For now, the book is out on these guys.

The Penguins are a good team, who have surprised the league with how competitive they have been this year. They can keep their motor running for most of the game, but they have one very clear, fatal flaw. They are a fragile group.

So, if you’re an opposing head coach, and your team is trailing by a goal or more in the third period, the message to your team is pretty simple. All it takes is one. One goal against, and the Penguins start to crumble. They can’t handle the pushback.

That’s what I wrote late last night, after the Pittsburgh Penguins had blown a four-goal lead in the third period of their matinee against the San Jose Sharks. The Penguins had done something they hadn’t done since 1976 when they allowed the Sharks to storm all the way back from down 5-1 in the third period to win it in overtime.

Twenty-four hours later, the Utah Mammoth read that same book on the Penguins, and used it to fuel their own three-goal comeback in the third and eventual win in overtime.

It capped off an absolutely sickening week for the Penguins and their fans.

On Tuesday, the Penguins surrendered a game-tying goal to Anaheim with 0.1 seconds left on the clock. The Penguins eventually lost that stunner a shootout, their ninth straight loss in the skill competition.

Since then, Dan Muse and his team have not recovered from that heartbreak. They played an uninspired game vs Montreal, a 4-2 loss. They blew that aforementioned game to the Sharks at home. And now, they’ve done this.

Sigh.

Justin Brazeau got the scoring started early off a backhand shot, deflecting it off a member of the Mammoth and into the cage. Bryan Rust tacked one on later in the first to give the Penguins a 2-0 lead after one. In the second frame, Ben Kindel scored a beauty on a breakaway, and the Penguins skated into the second intermission with a three goal lead.

But for the black and gold, we just can’t trust these things anymore, can we?

Just like last time, it only took one goal from Utah to steal all the momentum in this game. These Penguins show time and time again that if you actually get up and show some pushback, they don’t know how to handle it. They crumble and collapse at the first sign of pressure.

Murashov was peppered with shots, facing far more rubber than he should have had to from the Mammoth. Utah more than doubled the Penguins in shots on goal, 37-16. They nearly tripled Pittsburgh in third period shots, unleashing a 17-6 barrage against the Penguins.

That’s an incredible indictment of the overall team performance tonight. One thing that the Penguins have done consistently over this now five-game skid is out-shoot their opponents.

In Dallas, the Penguins out-shot the stars 29-23. At home against the Ducks, 47-28. Against the Canadiens, 38-29. And against the Sharks, 43-32. But against Utah, they were trampled in the shots department.

The entire blue line is just lost. They folded goal after goal in that third period, each more infuriating than the last. They learned absolutely nothing from the game prior.

But, it’s just like I was saying about the loss against San Jose: sometimes, you just need your goaltender to make a save. Is it fair to him, especially considering his lack of NHL experience, to let him face that kind of onslaught of shots? No. It’s absolutely unacceptable for every skater in the lineup.

Such is life in the NHL, though. Every now and then, it’s up to your goaltender to bail out his team when they are clearly struggling to defend. That is especially the case when an opposing team rips two goals in 15 seconds, and four goals in seven minutes.

This criticism is in no way a referendum on his prospective NHL career, or whether fans should still be excited for him. But today, the Penguins needed far more than what they got from their goalie. Murashov completely fell apart.

He gave up a juicy rebound that Utah’s Nate Schmidt scored to get the Mammoth on the board. He did it again, allowing Michael Carcone to pot the goal on a wacky bounce after he blew right past Connor Clifton. The third goal goes through traffic as the Penguins left Sean Durzi all alone on the right side. Then, with the lead already evaporated, Murashov couldn’t properly adjust to a cross-crease pass in time.

Any credit the Penguins clawed back when Brazeau deflected one in to tie the game at four was almost immediately lost when the game went to overtime.

Less than a minute in, Kindel makes the rare rookie mistake and throws the puck directly to Utah down the ice. Could Erik Karlsson have tried harder to track down that puck? Probably.

But Kindel is not forced to make any play right then and there. He has the puck on his stick with open space in his own zone. He doesn’t have to try and force that pass to Karlsson.

In overtime, possession is everything. Kindel had just gifted the Mammoth a free one. The puck eventually winds up on the stick of Dylan Guenther, who waltzes right in and shoots it past Murashov for the win.

We talk about how bad the Penguins have performed in shootouts over the last year or so, but maybe it’s time we consider that they are just cursed as soon as regulation ends.

The Penguins have played ten overtime games this season. They are 1-9 in those games. They have lost all five shootouts they have played in this year, and their only overtime win came against Columbus back on Black Friday.

But none of them were as humiliating, or demoralizing, or just downright unacceptable than this one.

This should never be a result that’s allowed to happen. But, if it ever, ever, ever does, the last thing you should ever expect is to have it happen twice in a two-day span.

This is the kind of weekend that some might consider a fireable offense. No, I’m not suggesting that the Penguins can Muse 31 games into his tenure with the team. But it’s not unheard of to see some fans suggest that after the two collapses we’ve witnessed this weekend.

Whether fair or not, this kind of stuff eventually comes back on the coach. Yes, his forwards are injured, his defensemen aren’t a good unit, and his goaltending is vastly unproven. But he’s the one in the suit behind the bench.

It’s one way to lose games. All in all, the Penguins are still a better team than we expected from them this season. But you cannot, cannot, cannot lose like this.