Penguins focus on improving breakout for Game 2 vs. Predators

It was the first thing coach Mike Sullivan made the Penguins practice on his first day on the job, and it never has fallen far from his focus in the 18 months since.

For the Penguins to have success, they have to break the puck out of their own zone cleanly.

In the first three rounds of the playoffs, they faced a variety of obstacles in that quest.

In the opening round against Columbus, they faced a gang of aggressive forecheckers who looked like they just had been released from a cage. In the last round against Ottawa, they faced a passive group intent on clogging the neutral zone at all costs.

In the Stanley Cup Final against the Nashville Predators, they'll see a mix of both approaches — and it might be their stiffest challenge yet.

Nashville coach Peter Laviolette takes a structure similar to the 1-3-1 Ottawa uses but has it push forward, looking to force turnovers, rather than sitting back and waiting for mistakes.

When it's employed by a roster filled with pesky forwards and the most mobile defensemen in the league, it becomes quite a menace.

“You get to see a little bit of everything,” defenseman Trevor Daley said. “I think these guys are a little bit more like Columbus. They come at you pretty hard. I just feel we can do a better job in our own right.”

The Penguins probably will do a better job on the breakout in Game 2 on Wednesday night if for no other reason than they couldn't do much worse. Despite taking a 5-3 victory in Game 1, they managed just 12 shots, going 37 minutes without one during one brutal mid-game stretch.

“To be honest with you, when we were making our plays last night, the puck wasn't really sitting down at all,” defenseman Ron Hainsey said. “Every time I was trying to make a play with the puck or skate, the thing was bouncing and rolling. It was almost like you couldn't see much out there for plays.”

Once the Penguins got a 3-0 lead with an unlikely offensive surge late in the first period, breaking the puck out of their own zone became even more problematic, and it's not hard to see why.

A defenseman whose team has a three-goal lead in a pressure-packed situation like the first game of the Stanley Cup Final isn't going to want to risk a turnover. It's just human nature. Therefore, he's hesitant to use the middle of the ice.

“When you're up three goals, the way you play is dictated by that a tad,” Hainsey said. “We probably let it get a little over-dictated that way for a stretch.”

If that defenseman instead tries a low-risk pass up the boards, Nashville's quick and talented defensemen will close the distance and foul up the breakout plan nine times out of 10.

Daley said that's not a phenomenon limited to the Predators, however.

“For the most part, the way the game's played, how fast it is, you've got to take the boards away,” Daley said. “We try to take the boards away, too. The two last teams we played tried to take the boards away. We're kind of used to it. We just have to do a better job of executing.”

To help the Penguins do a better job of executing on the breakout, Sullivan went back to the lab Tuesday. He shared the results of his analysis in a video meeting with the team before an optional practice in Cranberry.

In the first round, the Penguins shifted their focus to a quick counter-attack to use the Blue Jackets' aggressiveness against them. In the third round, the Penguins preached patience in dealing with Ottawa's tough-to-penetrate trap.

Now it's up to Sullivan to crack Nashville's code. It's a part of the job the ultra-competitive Massachusetts native seems to enjoy.

“I think that's part of the fun part of being in a seven-game series, those subtle adjustments and tweaks that you make from game to game, whatever it may be,” Sullivan said. “So we as a coaching staff take pride in that. We work extremely hard to try to prepare these guys for what they're up against. We try to offer them the tactical solutions from game to game to try to help them have success.”

Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter at @BombulieTrib.