Penguins keep sliding with 4-0 loss to Oilers

"The start doesn't help," Mike Sullivan said. "You know, I think the guys went in with the right intent, the right mindset. There was good energy going into the game. And when you're going through some of the challenges that we've gone through lately, you get off to that kind of start, it presents a challenge right away."

• The inability to finish, something that has plagued the Penguins all season and led to a team shooting percentage of 8.54%, good enough for 31st in the league? That was on display here too, peppering Oilers backup Calvin Pickard with 41 shots. It wouldn't even be accurate to say that they were held to the perimeter, either. They put up 12 high-danger shots on goal on Pickard, whereas the Oilers only put seven high-danger shots on Tristan Jarry. This five-on-five heat map shows where the Penguins were getting their unblocked shot attempts from, and they were certainly getting some off from around the crease:

"We're getting a lot of shots," said Reilly Smith. "We're just not getting good second opportunities. It might just be crashing the net, trying to grind our way out of this right now. The last three games, we're getting a lot of shots but we're not finding the back of the net."

• Where the Penguins weren't able to get much off was the power play, which was scoreless on five attempts. They didn't even get through two of the five power plays, negating one with a Jeff Carter roughing call and another with a too many men call. They recorded just six shots over the five attempts and allowed three. The shot attempts they weren't getting weren't of the best quality:

• It wasn't surprising that there wasn't a late rally. Mattias Ekholm added to the Oilers' lead in the first period with a shot that deflected off John Ludvig's skate, then Darnell Nurse scored a pair of goals after a scoreless second period. The Penguins have been toward the bottom of the league this season in terms of third-period comebacks, with only a 3-18-6 record when trailing after the second period. That's a .111 win percentage, ranking 25th in the league.

There's not much to do at this point as far as the roster goes. The trade deadline has passed. Some people may have this fantasy of the Penguins using these remaining games to give more guys from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton looks at the NHL level and sit some veterans, but that's just not possible for a number of reasons.

Sure, the 23-man roster limit goes away after the trade deadline, but the salary cap is in effect through the end of the regular seasons. The Penguins have $150,000 in cap space, per PuckPedia's math. That's it. Not even close to enough for a recall, and that's already with long-term injured reserve relief from both Jansen Harkins and Matt Nieto. There's no real way to free up space at this point either. Players are only eligible to be sent down to the AHL after the trade deadline if they were on an AHL roster at the time of the deadline. That means that for the rest of the season, the only players from this group eligible to be sent down are Jonathan Gruden and Valtteri Puustinen, who were both papered down on deadline day as a formality to keep their AHL eligibility, since Wilkes-Barre's season will almost surely last longer than Pittsburgh's.

Even if the Penguins did have the cap space, there are further limitations at this point in the season. From the trade deadline through the end of the regular season, teams have unlimited emergency recalls, to be used when they would otherwise be short a player. But teams are limited to only four standard recalls -- those kind of recalls a team makes when a player isn't needed, but has earned a shot. The Penguins are down to two of those after re-assigning and recalling Gruden and Puustinen on deadline day.

Barring further injuries, the roster is the roster.

 Kyle Dubas' selling of Jake Guentzel with no real additions for the NHL roster other than the Michael Bunting return indicates that management punting on this season and is aiming to come back stronger next year. After everything the team has shown this season, especially as of late, punting is the right move. No sense in wasting future assets to add for this season. While only eight points separate the Penguin from the last wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, four other teams now stand in their way. They're not close to being mathematically eliminated, but the climb seems insurmountable.

Still, the Penguins are trying to keep up their confidence and the belief that the season is salvageable.

"You don't have any other choice but to just muster (confidence) up, I think," Bryan Rust said. "Nobody's happy with what's going on, how things have been going. I think it doesn't matter how hard you may think it is. I think you just got to find a way to make that confidence for yourself. You've just got to push it and maybe get a little two, three, four extra percent."

"It's obviously tough," said Smith. "A lot of it is self talk, trying to communicate with the group and making sure we're buying in for each other. The only way you can get out of stretches like this is hold each other accountable, but at the same time, work together and try to stay positive."

It's a long shot to make the playoffs. It's an even longer shot to imagine that this team could make a real run this season, even if they do sneak in. The Penguins are going to try to keep that confidence up and try to make a late push over this next month, but it's probably too late. Coming back stronger next season will have to be the goal.