Ian Cole (right) of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Landon Ferraro of the Boston Bruins battle for the puck during the third period of their NHL at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. (AFP)

By Jonathan Bombulie/The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (TNS)


Defenseman Trevor Daley had only been around the Penguins for about half a day when he incredulously watched his new team get shut out by the Boston Bruins on Wednesday night.
“These guys are world-class hockey players,” Daley said. “Soon, soon, very soon, it’s going to come for these guys.”
With that, Daley reached the point where many who watch the Penguins closely have been for weeks or months.
On paper, the roster is full of players with high-end talent and a track record for creating offense, but somehow, the team has lost its scoring touch.
Max Talbot scored in the first period, Jimmy Hayes scored in the second, and Tuukka Rask made 34 saves to lead the Bruins to a 3-0 victory. It was the Penguins’ fifth loss in their past six games and their third shutout loss in 30 games this season.
“We’ve got to find solutions,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “We can’t look for any sort of excuses. The answers are in the room. We have to find them, and we have to work together to work our way out of this.
“That’s the message I’m going to bring to our team. We’re in this thing together, and we’re going to figure this out.”
Sullivan, in his second game with the Penguins, shuffled his lines and power-play units before the game. Shook them up during the game, too.
The Penguins outshot Boston, 34-29, including an 18-4 edge in the second period. They carried the play for long stretches.
They simply can’t score, and it’s leaving them in a tough spot in the race for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, limping along with a 15-12-3 record.
“We need to go to the net,” Evgeni Malkin said. “With rebounds, maybe we need to score not pretty goals, but score a couple goals. Luck comes back. We start to win, start to score.”
On the reconfigured power play, Malkin was at the center point on the top unit, and Phil Kessel was the trigger man on the second unit.
Malkin said he saw progress, and Kessel and Chris Kunitz hit posts, but the bottom line was two shots in six minutes of power-play time.
“In my experience, when teams go through struggles, part of the solution is always to simplify,” Sullivan said. “So we’re trying to simplify the process. We’re trying to shoot the puck, get the puck to the net, get people to the net and see if we can’t work our way out of this.”
The Penguins fell behind 1-0 in the first period after a missed connection between Conor Sheary and Brian Dumoulin coming out of the defensive zone resulted in a turnover and a goal for a familiar face now wearing a Bruins jersey.
Talbot, a popular former Penguins forward, picked up the puck outside the blue line, skated up the right wing on a two-on-one and beat goalie Jeff Zatkoff on the glove side.
The Bruins doubled their lead four minutes into the second period. Ryan Spooner made a centering pass from the left-wing corner, and the puck bounced in off the tangle of defenseman Ian Cole and Hayes as they skidded into the cage.
“Frustration is the word,” Dumoulin said. “It’s easy for it to settle in. It’s definitely a factor. It’s one of the key things at this point. We have to refrain from being frustrated.”