There’s an old axiom in baseball. You win with pitching, defense, and timely hitting.
Translated for hockey? Defense, clutch goaltending, and timely scoring. Which the Penguins got—in spades—during last night’s thrilling 2-1 overtime victory over San Jose in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals.
Indeed, the Pens delivered a classic postseason performance. One that harkened back to Games 2 and 3 of the ’92 Cup Finals, when the locals beat the defensively minded Blackhawks at their own game.
In particular, the black and gold did a terrific job of clogging shooting lanes and denying a seriously skilled Sharks squad access to the prime scoring areas. With four blocked shots, ubiquitous Nick Bonino led the way.
Our guys were physical, too. Surprisingly so. Playing the game of his life, Ben Lovejoy dished out five hits, including a couple that registered on the Richter scale. Kris Letang and resurgent Olli Maatta had four hits apiece.
Patric Hornqvist? A game-high six.
Channeling his inner Tom Barrasso, goalie Matt Murray was exceedingly sharp. Facing down streams of pressure delivered in awkward, staccato bursts, the cucumber-cool rookie made 21 saves. None larger than his flurry of stops on a swarm of Sharks in the final minute of regulation. Unless it was his doorstep denial of San Jose sharpshooter Joe Pavelski a fraction before the second-period horn. Or his big-time save on Joel Ward during the early going.
It helps to be lucky. The visitors rang four shots off the iron…including three by snake-bitten Tomas Hertl. On the home side of the ledger, Carl Hagelin chimed one off the crossbar.
As for timely scoring? How about the HBK Line? With a typical burst of speed, Hagelin hounded Sharks defender Brenden Dillon into a turnover. Like a vulture hovering over an easy meal, Phil Kessel scurried to the net in time to nudge Bonino’s deft cross-crease shot over the line at 8:20 of the second period to break a tense, scoreless tie.
“I think guys are going to give him some crap about that, because it’s Phil,” Bonino said of No. 81’s opportunistic play. “But he can’t pass that up. You have to whack that in.”
The overtime winner? A gem.
Sidney Crosby won the draw clean from Ward and pulled the puck back to Letang. Instructed by his captain not to shoot, “Tanger” instead dished a short pass to Conor Sheary at the top of the left circle. After reaching back to retrieve the rubber, the Pens’ rookie wheeled and beat Martin Jones to the glove side.
Screened on the play, Jones never saw the shot.
“I call [24] faceoffs a game, so I got [23] wrong tonight,” Crosby said modestly. “It’s one of those things; guys have to execute, you have to make the pass. That’s exactly what they did.”
While naturally on Cloud Nine, Sheary grasped the meaning of the moment.
“It’s surreal,” noted the undrafted free agent out of UMass-Amherst. “Important moment. Most important, we got a win and we’re up 2-0 right now.”
Amen, Conor.
Two down. Two to go.
Hey Rick
With 14 down and 2 to go, this is not the time to celebrate. The Sharks are a good team. They earned their way to be one of the last 2-teams standing. And the B & G now have to go into enemy territory against a desperate team. The Pens are going to have to out-desperate them. This is no time to take the foot off of the accelerator.
But if you are Pens Fan you got to be enjoying this.
Keep that pedal to the metal!
Hey Coach,
Agree totally….You have seen the determination in Crosby’s eyes and the intense efforts he has put forth in this series. He will not allow his team to take a night off when they are this close to winning it all. This is a special “legacy moment” for Crosby and his career and he will not let this slip away from him !!
It has been a very long time for him to get back to the Finals, and he may never get back here again, especially with unforeseen injuries, so to him he will play these last games to the maximum of his ability and demand all the other Pen’s do the same.
Lets Go Pen’s.
Hi Rick,
To date we have watched almost 70 minutes of Hockey in the finals and although the score board indicates the slimmest of victories,the games I saw were anything but close. The Pen’s out chanced the Sharks by a wide margin and except for about 20 minutes, the Pen’s dictated the play. The Pen’s also silenced the big guns of the Sharks last night. HNIC reported at the end of the second period, the Sharks had only 10 shots that reached the net, and 4 of them were from the forwards ?? Two periods of hockey in a critical game, and your forwards only had 4 shots in two periods ! Why ?
Incredible team defense by the Pen’s.We swarmed them like bunch of bee’s and the Sharks never,ever faced pressure like that in the 2016 playoffs.
Second point is that Brent Burns is no Victor Hedman ! I thought that Burns would be the catalyst leading his team with his size and big shot and give the Pen’s serious trouble. It has not happened, and just like Hedman the Pen’s shut him down as well. As a result, the Sharks often looked slow coming out of their own end. ( A lot of that is due to our fore check as well.)
Finally, I really feel that the Pen’s team speed and team defense combined with 3 separate scoring lines have proved to much for the Sharks.
It is not that the Shark’s have played poorly…..our Pen’s have exposed their weaknesses as a Team. As I posted previously,the Pen’s in five !
Good article Rick..
130 minutes of Hockey… not 70 Sorry Rick.
Hey Guys,
Sorry, again, to be so out-of-pocket. But once again, you seem to have things covered.
Jim, I couldn’t agree more about Brent Burns. This guy really worried me…to the extent that I singled him out at the end of my pre-series forecast. But, at least through two games, he hasn’t been the disruptive force I’d envisioned.
I do expect the Sharks to come out loaded for bear in Game 3. And being down 2-zip certainly isn’t a death sentence. Our Pens came back from 0-2 in the 2009 Finals to take 4 of 5 from Detroit…and the Cup.
Maybe the Red Wings felt the same way about us in ’09. But I have a hard time seeing the Sharks take the series. I think they’re a little weak on the backend—especially the Dillon-Polak pair. And, although it’s only one game, I thought the Pens dictated play in Game 2. To the extent that I really wasn’t anxious about the eventual outcome, even after San Jose came back to tie it up.
One thing we need to do? Stay out of the box. The Sharks—particularly Joe Thornton—come alive on the power play. They move the puck really well. And they can finish.
GO PENS!
Hey Rick,
You touched on a really good point….Take few penalties. That is really starting to frustrate the Sharks.
Joe Thorton ?? It is very obvious some thing is bothering him. I have watched him play for many years and always thought of him as one of the “GOOD ” guys, in that he was not a dirty player or an agitator. In the last game and a half this is not the same guy I have respected for the past 10 years. If he was not super Joe Thorton, the refs would have put him in the sin bin.
Let’s Go Pens…
Hey Jim,
Thornton’s a tough customer. Used to do a fair amount of fighting earlier in his career. Was pretty good at it, too.
I’m not certain of what’s up with him now. I’m sure he’s very aware that this is probably his last chance to win a Cup. Perhaps he senses it slipping away and is lashing out in frustration.
Lest we forget—Thornton was the captain of some pretty good Sharks teams that never went anywhere in the postseason. So maybe he’s dealing with the weight of expectations from playoffs past.
Whatever the reason, the dirty crap never works. But so long as he’s focused more on whacking people than scoring?
A bonus for our Pens.