Sleepy Penguins Outlast Predators 5-3

Somebody up there likes us. An awful lot.

I can find no other plausible explanation for how the Penguins defeated Nashville last night in Game One of the Stanley Cup Final before 18,618 hand-wringing patrons at PPG Paints Arena.

It sure as hell wasn’t due to a heroic effort on the part of the home team. In all my years of watching Penguins hockey, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them deliver a more tepid performance at crunch time. And I’ve seen some clunkers.

After snatching a 3-0 lead thanks to a disallowed Nashville goal and one of those volcanic four-minute eruptions we’re so accustomed to, our guys literally fell asleep. A neat trick, especially on skates.

How bad was it? For starters, the Pens mustered nary a shot on goal for the entire second period, marking the first time in the club’s illustrious postseason history they’ve failed to do so. For an encore, they went nearly the entire third period without one, too. For the game, they mustered all of a dozen shots on goal and a miserable 28 shot attempts.

My late grandmother, God rest her soul, could get 28 shot attempts in a game.

No, our boys didn’t deliver a primo effort by any stretch of the imagination. They played maybe 10 effective minutes out of 60, in two staccato bursts. With an assist from Predators goalie Pekka Rinne (.636 save percentage), they somehow managed to accumulate five goals during those all-too-brief interludes.

That’s a heck of a return on their sweat equity, but not one that’s sustainable in any way, shape or form.

After allowing Nashville to creep back on a second period power-play goal by Ryan Ellis, the Pens made a concerted effort to give the game away in the third. Evgeni Malkin, who netted the game-opening goal, made like ex-linemate James Neal and took a silly slashing penalty to set up a power-play tally by Colton Sissons. For good measure, Neal ran over black-and-gold goalie Matt Murray well after the play. Not that any Penguins pretended to notice.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this was going. As I’ve done so often through these playoffs, I sat on my chair at the Pennsbury Pub and Grille with hands clasped to my face, peering between spread fingers at the images unfolding on screen.

My trepidation turned to full-blown anger after the Pens botched a gift power play midway through the third period. Mere seconds after the muffed man advantage sputtered to its disappointing conclusion, they allowed the tying goal on a defensive breakdown orchestrated in part by Olli Maatta.

“They’re gonna’ blow it,” I grumbled to my buddy Tom Blanciak after noting Maatta’s culpability and overall wobbly play.

Following another sequence of botched offensive-zone entries and wayward passes, I blew my stack.

“Take the (bleeping) puck and drive to the net,” I yelled in decibels loud enough for the entire establishment to hear.

Maybe Jake Guentzel heard, too. About a minute later the precocious rookie raced into the Predators’ zone and lasered the puck past Rinne high to the glove side. Incredibly, it was the Pens’ first shot on goal in 37 minutes—nearly two full periods of hockey.

Thank the good Lord coach Mike Sullivan didn’t scratch the kid.

Shaken from their slumber, the Pens managed three more shots on the Nashville goal over the final three minutes and change, including Nick Bonino’s empty-netter with 62 ticks left on the clock.

Yeah, we won alright. And a win, is a win, is a win—especially during the Final. But jeez!

Or as Sullivan so aptly put it…

“We weren’t very good,” an observation he felt compelled to repeat in Rain Man fashion. “We weren’t very good. So, when you’re playing a team like Nashville that has a balanced attack, you have to have some pushback. I didn’t think, in the second period, that we had any pushback. … We just weren’t very good.”

Puckpourri

Bonino scored two goals to earn the No. 1 star. Bones’ first goal at 19:44 of the first period deflected in off Preds defenseman Mattias Ekholm.

Conor Sheary scored the Pens’ second goal—his first of the playoffs—off a nifty feed from Chris Kunitz. Kunitz and Sidney Crosby collected two assists apiece. Matt Cullen and Justin Schultz assisted on Guentzel’s game-winner.

Patric Hornqvist returned to the lineup after missing six games with an upper-body injury. He skated on the reconstructed fourth line with Cullen and No. 2 star Guentzel. Carl Hagelin was a healthy scratch.

Murray stopped 23 of 26 shots for an .885 save percentage.

Malkin collected his playoff best 25th point, three points ahead of Crosby. Guentzel leads all postseason scorers with 10 goals.

Nashville held an edge in shot attempts (46-28), shots on goal (26-12), blocked shots (14-9) and hits (37-31).  The Pens controlled the faceoff circle (33-24).