Not only did the Pittsburgh Penguins lose their 2026 playoff opener to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena, they also did so in concerning fashion.
The team managed just 17 shots on goal during the 3-2 loss. The power play was feckless on both of its attempts, and goalie Stuart Skinner had to turn away multiple breakaways and odd-man rushes over the finale 40 minutes.
During this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of TribLive and 105.9 The X said the defeat raised some red flags. However, he is still picking Pittsburgh to win the series.
“I’m not flipping my pick, but I’m saying, ‘Uh oh,’” Madden cautioned. “I thought Philly played like a young, hungry team, and they played playoff hockey. They adjusted. They hit. They went shift-by-shift hard, whereas the Penguins looked like what they are: An older team with a couple of kids.”
Madden seized on one particular aspect of the game where the Penguins failed.
“They didn’t adjust. The Flyers played a 1-3-1 from what I saw. The Penguins couldn’t solve it,” Madden continued. “They couldn’t get through the neutral zone. They got very little zone time. They have a knack for just playing how they want to, and not budging from that. That was a trademark during the (Mike) Sullivan years.”
However, Madden isn’t laying that shortcoming at the feet of Sullivan’s successor, Dan Muse.
“I want to blame what happened Saturday night on the players, because I refuse to look at Dan Muse in his first playoff game to decline to adjust when something wasn’t working,” Madden said. “There are a number of things that contributed to that loss, but the stubbornness I might put that at the top of the list. They did not adjust, or even try to.”
As far as the individual players who deserve scrutiny, Madden says it’s easy to identify quite a few.
“(Elmer) Soderblom, emboldened by that great goal in a meaningless game against a crap team in the season finale at St. Louis, inexplicably—almost hilariously—tried to play hero ball every time he got the puck,” Madden said. “There were a lot of things that went wrong that we could put on individuals.”
Surprisingly, Madden put Skinner on that list.
“Skinner played well, but he didn’t steal a game — which is my complaint about the goaltending dating back to when (Tristan) Jarry took over as No.1. The goaltending never steals a game,” Madden said. “(Evgeni) Malkin scored that goal to get the Penguins back in it, but he coughed up three breakaways that just never got converted. So if we want to point fingers, I don’t have enough hands to do that.”
Also during the podcast, Madden and I discuss some potential line changes for Game 2. We analyze the Pirates’ series win over Tampa Bay. We speculate about the Steelers’ approach to the NFL Draft, which starts on Thursday. And we get into the ongoing wait-and-see game with Aaron Rodgers.