In the hockey culture, one is never supposed to criticize the goaltender.

The goaltender is always, always, always outside, whatever might have caused your team to fail.

So some of what I'm about to say might come across as a little uncomfortable.

Good morning to you. Good Wednesday morning. I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports,

and this is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're

into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and

pirates in the same place that you found this. Arters Shilovs was terrible last night.

He was absolutely to blame for what wound up a six to two loss to the avalanche. Might they have lost the game

anyway or whatever? Doesn't matter. The job of the goaltender is twofold. One, make saves. Two,

make enough of them to give your team a chance. He did no such thing. Gave up four goals on the first 12 shots that he saw.

Two more of them were those long-range floaters that he just can't seem to track.

Another was from a really severe angle in tight that never should have been available to the shooter,

and the other was a breakaway, and you want to say, all right, well, it's Nathan McKinnon and he's really, really great. Every once in a blue moon

stops somebody one-on-one. And I'm not even going to get into the fifth goal later on, which came

on a clear She-Love-style trademarked rebound. It's now been 20 goals conceded in the last four

games between Sheelovs and Stuart Skinner. The goaltending, no matter what they tell you, is not

good. And it's nowhere near good enough for this team to get into the playoffs.

Of the top 10 teams in the Eastern Conference, the bottom seven of those are now separated by

three whole points. Three of the Penguins' next four games are against teams in that little cluster.

The very next one is tomorrow night in Ottawa, where the Penguins never win,

and soon after that come the Islanders and the Red Wings,

all of whom will show up to the rink with better goaltenders than what the penguins have.

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