Now the Penguins trail the Rangers by eight points and probably will get beat twice at MSG. (Tuesday’s defeat will have definite negative residue.)

But the real blame falls upon GM Ron Hextall.

The Penguins clearly had goaltending problems in last season’s first-round playoff loss to the Rangers. Hextall needed to get a better backup for Jarry, who was hurt then, too. If Jarry was to be the No. 1 goalie, a 1A was needed. Somebody who could legit start if it came to that.

Hextall instead signed DeSmith to a two-year contract extension. It was the easy thing to do. Hextall seems to prefer what’s easy.

Now the Penguins have goaltending problems again.

The two-year contract extension Hextall gave Jeff Carter in the middle of last season was ludicrous. Why was there urgency?

Protecting Carter in the 2021 expansion draft was also dumb. It arguably cost the Penguins Jared McCann, who has 33 goals for Seattle.

Hextall acquired Carter at the trade deadline in 2021. He did OK for the rest of that season. But he was 36 then, bound to fade, and he has.

Hextall’s mismanagement doesn’t exonerate Jarry and Carter. They were on the ice Tuesday. Hextall wasn’t.

But Hextall’s sins go beyond decisions made about the goaltending and Carter.

The Kasperi Kapanen contract. The Brock McGinn contract. The unnecessary signing of Jan Rutta. Trading Mike Matheson for Jeff Petry. (Matheson played well for Montreal on Tuesday. Petry was stagnant, as usual.) The salary cap problems.

No matter how the Penguins finish, Hextall’s got to go. Losses like Tuesday’s and the way they transpire serve to reinforce.