Pens Off-day Report: Alarming signs have emerged where Bylsma's system has to be looked at much more closely by management moving forward

When a Cup favorite is down 0-3 in the first round, criticism towards a head coach who has lost six straight playoff games and is 4-10 in his last 14 playoff games, is going to be there and will only mount if the Penguins are swept Wednesday night.

To no surprise, questions about whether criticism towards Bylsma is "fair", was a hot topic in the locker room today.

"No, " Sidney Crosby said when asked if the criticism towards Bylsma is fair. "That's what happens when you lose. You want to point fingers at everyone and that's not any different in this case, " he said. "We know in this room we've still yet to put a full game together and that's no ones fault but our own and there's nothing we can do about that now. Only opportunity we have is to make it better next game and that's what we're going to try to do."

James Neal took the same stance.

"Yeah, for sure, " Neal said indicating the criticism is "unfair". "We’ve played a style of hockey all year that has been successful. We come out in the first game and they come back and score three goals on us. You can say what you want about it, but we need to play better and we need to not give up chances like we have. We’ve kind of let our goalie out to dry a few times. He’s taken heat for that. It’s a team game and we need to do a lot of things better to get one win, " Neal said.

While it's hard to pinpoint the Penguins being down 0-3 on Bylsma and yes they were successful once again in the regular season, but two things management needs to evaluate this off-season very closely is Bylsma's system moving forward and how the Penguins evaluate players, most notably what they seek out of their defensemen, as the team is infatuated more with defenders who can skate and move the puck well, than they are with defenders who can clear the front of the net, and block shots.

An issue for the Penguins in regards to what might be a Bylsma issue has been a "mindset problem" this hockey club has, something  I wrote about on Sunday prior to Game 3. In game 3, the Penguins "mindset problem" showed up again and a prime example of that is when your 4th line is getting caught deep in the offensive zone and the Flyers going the other way on an odd-man rush leading to a Daniel Briere goal, which gave the Flyers a 3-1 first period lead. When a teams 4th line isn't responsible defensively, there's some serious issues.

If the Penguins bow out tomorrow night in the same fashion they did on Sunday, Bylsma doesn't deserve to lose his job but the heat will surely be on and it should be on in one critical area, his system, with the Penguins imploding this round, struggles in the playoffs for three years now, and defensive struggles for a while being there, that at times were covered up previously by Marc Andre Fleury when he was on his game.

Bylsma's uptempo offensive style attack has to become looked at much more closely by management and fully evaluated this summer on whether adjustments in Bylsma's system are needed and can be made with him behind the bench. As one long-time scout told me over the weekend. "A coach trying to go away from what he believes [system] in.... it just leads to trouble."

Even if the Penguins come back and win a couple games to make things interesting, if this management group goes into the off-season believing the Penguins problems against Philadelphia are mainly just bad luck on special teams and bad goaltending from Marc Andre Fleury, this team will never get to where it wants to go.

-- Defenseman Zbynek Michalek played in a tight defensive structure in Phoenix prior to signing with Pittsburgh in 2010, and I asked him today if he feels the Penguins offensive attack needs to be scaled down for the Penguins to start slowing down the Flyers.