​IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters ConnectThe end is near.There is a shelf in the Pittsburgh Penguins dressing room, and on it rests the game puck from every win. After 15 games this season, there are just five pucks, and it seems there are an increasing number of dejected players. And possibly a coach, too. The Penguins were able to limit the eye-rolling mistakes, but their special teams took the dirt nap for them instead, as they wasted a 5v3 power play with four minutes remaining before giving up a power play goal with 32 seconds remaining to lose to the Vegas Golden Knights 3-2.“I think (structure) has been a focus for us the last handful of days, just staying structured,” said Tommy Novak, who had a goal and an assist. “You know, coming back to the house, stopping, not giving up so many great looks. So just a lot of focus on that ice, and staying in battle. So yeah, I think (we were) probably better, but it sucks not to get the win.”It wasn’t a great performance, but it was good enough to win. And make no mistake, more so than some of the bewildering losses, this one was a heavyweight gut punch. A team can fight, and it can chase improvements, but it cannot outrun reality. And that ominous cloud of rebuilding seemed to creep ever closer over the horizon Tuesday. Even without saying it, the players know it. And that very negative reality is becoming impossible to ignore. The Pittsburgh Penguins are not only far behind their opponents in terms of structure and cohesion, but collectively aren’t good enough. When coach Dan Muse was asked about limiting Vegas for much of the second and parts of the third period, because indeed the Penguins were playing a more structured brand of hockey, Muse went immediately to the soft defending and mistakes. An Xs and Os question became an indictment of his team’s squishy, soft lack of defending. “I thought it was better, and then early in the game, I still think we were…it wasn’t so much the structural piece. There were a couple of breakdowns there, one in the neutral zone, just letting a guy behind us. Hockey is a game of mistakes, we just need to limit them. We’ve got to limit the big ones, and so I thought for the most part we did a better job with that,” said Muse. “But it was more early in the game, definitely the first period. I just felt like even though we were in areas, we had to be in the fight, more at the puck battles.”“And there are opportunities where we could have gotten stops in the defensive zone. So, we’re doing the right things defensively, but now we have to add more to it where we’re recovering pucks. We’re not just relying on that structure, and that’s the piece that I feel like, coming off tonight, for too much of the game needed to be better.”Muse’s specific answer opened the gateway to the pressing reality of the current team. They are poorly constructed. They simply do not have enough players who naturally engage in those basic puck battles in the defen