Pens hope for wake-up call from Sullivan

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Mike Sullivan’s voice is unmistakable. Loud. Authoritative. Animated.

And, the Pittsburgh Penguins hope, an alarm clock.

One of the NHL’s marquee draws is in the midst of an identity crisis more than a third of the way into a season that began with typically high expectations, goals that at the moment appear impossibly out of reach.

The Penguins aren’t scoring. They occasionally aren’t defending and — perhaps most troubling — the magic they once summoned so easily seems to have disappeared.

“I think we’re bottom of the league in goals scored this year and I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be, right?” forward Phil Kessel asked, only somewhat rhetorically.

Pittsburgh’s 4-1 loss to Washington on Monday night in Sullivan’s debut dropped the Penguins to 15-11-3. They remain in a tie for ninth in the Eastern Conference and are 27th in goals per game despite ranking fifth in shots. The power play littered with All-Stars is 28th, ahead of only Calgary and Arizona.

Enter Sullivan, who spent a decade grinding out a career as a defensive-minded forward before getting into coaching. He now finds himself trying to get Pittsburgh’s highly capable, occasionally highly strung players working in unison.

Nowhere are Pittsburgh’s struggles more evident than in Sidney Crosby’s prolonged funk. The two-time Hart Trophy winner is on pace for career lows in goals and points, and his team appears destined for a four-month battle just to reach the postseason let alone make a serious run at Stanley Cup to bookend the one he and fellow superstar Evgeni Malkin won in 2009 back when a dynasty seemed almost inevitable.

It never happened thanks to a mix of injuries, bad luck and a handful of meek flameouts in the playoffs. While the team has played to a full house for nearly eight years and counting, it’s one of the few constants for a franchise in flux.

Dan Bylsma and Ray Shero, the coach and general manager who helped make the Penguins one of the league’s must-see attractions, are gone.

Forward Pascal Dupuis, long the glue in a dressing room of diverse personalities, retired abruptly last week due to lingering health concerns surrounding the blood clotting issue that cut short his 2014-15 season.

Defenseman Rob Scuderi, brought in more than two years ago to provide the blue line with some needed grit, became a pariah as his game deteriorated and was shipped off to Chicago on Monday night for Trevor Daley.

Co-owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle are shopping the club, at least when the notoriously private Lemieux isn’t taking to Twitter to shoot down speculation of a rift between himself and Crosby.

The day-to-day drama that seems to follow the Penguins wherever they go — on Tuesday alone the Penguins said goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is out with a concussion and star-crossed forward Beau Bennett will miss at least a month with a shoulder injury — the ever accessible Crosby allows “we have to be better.”