The Pittsburgh Penguins were bad at even strength on Wednesday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena.
The Lightning rolled right past the Penguins 3-1. Anthony Cirelli, Nikita Kucherov, and Tanner Jeannot all scored for Tampa while Jake Guentzel scored a late garbage goal for the Penguins.
If it weren't for a mishap by Andrei Vasilevskiy with under a minute to play, Guentzel would have never scored and the Penguins would have been shut out. It wasn't anything to be proud of.
The power play did nothing to help this reeling Penguins team once again. It is getting to the point where they are starting to be embarrassed by how bad they are on the man advantage.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are truly bad when they are on the power play
They missed on four tries which included 40 seconds of a two-man advantage in the 3rd period. They weren't out of the game during these power plays either so converting could have changed everything.
It is now 34 straight failures for the Pittsburgh power play. Mike Sullivan has seemingly tried everything to get it going and they just can't connect.
They have only scored seven power-play goals this season. Three of them came in the same game against the lowly San Jose Sharks. They even allow short-handed goals in bunches as they have given up four. It is truly a disaster.
This bad power play is starting to hurt their play at even strength. They have been switching up the lines there too and nothing has worked. Even putting Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin together hasn't worked. That's how you know they are down and out.
Once they finally break out on the power play, will they go on a run of scoring tons of goals with the man advantage? Will they start to play better at even strength? All of those questions could lead to positive answers but they won't know until it happens.
It is hard to fathom how bad this power play is when you consider all of the talent that is there. We are talking about a handful of Hall of Fame players who are unable to get it done.
Their next chance to end this bad streak will come on Friday. It will be at Amerant Bank Stadium against the Florida Panthers.