Pens regroup after letdown

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Hold off on the confetti making. Don’t start looking for a good seat along the Stanley Cup parade route. Don’t bother trying to pick a spot in the Consol Energy Center rafters for the next championship banner to hang.

For all their talented parts, the Pittsburgh Penguins remain very much a work in progress.

And while the Penguins knew not to overreact to a 5-2 drumming at the hands of Toronto on Wednesday night, a victory that quickly took some of the steam out of Pittsburgh’s 2-0 start, they also understand they’ve can’t simply rely on talent every night to get the job done.

“When your mindset is not right when you’re playing the Leafs, it can cost you,” defenseman Kris Letang said.

Coach Dan Bylsma anticipated an emotional letdown after his team opened the season with emphatic road wins against rivals Philadelphia and the New York Rangers. He hoped the excitement of playing a home game for the first time in nine months would make up the difference.

Instead, the Penguins crumbled over the final 30 minutes, taking a series of penalties that eventually snowballed into a series of uncharacteristic mistakes the NHL’s second-youngest team had no trouble pouncing on.

Toronto scored the last three goals, all of them relatively easy tallies following a Pittsburgh miscue.

The most glaring came on a botched clearing attempt by Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin that went right to the stick of Toronto’s James van Riemsdyk at the top of the left circle. The wrist shot whizzed by Marc-Andre Fleury to give the Maple Leafs a lead they would not give back.

And just like that, the aura of invincibility the Penguins showed while drumming the Flyers and Rangers evaporated and the ghosts of last spring’s playoff meltdown against Philadelphia returned.

Not that Sidney Crosby is quite ready to go down that road. The superstar chalked Pittsburgh’s poor performance against the largest crowd ever to see a hockey game in the franchise’s history to a bad night.