ELMONT, N.Y. — Erik Karlsson sat in the somber Pittsburgh Penguins locker room following the season’s final morning skate on Wednesday in New York, his customary smile replaced by a frown.
“Five damn years,” he said, shaking his head.
It’s been two years since the Penguins last qualified for the playoffs, but the drought is longer for Karlsson. He hasn’t been in the postseason since May 2019, when his San Jose Sharks fell to the St. Louis Blues in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals — a game Karlsson didn’t play because of injury.
Karlsson’s trade to Pittsburgh was supposed to resuscitate the fading Penguins and send the future Hall of Fame defenseman back into the playoffs. It completed neither objective.
“I think it’s been an underachieving season for a lot of us,” he said. “I think we’re a much better team than what we’ve displayed in 81 games this season. But at the same time, we did all of this to ourselves. That’s what is frustrating.”
Karlsson had a fair amount of power when San Jose general manager Mike Grier was looking for a trade partner last season and made it clear he preferred Pittsburgh.
The bitter disappointment of the past six months hasn’t soured him on the city or the organization.
“I love it in Pittsburgh,” he said. “I really do. It’s been great. It’s where I want to be. I was so excited to come to Pittsburgh, and, obviously, it hasn’t turned out the way anyone wanted it to, or the way anyone thought that it would. But the good thing is, I’ve been here for a year now. I see the way things are, I see things more in-depth now that I’ve been here for a while. I like what’s here. I think that everything will get better for this team moving forward.”
Karlsson has never won the Stanley Cup but understands the Penguins, who were officially eliminated from the playoffs on Tuesday night, always have championship expectations.
“We are a huge disappointment,” he said. “Huge. We underachieved so much and it’s very disappointing. There’s no other way to say it.”
One issue stands out among the rest.
The Penguins, who boast future Hall of Famers such as Karlsson, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang and accomplished NHL goal scorers such as Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Jeff Carter and Michael Bunting, rank 31st out of 32 teams with a 14.6 conversation rate on the power play.
But really, no team has been worse on the power play. While the Flyers rank behind the Penguins, they’ve only allowed five shorthanded goals this season. The Penguins have allowed a league-leading 12.
“I know, I know,” Karlsson said. “People should be asking me and us about the power play. It’s the worst in the league.”
Why?
“Here’s the thing,” Karlsson started. “It’s not just one thing with the power play. It really isn’t. It’s an accumulation of many things that happened throughout the season. We were just never able to work it out because there were so many things.”
Karlsson didn’t get into specifics but did describe how psychologically stuck the Penguins became on the power play.
“We tried so hard to work it all out but we never really did,” he said. “We couldn’t get our minds out of the situation. That’s what happens. When you’re into something so incredibly deep like we all were on the power play, I think it actually becomes harder to see and figure out what the solution is. You try to get yourself out of that mindset. You try and try. You want to get rid of this feeling that you have, that something’s not right on the power play and you want to fix it. But we couldn’t.”
Karlsson said there’s equal blame to go around.
“Oh, it’s on all of us,” he said. “We are a lot better than what we showed this year. I know that much.”
By his lofty standards, Karlsson was passable this season but hardly his best.
Entering Wednesday’s meaningless season finale against the playoff-bound Islanders, Karlsson produced 11 goals and 55 points. For most defensemen, that’s quite an offensive season.
For Karlsson, who is one year removed from recording 25 goals and 101 points and winning his third Norris Trophy, this was a disappointing season. His defensive lapses were expected and, at times, profound.
So, too, was his offensive genius. Given the talent that surrounds Karlsson — on the power play and alongside either Crosby or Malkin’s line — it defies logic that the Penguins weren’t more lethal offensively and that they didn’t reach the postseason.
“I know we have a better team than this,” Karlsson said. “We are capable of more than this.”
Karlsson doesn’t know what to expect this summer, but he’s hopeful that team president/general manager Kyle Dubas doesn’t blow the roster up.
Karlsson wants another crack at this and will likely get his wish thanks to the glut of no-movement clauses in the locker room restricting what Dubas can do.
“Well, let’s just put it this way,” Karlsson said. “I just hope we’re together for a bit longer, because that way, we would get another chance to show just what we are capable of doing. I think we’ve learned a lot this season. I just want the power play to be a non-issue starting next season. It snowballed on us and we never got out of it. But I know we’re so much better than this and I want us to get the chance to prove it.”
Notes
• Alex Nedeljkovic will start against the Islanders on Wednesday night, meaning he will have started the final 13 games of the season.
• Emil Bemstrom isn’t available against the Islanders, coach Mike Sullivan said. A Bemstrom hat trick against the Islanders, no matter how unlikely it may have been, would have forced the Penguins to forfeit a third-round pick instead of a sixth-round pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets in completion of the trade that brought Bemstrom to Pittsburgh.
• Speaking of hat tricks, Malkin enters the final game of the season needing three goals to reach No. 500 for his career.
• Karlsson is unsure if he will represent Team Sweden in the upcoming World Championships in Prague.
(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
