GTOG Instant Reaction: 'Til the Bitter End; Pens Lose 4-2

By Finesse

This is not the time to jump ship.

But if you can find a nearby bridge, we won't blame you.

If Game 5 was like getting blindsided by an 18-wheeler, Game 6 was Chinese water torture. Tonight was a slow, excruciating two and a half hours of some of the worst hockey the Pens have played all season. Unfortunately, it was either not quite bad enough or the Lightning just aren't quite good enough to have put you out of your misery early like in Game 5. Instead, while the Lightning went invisible in the second and early third period - giving you just a little bit of hope that the Pens might actually win this game - every single thing that was wrong with the Pens this season was put into a blender, mixed up, and then excreted all over the ice during five second period powerplays.

For anyone watching on Versus, you heard a story about a Lightning assistant coach -- maybe his name was Simmons, we don't know -- who is very sick and was watching from the hospital. It goes without saying that GTOG wishes this man a speedy recovery. This individual was apparently texting the Lightning bench FROM THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT to advise them on their penalty kill strategy. It worked. Granato, Reirden, and yes, Bylsma, are being outcoached via cell phone by a guy in a hospital. We aren't making this up.

This isn't Marc-Andre Fleury's fault. It isn't a single individual's fault, although deciding whether Letestu or Kovalev has been the Pens' worst player this series is like Rebecca Black deciding between the front or the back seat - you can make a really good argument either way. Kovalev makes global warming look fast. And Letestu, although we're sure he is trying super hard, would look like he's out of his league if his league was the WNBA. Oh, but combined they played 9:42 on the powerplay. Because that makes sense.

We will have much more tomorrow in Get To Our Postgame, which will likely feature a reprint of some 2+ hours of sad, lonely, depressing, self-pitying text messages about whether you'd rather have Goligoski than Letang in 2017. Yeah, it got that bad.

However...

Somehow, someway, the Pens can, and actually might, still win this series. The past two games are over  - you can't lose them again, even though the Pens tried their best to recreate Game 5 tonight. We all knew that this series would not be easy, even if we didn't think the Pens would look this horrendous along the way.  But since the beginning, we have said Pens in 7.  You don't change a horse midstream.  Pens in 7.

Hopefully has unlimited texting plan