from Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,

The Penguins are going to be fine even if their 5-4 loss to Columbus in Game 4 Tuesday night qualified for that worst-performance category.

It would have been nice if the Penguins had wrapped up the first-round series with a sweep if only because it would have meant more time to rest and heal before the next round against Washington or Toronto. But it was unrealistic to expect four consecutive wins. Columbus is a proud team, a 108-point team in the regular season. It wasn’t going to go quietly into the off-season even if it had to play without its best player, defenseman Zach Werenski, who was lost for the rest of the playoffs after a gruesome facial injury in Game 3.

The Penguins didn’t match the Blue Jackets’ intensity and desperation, didn’t come close, actually. They were horrible again in the first period. Marc-Andre Fleury wasn’t at his best. His teammates gave him very little help, allowing 34 shots on goal, many of them high-quality. Sidney Crosby and linemates Jake Guentzel and Conor Sheary —the best line in hockey through the early portion of these playoffs — were a combined minus-7 and finished with just one point, Guentzel’s cosmetic goal with 27.6 seconds left.

But it’s just one loss.

It was a delay of the inevitable, not a denial.

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Watch the highlights from the Penguins 5-4 loss to the Blue Jackets below...