The Pittsburgh Penguins notched their first overtime loss of the 2023-24 regular season Tuesday, falling 3-2 to the Nashville Predators. It was good to see the Penguins claw their way back from an early 2-0 hole, and they certainly earned the loser point for that. All anyone in the Pittsburgh fanbase seems to be concerned about is the refereeing, and particularly the (disputably) missed interference call in overtime that freed up Filip Forsberg to score the game-winner for Nashville. The Penguins have drawn the second-fewest power play opportunities in the NHL, and a potentially overlooked penalty in overtime only lends further credence to a suggestion that the referees have some bias against Pittsburgh. However, nobody can control the on-ice officials; missed and bad calls happen all the time to any team, so it comes down to the team itself to take advantage of the opportunities they are given.

To that point, I will once again highlight the fact that the Penguins did have two power-play opportunities against one of the worst penalty killing teams in the League on Tuesday, and they failed to score on both of them. Like I said in Tuesday’s Gameday, Pittsburgh’s inability to produce on the power play is really holding them back, and now they are 0-for-20 on the power play in their last eight games, and they have a 3-4-1 record in that span. They’ve also lost three of their last four games by a single goal. They’re really lucky that it’s early and the rest of the division/conference isn’t getting away from them, but they cannot keep this up forever. The big question is when someone is going to do something about it. (The answer is probably never! So we’re just going to have to accept this status quo and move forward! Wheee!)

Tonight the Penguins finish up November with the first game of a curious sandwich of a four-game set – a Double Stuf Oreo, if you will – against the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Philadelphia Flyers: tonight in Tampa, then a home-and-home back-to-back against the Flyers before heading back to Florida to face the Bolts again next Thursday. Tampa Bay is right in the thick of the Atlantic Division playoff race, tied with Toronto and Detroit for third but technically fifth because the Lightning have played more games. November has been all over the map for Tampa: a 6-6-2 record highlighted by a lot of scoring for both the Lightning and their opponents. Since November 1 Tampa Bay has scored the third-most goals in the NHL, up there with the likes of Vancouver, Colorado and Edmonton, but they’ve also allowed the second-most goals, down with San Jose, Anaheim and Columbus.

Akin to Nashville, the big problem for the Bolts has been their goaltending. They were forced to start the season without perennial Vezina contender Andrei Vasilevskiy, and he only just made his first appearance of the season in Tampa Bay’s huge 8-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes this past Friday. Before then, the Lightning were depending on the tandem of Jonas Johansson and Matt Tomkins, and I’ll stop you from asking, “who?”, by responding that Johansson’s 18 starts this season is already a career high for him, and you could say the same for Tomkins and his three starts as well. In any event, neither of those goaltenders have been particularly good at their job; subsequently, Tampa have the seventh-worst team save percentage in the League. Besides that, everything else for the Lightning – second-best offense, second-best power play, top ten penalty kill – has been great. So, in typical fashion, it appears that Tampa Bay is content to hang back before they invariably start to play well and cement themselves into the top of the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference playoff picture.