The Penguins stick with the familiar forward groups and rotate Harrison Brunicke out in favor of Connor Clifton getting into his second game of the season. The even goalie rotation continues which makes it Tristan Jarry’s night.
Their opponents on the night, the Florida Panthers, are going with this lineup:
Pittsburgh starts out well, Tommy Novak keeps his legs moving and makes Jeff Petry take him down to send the Penguins to the game’s first power play. The power play stays hot, albeit in a messy play around the net. Bryan Rust eventually gets the puck and Sidney Crosby has expertly removed himself from the fray, just waiting for the puck. Rust gets it to him, Crosby wrists a puck in before Sergei Bobrovsky can get back square to him. 1-0 Pens.
The visitors continue the better of the play, late in the period Rust gets tangled up with Anton Lundell and many players on both teams get together. Parker Wotherspoon jumps into the fray to help his buddy and gets a penalty for it. Rust and a Panther also go, granting Florida their first power play of the night but the period ends before they can get much going.
Shots are 7-6 PIT, they’ve had a few slow starts recently (only one goal for in the previous three opening periods) and did well to get on the board in the early going on the road.
The Pens kill off the rest of the penalty and later on get the game’s second goal. The Crosby line goes to work around the boards, holding the puck, working it to the point and wearing down the opponent. Eventually Erik Karlsson gets the puck on net, the rebound sits right there for Rickard Rakell to poke into the net for his third goal of the season to extend the league to 2-0.
Clifton heads to the box soon after, and the Panthers scored quickly on their second power play of the game. Brad Marchand set up shot at the far post and lets Mackie Samoskevich’s shot/pass go off Marchand and into the net. 2-1.
Right off the next faceoff, the Panthers get a great chance off the rust but luckily for the Pens Marchand shoots high and wide this time.
The Panthers control play for much of the period but then 18-year old Ben Kindel pops up to score. Kindel and Tommy Novak play a two-man game, passing the puck back and forth twice in the offensive zone. The crescendo is when Novak feeds Kindel for a one-time blast that beats Bobrovsky high to the short-side. 3-1 Pens with 4:36 to go in the second.
Shots went 13-5 FLA in the second period, but the scoring went 2-1 in the middle frame to the Pens. The champs were in the midst of a push there in the middle, that late-ish period goal by Kindel looms large to re-extend the lead back to two goals.
The Panthers narrowly miss a tap in right at the start of the period and then head to a power play when Evgeni Malkin trips a player in the offensive zone. The Panthers score again, creating a mini 2-on-1 down low, Ryan Shea takes the pass lane away for Marchand at the back door but Sam Reinhart is unmarked to snap a shot by Jarry. 3-2 game with 17:36 still to go.
Every time the Pens have needed a response tonight, they’ve found it and they get it again. Karlsson sends a puck up the ice and over a few defenders for Connor Dewar. Dewar doesn’t get much on a low shot that some how hits Bobrovsky and floats past him and into the net. 4-2 game with 15:11 to play. Strange one, it looked like Bobrovsky was going to reach out and swipe the slow shot away, but instead ended up bungling it and having it leak on by.
The Panthers aren’t champs for nothin’, they don’t go away easy. Marchand scores his second of the night dekeing a puck to his backhand and tucking it in with 8:54 to go. 4-3 game.
Pittsburgh finally gets their first power play since early in the game with Aaron Ekblad off for interference. It takes a matter of seconds before some elite passing from Rust to Malkin to Rakell to Crosby who lifts the puck into the net to re-establish a two-goal lead at 5-3 with 8:11 left in regulation. Big answer just 43 seconds to match Marchand’s second goal of the night with Crosby’s second.
Jarry makes a scorpion-esque type of save with his lower leg to deny Marchand’s hat trick effort.
The Pens ice the puck with 3:42 to play and Florida moves to pull the goalie.
Pittsburgh can’t score on the empty net via pressure, the Panthers hit a couple of posts and resort to a timeout with 1:08 to play for a final push. They don’t create much in the end.
- The move to sit Brunicke against one of the more dogged and aggressive forward groups out there makes sense logically to put a more rugged and veteran defender in Clifton in the lineup. Smart to pick the spots and shield a teenaged rookie on the road from the style involved in this matchup, of course in theory – Clifton didn’t take the best penalty in the second and opened the door for Florida to get back into the game and got caught stationary in front of the net on Marchand’s third period goal.
- We’ve seen the smarts from Crosby for 20 years and going on 21 seasons, him taking scope of the situation and settling into the best spot never grows old. His teammates had the numbers edge down low, Bobrovsky was discom-bob-ulated (heh) to the point where he had dropped his stick. So Crosby sat back in the weeds and let it develop, all he needed was someone to get the puck to him and it was going to be almost an automatic goal in that sequence. They did and then he did, the stuff of beauty.
- Later on, Crosby was credited with an assist on Rakell’s goal a full five seconds after the captain’s shift ended. Don’t see that every day for a guy on the bench to pick up a point on the goal, which speaks to just how much the Penguins were holding onto pucks and working.
- Lundell was making Crosby work for every inch on the ice all night long. Those two were like rams locking horns and colliding on about every shift. For his part, Sid was backchecking and super engaged all over the ice too. Some fun action watching those two go at it.
- The preview’s game focus was on the finishing struggles of the Panthers, which mostly held to form. Through two periods they had only one goal on 19 shots, courtesy of the power play and Marchand getting to the net and then another power play goal in the third. Otherwise converting was a struggle for them at even strength, as the stats showed has been their norm this season.
- That last note isn’t intended and shouldn’t minimize Jarry, who was a big reason that Florida did struggle. It took a lot to beat him tonight, he made 34 saves and was very steady from beginning to end in a game that had a lot of punches and counter-punches going on. Another good night in net for the Pens to work with.
- About ten seconds before Kindel scored, he made me sigh by trying to force a pass from down low that didn’t connect when he had an open lane to pass back to the point. Luckily they were able to recover and, undaunted, Kindel made his next few touches of the puck count in a major way. The kid’s composure belies his age and experience with the hands and sense to come through in an instant like that.
- Caleb Jones took a rough fall left leg first into the corner of the rink with 6:48 remaining in the third. He left the ice in discomfort and didn’t return. That’s worth watching being as Pittsburgh only has three left shot defenders on the roster.
- It took the refs about 5 minutes, a video review and a couple of conferences with Florida coach Paul Maurice to figure out which Pens would be on the ice after they iced the puck with 3:42 to go. A real circus. The Pens were trying to get Crosby out there, who was coming on the ice for a change in the play, but after the puck had been released. It took forever but they got it right. Might have been a blessing in disguise for the Pens to break up the momentum and give all their players a breather, even though they didn’t have their best faceoff taker available once it all finally got sorted out.
- Justin Brazeau popping off so much might take a little shine away from Connor Dewar’s own early season hot streak. Third goal of the season for the fourth liner! That goal he scored was in a way a microcosm of this whole stretch of the four-game winning streak; not the prettiest but earned through hard work and forcing a good result to happen by doing the right thing. A lot of the team is pulling the rope in that direction and finding ways to cash in, leading to victories.
The Pens had an answer for everything the Panthers did tonight and put two more points on the board in the standings as a result. Pittsburgh heads back home to PPG Paints for a pair of games, beginning with Columbus coming to town on Saturday.
