PHOTO COURTESY PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

The Penguins spent last weekend getting lambasted by networks broadcasting here in the United States and Canada.

But so far, at least, the criticisms and declarations regarding the sorry state of the Pens have fallen on deaf ears.

Whether it was Ray Ferraro (ABC/ESPN) calling out slow, lazy line changes, or Paul Bissonnette (TNT) pointing out how soft the Pens have become, or P. K. Subban (TNT) putting on a pair of glasses (an apparent mocking of President of Hockey Operations Kyle Dubas), the shots at the Pens and their product just kept coming during a 5-1 loss on Saturday in Boston and a 4-0 setback on Sunday at home against Edmonton.

Perhaps the most penetrating comment of all was this from TNT’s Eddie Olczyk: “They gotta pick a lane here, at some point, very quickly. You try to replace (Jake) Guentzel over the course of the summer and you try to make another run, bring the band back. Or, they gotta make some tough decisions. To me, anything should be on the table here in Pittsburgh moving forward.”

Edzo hit the nail on the head.

But the head coach, alas, is apparently exempt.

Speaking on “The GM Show” on the flagship station of the Penguins Radio Network, 105.9 The X, Dubas offered up yet another wholehearted endorsement of Mike Sullivan on Wednesday night.

“‘Sully,’ as I’ve said a couple times now, if you don’t have ‘Sully’ then you’re looking for ‘Sully,’” Dubas maintained. “If you have it, you should keep it. He obviously deeply cares. This has not been an easy time for any of us but especially those that have been here much before my time here that have had a lot of success. They want to get the Penguins back to that level. ‘Sully,’ I think, takes this very personally and it’s deeply important to him. He’s just too good of a coach to just summarily put it all on when it doesn’t go perfectly. It’s on me, it’s on the players, it’s on all of us and we’ll get through it together.”

So Sullivan’s not going anywhere, much like this season’s Penguins.

Yet when you watch the Penguins play of late, including through a more competitive but also scattered, undisciplined, unstructured, 2-1 overtime loss on Tuesday night in Ottawa, about the last thought to come to mind would be, “This is a well-coached team.”

That’s not all on Sullivan, but nor is he absolved of responsibility.

The Pens have clearly tuned him out. He hasn’t been able to reach them on matters such as “discipline and detail,” two aspects of the Pens’ game Sullivan admittedly found lacking in an embarrassing, 6-1 loss on March 3 in Edmonton (not to be confused with the embarrassing, 4-0 loss to the Oilers at home last Sunday).

Sullivan made that most recent reference to “discipline and detail” (far from the first time he’s gone there) after the Pens’ 59th game of the season.

They still hadn’t gotten the message by then.

They haven’t yet.

And that’s a much bigger issue than hijacked Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads.

Sullivan has also been reluctant to embrace the type of player and the type of approach that can deliver the physicality and grit the Penguins so obviously lack. It’s either that or he can’t get the players to embrace it.

Either way, the Pens don’t have it.

Sullivan has always been much more of a fan of skate-and-create than bump-and-grind but that approach, while admirable, is no longer applicable now that the stars have faded.

And yet the guy whose opinion matters most, Dubas, has given Sullivan yet another rubber stamp of approval.

Makes you wonder if Dubas will ever be willing to address anything that falls into the category of a critical issue or an agonizingly difficult decision with the necessary objectivity and perspective.

Or if he’s simply wearing the wrong-colored glasses.