ST. LOUIS -- Mike Sullivan has been in and around the NHL for most of the past three decades.
He's witnessed an awful lot during that time, including a few things that he probably has found difficult to believe.
But never, Sullivan said, has he seen anything like the run of injuries to key players that the Penguins have experienced during the first two months of the 2019-20 season.
"Never this many, for this long," he said.
When the puck dropped on what became a 5-2 loss to the Blues at Enterprise Center Saturday night, the Penguins' man-games lost total for the season stood at an even 100, including the absences of four regulars -- Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Justin Schultz and Nick Bjugstad -- currently in varying states of rehab and recovery.
On the first shift of the opening period, that list grew to five, as Brian Dumoulin was hobbled after St. Louis forward Zach Sanford fell on his right leg behind the Penguins' net.
Dumoulin struggled to get off the ice, and needed assistance from two men to get to the locker room.
He did not return to the game, and little is known about the extent of the injury.
"I don't have a lot of information for you right now," Sullivan said after the game. "All I can tell you is that he's out with a lower-body injury."
Update: Dumoulin had surgery and is expected to miss eight weeks minimum.
The Penguins were playing their second game in two nights and their third in four, and suddenly had to play with final 59-plus minutes without a guy who works alongside Kris Letang on the top pairing and who had been averaging 21 minutes, 59 seconds of ice time per game.
Dumoulin's departure forced Sullivan to scramble his pairings and pile extra minutes on the five defensemen who remained. Letang ended up playing 28:23, Jack Johnson 26:24, Marcus Pettersson 24:58, John Marino 21:03 and Chad Ruhwedel 15:24.
Johnson, though, suggested that the increased workloads weren't the biggest problem that Dumoulin's injury caused.
"The toughest part is not necessarily going down to five (defensemen)," he said. "It's just losing a good player."
Perhaps, but Penguins defensemen made some errors during the final 20 minutes that possibly could be traced to being physically worn down.
"I thought we made some fatigue mistakes in the third period that maybe we wouldn't have if we had a guy like (Dumoulin)," Sullivan said.
He didn't cite any examples, but leaving Jaden Schwartz unchecked in front of the net before he scored during a St. Louis power play at 17:05 of the third probably qualifies.
The Penguins also were victimized by some bad luck, such as when Blues forward Nathan Walker golfed a bouncing puck past Matt Murray at 14:01 of the second period to break a 1-1 tie and put St. Louis in front to stay.
"That was a tough one," Murray said. "It was rolling and took a big bounce and (Walker's shot) just kind of fooled me."
Good fortune almost certainly played a role in Walker scoring, since he made solid contact with a puck that wasn't on the ice. Then again, it could be argued that it it really wasn't a fluke because Walker has scored half of his career NHL goals exactly that way. Of course, he only has two of those.
Mind you, the Penguins weren't the only ones guilty of some conspicuous errors.
Consider Ivan Barbashev's goal at 2:54 of the third period, which ultimately became the game-winner.
The scoring sequence began when Pettersson had a major blunder in the offensive end, fanning on a shot attempt and getting caught behind the play when it moved in the other direction. Dominik Simon dropped back to cover for him on the Blues' three-on-two break that resulted, but St. Louis' Tyler Bozak bulldozed Simon in the Penguins' end, clearing a path for Barbashev to get off an unimpeded shot from near the left hash.
It looked like a textbook interference penalty, since Simon had neither touched the puck nor seemed likely to do so anytime soon, but neither of the referees, Brian Pochmara and Gord Dwyer, shared that perspective.
"They obviously didn't see it that way," Sullivan said. "It doesn't really matter what our opinion is, what yours or mine is. It matters how the referees see it. They didn't see it that way."
Losing to the Blues capped a lost weekend for the Penguins, who were coming off a 5-2 defeat in Columbus the previous evening, but while the scores in those two games were identical, the efforts the Penguins put forth in them were not.
After sleepwalking and sputtering through much of the game against the Blue Jackets, they put forth a fairly inspired effort for much of the one against St. Louis.
"We definitely competed harder," Johnson said.
Sullivan didn't dispute that point.
"I thought that for most of the game, we played a pretty good game," he said. "We had territory. We had scoring chances."
What they didn't have was good special-teams play. That's a key variable most of the time, and even more important when a team is missing as many significant contributors as the Penguins are.
St. Louis went 1-for-3 with the extra man, as the Penguins gave up at least one power-play goal for the sixth game in a row. This, immediately after a 10-game run during which they did not allow a man-advantage goal.
"We have to fix the penalty-kill, because it's losing games for us right now," Sullivan said.
Meanwhile, their power play was 0-for-2, marking the fourth time in the past six games that it has been shut out.
"Our power play needs be better, as well," Sullivan said. "We had a couple of opportunities on our power play, and we didn't get the job done."
That, they believe, can change. And it might have to, given that there's no guarantee -- at least not yet -- that any of their injured players will be back in uniform anytime soon.
"We've got to go with the guys we have who are healthy," Sullivan said. "We think we are capable. We just have to make sure we play a solid team game. If we do that, we're going to give ourselves a chance to win every night."
And if they don't, the pain won't be limited to the players on the injured list.
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